3D Software Reviews

Aurora	ZBrush 1.5	Anark Studio 1.5
Strata 3Dpro v3.7	ET SHADE R5/E	Ashlar-Vellum Argon
Bryce 5	Rhino 2	Elsa Gloria DCC
Anark Studio	Carrara	ZBrush 1.23b
Swift3D V2	DarkTree Textures 2	Vue d'Esprit 4
Animatek World Builder 3 Pro	Deep Paint 3D - Texture Weapons	Director 8.5

 

3D Software Reviews 3DS Max 3 Improvements range from enhanced speed to a better user interface; new features include TurboSmooth, Object Display Culling and Direct 3 3ds max 5 In this review I will be looking at the new features which differentiate max 5 from it's previous version. 3DS Max 5 This new version of 3ds max adds features and fixes that greatly increase the workflow and power of this application. Continuing on with their commitment to empowering content creation artists, discreet has shown that they are able to take this product, and make it a solid and impressive toolset. CGChannel 3ds max 5 In this review I will be looking at the new features which differentiate max 5 from it's previous version. Numerous changes in Interface design, modeling, material mapping, animation, lighting and rendering have been made. Creative-3D.net 3ds max 7 review Discreet has begun shipping 3ds max 7, the latest version of its venerable 3D modeling and animation application. The upgrade includes new modeling and texturing features ... 3ds max 8 review Ryan Lesser reviews the newest tools available in Autodesk’s 3ds Max, including pelt mapping, render UVW template functionality, skinning, modeling and animation. 3ds max 9 review Review of 3ds max 9 Adobe Atmosphere Adobe Atmosphere lets you import your 3D models from Max or Maya, enhance them with lighting, physics, and interactivity and then deliver them as interactive 3D over the web, or in the ubiquitous PDF format (yes - interactive 3D in a PDF!). Adobe Photoshop 7 Photoshop 7 is a conservative and reasonably solid release with a handful of welcome new features, such as the File Browser and healing brush, that you'll use every day. Macaddict.com Adobe Premiere 6 Adobe Premiere 6 ($549 list), released in December of 2000, brought important new features, such as DV capture and Web video output. It also added a storyboard organizer, a powerful history tool, and palette windows, which are used for managing filters and effects. After Effects 3.1 Adobe After Effects 3.1 brings professional quality video post-production and special effects for film, broadcast video and multimedia, right to your desktop. AfterBurn One of the foremost volumetric packages is AfterBurn, which works as a plug-in to Discreet's 3ds max software. The new version 3 has just been released by Sitni Sati, the Croatia-based developer, and is available from the developer and vendors such as Turbo Squid as part of the Discreet Certified 3ds max Plug-in program. Alias Maya Unlimited 6.0 The sixth version of Maya isn't really a revolution - but it is another evolution. There are a few 'big' changes in Maya 6 including a new hair system, some nice character setup and animation features, Photoshop PSD file support, and further mental ray integration. There are also many other small changes as well, some very handy. Anark Studio 1.0 Anark Studio (AS) is designed to manage content created in other applications. The introduction says that it allows you to create digital projects for distribution by the net, an intranet or perhaps a PC running a display on a sales stand. You might also use it to write a training course. ... Anark Studio 1.5 It was nice to see how Anark Studio has developed. I started the review full of enthusiasm, as it has benefited from improvements that have made the program easier to use and above all, fun. You just want to show someone what it can do... Anark Studio 2.0 New from Anark is version 2.0 of its Studio software, a program for creating Web-based animations, presentations, and interactive applications. Animatek World Builder 3 Pro Digital Elements newest release brings some significant new capeabilities to this impressive landscape generator. It's ease of use, animation, plant library, and beautiful rendering make it a powerful application on it's own. Combined with other 3D platforms such as Max, Maya, and Lightwave - WB3 Pro should quickly become one of your most used utilities. Animation:Master 2002 Animation:Master (at $299) has maintained a focus on character modeling and animation in an application that offers a wide range of features that are found in animation programs in the $2,000 price range. Ashlar-Vellum Argon Argon is the middle product in a range of graphics tools from Ashlar-Vellum and costs $995. The company advertises its products as "Software that works the way you think". AxelEdge 1.5 AxelEdge 1.5 is MindAvenue's premium solution for web delivered interactive 3D. AxelEdge allows web developers to easily develop 3D multimedia