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ADDEPTH
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1994-10-18
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addDepth
review by
Judy Litt
If you've been reading CyberNews from the first issue, you'll
know that I reviewed trueSpace, another 3D program, in that issue.
You'll also know that I didn't find that program quite as easy for a
3D novice to use as the company's literature proclaimed. addDepth
is a 3D drawing program for the common man. (Have you noticed that
3D programs like program names with the first letter not
capitalized?)
One of the nice things about addDepth is that you can be crating
3D drawings before you ever crack the manual (which is only about
one hundred pages), thanks to wizards. There are two different
wizards in addDepth: the template wizard and the step by step
wizard. They do what you'd think they do. The template wizards are
thirty-three templates-3D drawings that you simply add your text to.
The step by step wizard takes you step by step through the 3D design
process. First you choose depth and bevel, then ro tation, effect,
and light source. Finally, you type in your text. What would make
the step by step wizard outstanding would be the ability to go
through it and apply all the same design decisions to objects
(circles, squares, etc.).
addDepth comes with basic 2D drawing tools: rectangle, ellipse,
and polygon tools. There is also a pen tool which allows you to
create objects point by point. You can fill open and closed paths,
group paths, and make paths compound-just like you would with an
ordinary 2D drawing program. You can also add and delete points,
and convert points from straight to curve and visa versa. Still,
addDepth is not meant to be a replacement for 2D drawing programs.
For instance, there is no way to rotate a 2D object; y ou must make
it 3D to rotate it. You can create objects in your 2D drawing
program and then import them into addDepth to extrude. addDepth can
import the following graphics formats: cdr, ai, fh, wmf, and cgm.
One thing I've found about addDepth: extruding objects on my
486DX2/50, with 8 MB RAM, can be painfully slow, depending on the
complexity of the object. However, you don't have to wait for the
program to finish extruding before editing it more. A preview of
what changes will do to an object would be nice. At some point,
you're going to have to wait for the object to be completely
extruded.
Creating colorful 3D objects with addDepth is a breeze. There
are twelve styles that come with addDepth. You can create a
rectangle, click on a style in the styles palette, and you're done!
You can also edit any style on the styles palette, and add styles.
You can create an object, make a new style for it, and then "grab"
that style onto the styles palette. You can also easily work in
either RGB or CYMK color modes.
A style is a combination of effects. There are five parts to
every object in addDepth: the front face, the front bevel, the side
surface, the back face, and the back bevel. You can apply an
effect to any of these faces. Effects include the following:
shading, stroke and fill, gradation, decal, and invisible. Only
one effect can be applied to each face. The gradation and the
decal effects are probably the coolest. The decal effect allows
you to map (place) any 2D drawing onto any face of an object. The
neat thing about the gradation effect is that it can be a one way
gradation or a two way gradation. A two way gradation goes from
one color to a second color, and back to the first color. There is
a color style dialog box. This dialog box shows a preview of the
effects you apply. Like extrusion, the preview is interruptible:
you can apply one effect, and then go on to apply another effect
without waiting for the preview to redraw. You can also rotate the
preview in 3D space. The preview is always a lowercase m-
I'd like to see the actual object I'm working on.
Printing in addDepth (at least to my HP1200c) seems to be a real
hit or miss affair. I created an object that had a two way
gradation. When printed out of addDepth, there was obvious banding.
I saved the file in FreeHand, Adobe Illustrator, and cgm format.
There wasn't enough memory to print the entire object out of
FreeHand-but the banding was gone and I had a nice, smooth
gradation. I imported the cgm graphic into CorelDRAW, and printing
was quite fast. But the banding was back. Printing out of Adobe
Ill ustrator was relatively fast, and the entire object printed.
However, for some reason the colors of the gradation were much
darker-making it hard to see that there was a gradation (although
there was no banding).
One other minor annoyance: when you quit addDepth, Program
Manager is automatically maximized. Since I use Dashboard, a
program manager replacement, I found this very annoying.
If you've seen the ads for addDepth, you've seen a color graphic
and the statement "create this graphic in ten minutes or your money
back." I think that's an accurate statement. addDepth is easy to
use and easy to learn. It allows you much more creativity than
CorelDRAW's extrude function. If you want some 3D objects to liven
up your designs, but don't have much time to learn a new program,
consider addDepth.
Requirements: 386 or higher
4 MB RAM (486 with 8 MB RAM recommended)
MS Windows 3.1 or later
4 MB hard disk space
Ray Dream, Inc.
1804 N. Shoreline Boulevard
Mountain View, CA 94043
(800) 960-4350