Hi all ... just bouncing an idea.
I've written a book. It's a boring old local history thing, but it needed to be done. Because the number of copies needed will necessarily be small, publishing the thing on paper is a very expensive no-no. So, I thought, publish it as a CD. Well, I got that together and I have a book that looks like a book except it's now a big PDF file. Then I thought ... well, hold on - if I'm going to do this electronically, then I could do a lot more with the graphics. And, further along in that direction, I could actually build a 3D model of the Norman church around which the book is written. In fact, I could model the entire village, and populate it with the characters I've discovered in the history of the village. And then, thought I, rather than just presenting a page of text, I could get the characters to say the words for me ... I'm sure you all see where this is going.
I've been looking around for a year or so. I've come across engines which look good until you discover that they're merely playthings for C++ programmers who take a very dim view of stupid questions like "How do I actually use this thing?". I can live without a learning curve which might take me the rest of my existence. So, summing up, Wintermute looks to me like just the thing I need.
In fact, it seems so much like "just the thing I need" that I've begun to worry. Can anyone see any fault in my thinking? I know that it's an obvious question and the answer is probably equally obvious. Is there any reason at all why I should not create an animated DVD (see - I'm up from CD to DVD already) using Wintermute?
Incidentally, although I've been playing with things like Blender and Wings, I'm coming to the conclusion that my 3D modelling skills are limited. So bear in mind that if you tell me Wintermute is really what I need, I may just be back here appealing for help of a more practical nature.
Cheers all ... Mike