experiences, combining 3D objects, Movies (Flash, MOV, AVI, MPG) and sound. Brazil r/s The Brazil r/s interface blends seamlessly into the Max render interface, and is accessed simply by choosing Brazil r/s as the current renderer. There are lots of controls and parameters--this is not a "dumbed-down" interface--but it's still relatively easy-to-use. Brazil r/s handles all Max scenes natively, and it is compatible with third-party plugins including materials, geometry deformation, and volumetrics. Bryce 2 The complete Bryce 2 from Metatools is finally available for the PC. I originally started this review 7 months ago in October 1996 only to discover that the Bryce 2 I received was incomplete! I finally received the full version in January 1997... C.A.T. Character Animation Toolkit (CAT), from Character Animation Technologies. Cadsoft Envisioneer 2.5 Designers And Developers Involved in residential and light commercial/industrial work and landscaping should take a close look at Envisioneer from Cadsoft. Carrara Studio 1.1 Carrara Studio 1.1 is the first release by Eovia, since the program was purchased from Metacreations. Carrara is the merger of the now defunct Macintosh 3D program, Infini-D, and the Windows program Ray Dream Studio Carrara Studio 2 Don't be fooled by the affordable price tag of Eovia Corp.'s Carrara Studio 2 ($399 direct). This 3-D animation program offers the power, ease of use, fast rendering, and features found in higher priced programs. Web designers and multimedia developers can take advantage of Studio 2's wealth of features, which include a preview function, five rendering engines, seven different modelers, multiple animation tools, and 3-D primitives (fire, clouds, and so on). The list continues with a particle system, an advanced shader editor, lighting effects, (and other special effects), many types of modifiers (atomize, bounce, dissolve, explode, and so on), and about 1,000 3-D models and textures. Cebas finalToon 1.0 ...finalToon takes the form of a Rendering Effect; just turn it on, and everything in your scene is rendered with the default line styles and normal surfaces. If you'd like to use cel shading on surfaces instead, you can apply the included finalToon material... CG Content Watch have recently started my personal blog to monitor 'problematic' 3D content published at online stores. The 'monitoring' includes reports for stolen content, unreasonable overpriced 3d models, poor quality items, etc. Character Studio 2 Biped and Physique integrate seamlessly into the MAX user-interface and go well with the work flow. Character Studio 2 is certainly not a tool that forces you to adopt a certain style of animation and take the individual touch out of your work. It doesn't save you from learning the basics of character animation though. It is an effective tool that helps you accelerate the process of going from idea to animated story, but also makes it easier to produce garbage too. If you feel that animating two-legged characters is too restrictive, you can always set up your own bone structure and use Physique to handle mesh deformation. Character Studio 3 I would start by calling Character Studio 3 (CS3) the essential 3D Studio Max plug-in however, referring to it as a mere plug-in is a major understatement... Cinema 4D A powerful 3-D animation and illustration package like Maxon’s Cinema 4D should be taking the world by storm. After all, you’ve seen its 3-D animation magic in movies like Walt Disney Pictures’ “Inspector Gadget,” in award winning animated shorts like Phil McNalley’s Pump Action and on the covers of magazines such as Scientific American and Popular Science. Cinema 4D Dynamics Control the laws of physics! CINEMA 4D Dynamics is a breakthrough technology for recreating natural forces to achieve startlingly realistic visual effects. This exciting plugin allows CINEMA 4D users to easily simulate real-world dynamic forces including friction, gravity, collisions, springs, wind and more. Cinema 4D NET A Cinema 4D rendering farm is established by creating a "Server" machine. This server machine can be anywhere in the world, and doesn't even need to be a super computer! To create the server machine, one simply copies the Cinema 4D NET Server folder to the server machine's hard drive, and launches the application therein. Once launched, the server machine then becomes a web server that can be accessed anywhere in the world. Cinema 4D XL (PC) Cinema 4D XL is Maxon's flagship 3D software and version 6 is the latest upgrade. Normally when reviewing an upgrade of an application we look at the new changes first, well in this situation its everything. I've yet to find a section of the program that hasn't been changed for the better... Cinema 4D XL 6 The anxiously awaited Cinema4D XL v6 has finally emerged. And what an emergence