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Piranesi is primarily used by architects. It’s a painting tool that imports 3D scenes or 2D plans, and allows you to apply textures and add elements as you would in Photoshop. Piranesi’s interface is basic compared to Adobe’s ubiquitous image editor, but Piranesi does boast some unique elements.
There are plenty of differences between the current crop of 3D tools, but there are similarities, too – after 10 to 15 years of development, 3D software developers have learned what works and what doesn’t. Despite all this, Strata is one of those applications that goes against the grain of traditional 3D conventions.
ImageModeler extracts 3D data from a series of photographs using technology similar to that used in matchmoving software. By placing markers on corresponding locations in different images it can plot the points in 3D space
Liquid Edition is one of those pieces of software that ‘coulda been a contender’. A few years ago, when Premiere 6.5 seemed on its last legs, Pinnacle bought what would become Liquid Edition and its developer, FAST, to try to wrest the market from Adobe.
Au Naturel is an After Effects plug-in that restores a more realistic gamma curve to video footage, instead of the one imposed through your camera or MPEG compression. It allows you to manipulate footage in a 32-bit per channel, floating point linear RGB colour space.
Digital Anarchy’s Backdrop Designer is a resolution-independent pattern tool that simulates the texture and shading of backdrops used by portrait and product photographers. It’s a Photoshop plug-in, and the idea is ...
Motion is Apple’s much anticipated motion-graphics product, providing real-time manipulation and rendering of motion graphics on the Power Mac G5. It has much in common with DVD Studio Pro and Final Cut Pro HD in terms of interface design.
ACT, the concept behind Endorphin, uses intelligent behaviours to apply physical simulations of human movement, and allows real-time interactive control using constraints and forces. Building animation with Endorphin is simple, using one of the most straightforward user interfaces in 3D.
Demicron’s latest version of this Web multimedia tool is as simple to use as its predecessors. It has the same logical structure and methodology for creating interactive 3D elements but with a new, cleaner interface. It’s Java-based, but you don’t need any programming knowledge to build applications and objects for streaming into Web pages.
With Boujou Bullet, 2d3 is attempting to take matchmoving to new markets. Its price is friendlier to smaller studios, and it’s automation has been improved – providing a subset of Boujou 3’s toolset as well as a step-by-step wizard that guides the user through what is a complex process.
Rostrum camera work can be quite fiddly using most standard timeline editing tools. Imaginate is a single-purpose program specifically designed to make animating still images quicker, easier, and more effective.
Both Adobe and Apple have been pushing the integration of their video, audio and DVD authoring tools with their respective Video Collection and Production Suite. Avid has hit back with Xpress Studio, a series of tools that provide an end-to-end creative studio
This drawing and illustration application has been in a crisis of identity recently. In the last couple of years it’s been called eveything from Corel Xara to Webster. This upgrade bears the name Xara X1.
For the creation of 3D vector animation and 3D Flash movies, Swift 3D, is one of the most successful tools on the market. This is largely thanks to its ease-of-use. It allows 2D designers to draw shapes using bézier curves, and then using the extrusion tool to add both depth and bevels, or the Lathe Editor to convert paths into radial 3D surfaces.
Over the years, Armari has made a name for itself as one of the most dependable independent UK workstation vendors. Always at the forefront of technology, the company is regularly one of the first to showcase new developments.
SketchUp stands out among 3D graphics programs thanks to its innovative and simple ‘push/pull’ approach, which makes it easy to sketch 2D shapes and then quickly manipulate them in three dimensions with the mouse.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ10S includes an amazingly powerful 12x Leica zoom lens that has built-in image stabilization and a fairly good selection of advanced creative controls ...
These devices have been available for years for CAD users, but only recently has 3Dconnexion released drivers and plug-ins that allow them to work with entertainment-focused applications such as 3DS Max, Maya, Softimage|XSI, and Photoshop.
EIAS is the new name for the 3D animation and modelling package ElectricImage Universe. Due to licensing issues, EIAS no longer comes with the ACIS-based EI Modeller, which is a shame, but that doesn’t mean a total return to the modeller-less old days.
Like many recent releases of 3D applications in the mid- to high-end range, version 8 of LightWave 3D has concentrated mainly on enhancements to character animation and dynamics.
