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Eovia certainly couldn’t be accused of being workshy. Its latest release of 3D suite Carrara – now at version 4 – is a lesson in how to lavish powerful additions on an already solid solution. Newcomers will find much to admire in terms of the wealth of features at your disposal, while ...
The latest version of Sorenson’s Squeeze Compression Suite takes a slight departure, looks-wise, from its predecessors. Although it retains the simplistic and intuitive workflow the interface is more akin to higher-end video solutions with dark windows sporting orange and white highlights.
I’m going to have to admit an initial bias against Visual Communicator. It’s a production system designed to make creating video-based corporate presentations – such as sales pitches and in-house training – easy enough that a marketing or sales department can do it itself.
StoryViz is not really aimed at mere mortals. It’s intended for those who need to illustrate and previsualize a movie or commercial before shooting – directors, visual effects supervisors, production directors and 3D animators, for example. As such, it’s up against that other new pre-viz product, Antics from Kelseus.
Maxon has delivered a top upgrade to Cinema 4D, with plenty of new features. Leading the way is support for N-gons. These are polygons with more than four sides, and an unlimited number of corner points that can aid more precise and cleaner modelling, especially when working with complex imported models.
Continnum 3.0 is a massive set of video plug-ins. The collection runs with Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, or After Effects, and there’s a Continuum AVX version for Avid Xpress. Over 40 plug-ins have been brought into the mix since version 2.0, which brings the total number of plug-ins to around 150.
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.
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.
That Canon produced a PowerShot G6 at all comes as something of a surprise. The introduction of the 8mp Pro1 model earlier this year appeared to be the next step up from 2003’s 5mp G5 model, and seemed to spell the end of the well-regarded G-series of semi-professional digital compact cameras.
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.
When Painter 8 appeared, it was hailed as the breakthrough version that finally transformed Painter’s ghastly interface into something usable. The changes in Painter IX are less dramatic, but it’s still a good upgrade. Corel has put a great deal of effort into the documentation, help, and tutorials.
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.
Anyone who’s recently used green-screen hardware professionally will be aware of Reflecmedia’s Chromatte products. Given the company’s track record, creating its own optimized keying plug-in was a natural development – though the actual coding was done by The Pixel Farm.
Commercial design or 3D modelling work often throws up a need for product shots, with near-shadowless lighting and invisible backgrounds. Using a professional photographic studio is expensive. Cubelite offers an in-house alternative, described as a small portable studio.
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
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.