it is. The press releases and previews looked impressive to say the least, and the package has certainly lived up to the prerelease hype... Cinema 4D XL Version 6 (Mac) Character animation is the major focus of this release. New features include enhanced object and animation managers. Objects can be more easily filtered, searched, bookmarked and arranged in layers. The timeline has been rewritten to work the same way as the Object Manager, and new ripple and region edition tools are available, along with improved keyframe interpolation controls. Support for OpenGL has been enhanced, as well. Combustion 3.0 Alan Edward Bell takes a thorough look at Discreet Combustion 3 and concludes with, "...Many feature film and television effects houses use Combustion on a daily basis for doing everything from matte generation, color correction to full blown compositing, I cannot recommend this software enough, and this review only scratches the surface of what is possible." Corel Bryce 5 Corel Bryce 5 is a the first major release of the Bryce product since Corel purchased it from MetaCreations. Bryce 5 is primarily a landscape creation, and environment rendering and animation package. DarkTree Textures 2 Nice little touches--the obvious result of much thought and care--abound in DarkTree Textures 2. For instance, whenever you drag a component to a tree slot, a dialog opens in which you click a button to indicate the type: Color, Percent, or Bump. Normally, the default type, which to accept all you need do is press Enter, or click if you've set your mouse to automatically move to the default button, is Color. However, if you've pasted a component into the Root socket as different type, this type then becomes the default for all subsequently placed child components. Deep Paint 3D with Texture weapons If you don't have Deep Paint with Texture Weapons yet, don't put it off - order it today! Regardless of your primary 3D platform, Deep Paint with Texture Weapons will give your models, scenes, and animations a whole new level of realism! Digital Element Aurora Aurora is an Adobe PhotoShop plugin which allows you to create natural environments, such as volumetric skies, clouds, oceans, lakes, rivers, stars, and more. Aurora is developed by Digital Element, publisher of the critically acclaimed 3D natural environment modeler, and animation program - WorldBuilder. Digital Element's Verdant Digital Element's Verdant is a powerful, and unique new Photoshop plug-in which allows you to add realistic 3D rendered plant images to an image. Director 8.5 - Shockwave Studio Director 8.5 - Shockwave Studio from Macromedia has brought interactive 3D to the web in a big way. With the Shockwave player on over 220 Million computers worldwide, coupled with the powerful features of this release, 3D is bound to gain a significant role on the web. Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio Macromedia's Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio is a significant event for Web 3D, delivering powerful 3D authoring capabilities to the multimedia and web development community, and empowering 3D artists with a new creative medium, and platform to bring their 3D worlds to life... DreamScape 2.0 What's in a landscape? To start with: sky, sun, and land and/or sea. These are the basic components of Dreamscape 2.0, the latest release from Sitni Sati, the Croatian developer that also makes the volumetric software Afterburn.... FinalRender Stage-1 this is a review of finalRender Stage-1, the second release of this advanced rendering software for 3ds max; the first was Stage-0. finalRender is much more powerful than the venerable default scanline renderer that ships with max. In some ways it's comparable to mental ray... Head Designer 1.5 The software is Head Designer, a plug-in for 3ds max distributed by Digimation. This eminently useful tool, which has been around for a while, was so good in its initial incarnation that little has been added in the new version 1.5. ImageModeler 3 ImageModeler 3 allows you to easily create 3D objects, for film or video production (when you need to blow something, or someone up for example), all the way down to virtual products for websites. The models can be as simple or as complex as you like them to be, in five simple steps. Imagine Imagine for Windows from Impulse showed up a week before Christmas 1996. Those of you who read my initial review of this software may recall that the final shipping version was supposed to out by October 3. At least this time they shipped a 240 page, 9 chapter user manual with it. Unfortunately there is still no on-line help! The CD-ROM includes 15 .avi files that demonstrate Imagine's capabilities. It contains 24 Lotus ScreenCam movies that demonstrate how to do appliqu,, blobs, bones, decals, particles, splines, textures, waves, etc. KAYDARA'S MOTIONBUILDER 5.5 New in MOTIONBUILDER 5.5 Professional is support for Python Scripting, a powerful, interactive, object-oriented programming language. MOTIONBUILDER's support for live scripting enables better integration with game studios' production pipelines, provides fast and intuitive commands for running live scripts, and allows users to automate repetitive processes and extend features without leaving the MOTIONBUILDER environment. Life Forms 4.0 Life Forms 4.0 software is by far the most powerful character-animation package in it's price-range. Create your own animations based on default models or edit motion capture or keframed character animations from almost any source. Includes the PowerMoves 2 CD packed with more than 750 ready-to-use motions including over 150 motion capture files. LightWave 3D Version 8 Lightwave has been one of the most instrumental tools in the advances in computer graphics (CG) for more than a decade. Now that CG takes center stage even in movies, you might feel inspired to give it a try yourself. I remember drooling over this program in my Commodore Amiga days ever since it's reincarnation as a stand-alone product in 1995. At the time CG was a matter of Unix or AmigaOS and not much else. That was 10 years ago and when I recently returned to Lightwave 3D, it was like I never left -- same excitement and overall very similar in user interface too. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as Lightwave for almost 20 years pretty much stood out for its well organized user-friendly interface -- stand-alone or as part of VideoToaster (before 1995). What's different is that I spent the last 11 years with solid modeling in a much more expensive package (Pro/Engineer) with a completely different focus (CAD). However, with the price cut to almost half, Lightwave3D is one tempting package for the CG interested. LightWave 7.5 LightWave is a versatile program that has been used for years in television, film, and games. It is also used to create graphics for print, web, industrial design, architecture, medical imaging, and a variety of other areas. The LightWave 7.5 Primer, is a complete, structured guide to the ins and outs of LightWave. Whether you are just getting started with LightWave, or are an intermediate user needing to hone your skills, this "course in a book" provides all the instruction you need to become proficient. You can work at your own pace through a variety of lessons, tasks, and self-tests that will improve your skills and help you master this powerful program. LightWave 7.5 on OS X LightWave 7.0 had improved upon and added a lot of features when it was released nearly ten months ago. While a patch release was made in September, there were still some quirks left to work out. After working with LightWave 7.5 it looks like a lot of those issues have been addressed. To fully test out LightWave 7.5 I used Faye, my 1.4GHz AMD system with 512Mb of RAM running Windows 2000. I also tested LightWave 7.5 with Nadia, my Dual Gig Mac running OS X . Maya 6.5 Alias Maya 6.5 is a completely rebuilt release optimized to meet the needs of games, film, broadcast and digital publishing professionals seeking dramatic performance... messiah : animate 3.0 For years, software developer pmg has been a top name in LightWave 3D circles; its project:messiah plug-in program is used widely for character animation, including in some high-profile Hollywood projects. Now the developer is branching out with messiah:animate (m:a), a stand-alone 3D character-animation application that also works with 3ds max. Metacreations Poser 3 The Poser 3 interface is one typical of Metacreations - it steers well away from the typical Windows or Mac interface. You work mainly in the center window, which contains the Poser figure/s. This window is resizable, and is the place where you pose your figure, move it, modify and even render it (although there is an option that allows you to render in another window). MindAvenue AxelEdge 1.5 AxelEdge 1.5 is MindAvenue's premium solution for web delivered interactive 3D. AxelEdge allows web developers to easily develop 3D multimedia experiences, combining 3D objects, Movies (Flash, MOV, AVI, MPG) and sound. modo it comes as a breath of fresh air that Luxology, a company founded recently by former Lightwave 3D stalwarts Allen Hastings, Stuart Ferguson, and Brad Peebler, has embarked on a course of world domination, or at least domination of the 3D market, with a bold new line of 3D software. Outburst 1.5 Animation Science has recently released an update to Outburst; it’s flagship particle system plugin for 3D Studio MAX. Outburst is not your ordinary particle tool, but a very advanced physics-based engine that is integrated into MAX. In a lot of ways it’s a port of their particle system written for Softimage Extreme, but with many enhancements. Now with version 1.5, Animation Science has added new features that increase its flexibility: target obstacles and Outburst|MAX, a tool to pass Outburst particle information to Video Post and Environment effects paint* 2.0 Discreet Logic’s paint* 2.0 was previously known as ILLUMINAIRE Paint in version 1. Then Discreet Logic took ILLUMINAIRE, chopped it up and repackaged it as separate products: paint* and effect*. As the painting tool of Discreet’s New Media product range (New Media is the group of products into which paint* and effect* belong) , paint* has been described as Photoshop for digital video. But as we found out, paint* 2.0 is a lot, lot more... Photoshop 5.5 At first glance, moving from version 5.2 to 5.5 does not sound like a big deal. Do not be deceived by the first glance though Photoshop 6 Photoshop 6 features by far the most sweeping changes to its interface since the introduction of layers with Photoshop 3. Pixologic ZBrush 2 Review Ryan Kingslien evaluates the latest ZBrush software package and explains the benefits of its hybrid production capabilities for modeling, 3D texturing and 2D painting. Poser 5 The new version is incredibly powerful, with some truly jaw-dropping features, but the basic functionality of being able to pose and customize your mannequin with a few clicks of the mouse is still the main draw. Poser Pro Pack The original idea behind Poser was incredibly simple - to simulate the moveable wooden mannekins you find in art supply shops designed to help artists draw realistic human figures. Since then the program has developed into a powerful 3D tool with features such as multiple character scenes, props, morph-based deformation, keyframe-based animation and artistic rendering. After the break-up of its developer, Metacreations, doubts rose about the program's future but now Curious Labs has stepped in and, with its Pro Pack, is aiming Poser even more firmly at the high-end 3D market. Procreate Painter 7 Version 7 already! Wow, where did the time go, it seems like only yesterday that we were all trying out Painter Classic with our new wacom tablets and wondering what the heck Fractal was trying to get us to do with a 'floater'. Several versions down the line, owned by Corel now, we have the natural media giant that is Painter 7. RealFlow 2 Simulating fluids in 3D is a very hard and sophisticated task, and since the birth of 3D creation only a few quality fluid simulators have been available. Based in Madrid, Next Limit has two well-known simulators Ñ RealWave, for creation of large water surfaces such as oceans and RealFlow for simulating fluids. By the time you read this review, Next Limit should be shipping RealFlow 2. RF2 works with all the major 3D packages running on Windows NT or 2000. It has plug-ins for 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, LightWave and Cinema 4D. Rhino 2.0 I firmly believe that Rhino is a value for money product and V.2.0 has added a little more value. If Rhino is your first venture into NURBS modeling then you are in for a treat and will probably tell everyone how easy NURBS modeling is. Rhinoceros Version 2.0 The review package included a comprehensive, 500 page user guide (for version 1.0 according to the cover), a Version 2.0 upgrade guide and last of all a CD. 20 minutes after the DHL guy left me on the doorstep I was running the program. Installation, it seems, is as uncomplicated and user friendly as version 1.1 had been. SHADE R5/E First off, what is Expression Tools SHADE? It is an advanced 3D modeling/rendering/animation package developed and sold by a Japanese company called ExpressionTools, Inc. It offers offers modeling capabilities that use Bezier curves, top speed, high-quality rendering and animation capabilites. SimbiontMAX 2.0 Darkling Simulations offers, in its new product DarkTree 2.0, one of the most powerful procedural texture creation tools around. But as always, with power comes complexity SketchUP Pro 5.0 Review SketchUP or Google SketchUP is a simple, yet amazingly powerful 3d modeling tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D ideas quickly and easily. Though it had been developed for the conceptual stages of design, SketchUP is more than a powerful 3d application for creating presentations.So here, we begin with Review of SketchUP Pro 5.0 softimage XSI 5.0 In this review I will elaborate on a lot of the new features in XSI 5.0. However, there are still many, many more new features that are not mentioned in this article. XSI 5.0 is quite an upgrade and I simply did not have time to write up information on everything. But I promise that I tried my best to leave most of the fun stuff in. SOFTIMAGE|XSI 3.0 There were a lot of improvements for XSI 3.0 announced at SIGGRAPH this year. Softimage even released a data sheet that outlined some of them. Unfortunately that data sheet hardly scratched the surface of the V3.0 "new and enhanced features list." As a result, many people perceived the release to be "a little thin." On the flip side however, the presentations at the Softimage booth told a totally different story. With incredible demos that showed just what the new features in V3.0 really had to offer. SOFTIMAGE|XSI 4.0 Softimage announced the newest version of its next generation animation application (XSI) at NAB 2004. At the same time they released a small amount of information about a few of its new features and enhancements. In this article I will elaborate on some of that information and give you a small glimpse into the inner workings of XSI 4.0. Strata 3Dpro 3.7 RME Strata 3Dpro 3.7 RME is Strata's most feature rich 3D application. In addition to the full suite of 3D modeling, animation, and F/X's tools, this version boasts Web3D capabilities, allowing web designers to export animations to Macromedia Flash format with the integrated Swift 3D power module, RAViX II™ SWF. Strata 3Dpro v3.7 Strata 3Dpro 3.7 RME is Strata's most feature rich 3D application. In addition to the full suite of 3D modeling, animation, and F/X's tools, this version boasts Web3D capabilities, allowing web designers to export animations to Macromedia Flash format with the integrated Swift 3D power module, RAViX II™ SWF Swift 3D NEW RELEASE! The industry-leading tool for quickly and easily creating high quality 3D vector and raster animations for Macromedia Flash®, video and print design projects. Swift 3D Max and Illustrate! 5 For those working in 3D graphics these days--according to a recent issue of Computer Graphics World, there are 200,000 of us--the World Wide Web is the final frontier. ... Swift 3D V2 Swift 3D V2 is a standalone application that lets you create vector-based animation in Shockwave Flash and other vector formats. These low-bandwidth presentations are accessible to almost all browsers, and can have greater impact than a simple GIF animation. While not the fullest-featured 3D app around, Swift 3D provides a respectable complement of modeling, surfacing, and animation tools that are easy to learn and simple to use. Swift3D LW 2 Swift3D LW 2 finally delivers on the promise of the original Swift3D, but it's still probably a better tool for delivering content specifically designed to take advantage of its inherent strengths rather than converting existing LightWave content originally destined for another medium. However, excellent results certainly are possible, and one only need visit the Electric Rain web site to see more than a few nice examples of what Swift3D can add to one's Flash movies. Swift3D LW is a little pricey for what it does, and at $295 for the full version and $149 for an upgrade, it's not exactly pocket change to get on board. But despite the price and the need for constant tweaking during the production process, Swift3D LW 2 gives you a nice vector rendering solution, one that's already integrated into an existing 3D package and that produces content that can be used directly within Flash, and as such it's definitely worth taking a serious look at to see if it's right for you Texture Layers 2.0 You might suppose that, with 3ds max's capable built-in mapping tools UVW Map and Unwrap UVW, that there's no market for add-on modifiers, but you'd be wrong. At least, that's the likely reasoning behind the recent release of Texture Layers 2 by developer Mankua Software Texture Master for ZBrush TextureMaster was a big help in creating this head study. I modeled it using a basic sphere with a high mesh resolution and the usual `draw pointer` and `move` buttons in the transform panel.... Toon Boom Studio for Mac OS X Toon Boom Studio™ is the complete animation software solution to quickly create eye-catching animations. The latest release, V3 enables users to easily build animations the cut-out way -- select artworks from existing libraries and animate using motion paths. Toon Boom Studio V3 brings significant improvements to animation keyframing, asset reuse and lip synchronization -- empowering artists to make better animations. In addition, V3 offers a simplified user interface with Drawing and Sceneplanning in one single unified mode. With each release, Toon Boom Studio is injected with powerful new features that will help you make the most of your talents and your time. TrueSpace 3.1 Article TrueSpace loaded easily from the CD-ROM and consumed approximately 32 MB of hard drive space. The installation included Intel's 3D sound system, RSX 3D. It also screwed my video drivers. During the installation I was advised that the drivers for my Matrox Millennium video card were not Direct 3D compatible. The dialog box gave the driver version numbers and the version numbers I had were higher than the version numbers trueSpace wanted to use to replace mine with. So, against my better judgment... Truespace 4 Truespace 4 is the latest version of this venerable mid-end package from Caligari. Truespace is 3D modeling and animation software, with a long history that goes back to its start on the Amiga. It's pitched by Caligari at the web, gaming and design markets though they then go on to claim the new renderer is 'film production quality'. I'll take issue with that claim later. For now, let's take a look at what else TS4 offers, and how it delivers. TrueSpace 5.1 trueSpace has got to be one of the most inexpensive professional 3D graphics creation applications on the market. At that price, Caligari hopes to bring 3D graphics within the reach of an entirely new level of users, and I believe they have succeeded. trueSpace 5.1 definitely rivals its competitors... TrueSpace 6 Even though trueSpace has its share of shortcomings, I would recommend trueSpace to any developer who wants quality 3D graphics at an attainable price. TS6 is one of the most fully featured mid-range 3D graphics packages available. If you are not a TS6 user already, try it. You wont regret it! If you're an old hat at TS, then upgrade and inherit a ton of new and improved features. And even if the product does not offer everything you are looking for, there will most likely be a plug-in that will take up the slack VistaPro 4.1.1 Review VistaPro is an inexpensive, yet capable 3D landscape creation, rendering, and animation application for Windows. Vue d'Esprit 3 When you launch Vue 3 and create a new scene, the first thing you’ll be asked to do is to select an atmosphere. An atmosphere is basically a sky, cloud, and sun set scene from which you can start building your scene. Vue 3 comes complete with around 100 pre-set atmospheres, but there is an option to create a user defined environment. The atmospheres range from hot sunny afternoons, to moonlight evenings, sunsets, and even alien-like atmospheres. Among the pre-sets are a series of animated atmospheres, with rolling clouds or a sun setting a scene can really be brought to life... Vue d'Esprit 4 I recommend freelancers and employers buy it for these simple reason: It's easy to learn, easy to use, the quality is just awesome and mainly, for just $200, it's a give away! ... Vue d'Esprit 4.11 We've examined several dedicated software packages for creating scenery--from atmospheric effects to landscapes to seascapes. They're all over the place, as plugins for for applications like Adobe Photoshop and Discreet Combustion and as standalone applications. And they offer several different approaches to the problem of creating photographic scenery, some 2D, some 3D , some specific to sky or water effects , some attempting to incorporate all into a single package. But what makes any one of these packages stand out? World Builder 3.0 There is little doubt that AnimaTek World Builder 3.0 Professional is the leader in World Building, terrain generation. It's ease of use, animation, plant library, and beautiful rendering make it a powerful application on it's own. World Construction Set 2.0 World Construction Set 2.0 installed easily from its CD-ROM and consumed about 65 MB for the complete install. The total install includes demos, tutorial files, OpenGL, etc. The terrain modeling and animation software is produced by Questar Productions. World Construction Set is available for Intel, Amiga and DEC Alpha computers as this is being written. Prices vary for each platform. The Intel retail price is $835 and street price will be less. Unix/SGI and Mac versions are promised. Check Questar's page for details. For the Intel platform Windows 95 or NT is required. RAM requirements are 16 MB minimum and of course more is always desirable. Documentation consists of 2 manuals... ZBrush 1.23b Pixologic's ZBrush 1.23B is one the most innovative and creative digital tools to appear in a very long time. It's difficult - if not impossible to pigeon hole this program into any existing category. To call it a paint program does not do it justice, to call it a 3D modeler, procedural shader, or 2D Painter also doesn't fit. ZBrush is all the above, and more.... ZBrush 1.5 ZBrush is a unique piece of graphics software. It's fast, fun and it gives instant results in real time. The program has been designed with the creative person in mind, allowing you to concentrate on creating great art and not get sidetracked by the interface. ZBrush 2.0 Creativity, innovation, change; these are facts of life in the CG world. As artists we find ourselves facing these challenges on a daily basis. Now a new tool has been thrown into the mix to help in this endeavor. ZBrush guru Lonnie Sargent reviews Pixologic’s new release of ZBrush to explain why and how.