COMBINING THE POWER of MacroModel's spline-based modeling tools with a new rendering and animation system, Macromedia is replacing all of its previous 3-D tools with Extreme 3D. The new package includes a unique animation interface and Extreme FX, a complete 2-D-animation and -compositing tool that's similar to Adobe After Effects.
Many of the tools in Extreme 3D will be familiar to MacroModel users, but new Boolean modeling tools allow adding, subtracting, and intersecting of surfaces. So, if you can imagine it, Extreme 3D can probably model it.
Macromedia has added a flexible animation engine that can animate any shape you create, right down to the point level. Its powerful sequencer offers complete animation control over object characteristics such as color and reflectivity and over spatial information such as rotation and position for whole objects or individual surface points.
Extreme 3D's interface shows animation tracks in a unique way that reduces the amount of information on-screen at one time. For instance, if you change the color of an object over time, only that track appears in the sequencer. Of course, there's also spline-based animation. You can combine 3-D animated elements with 2-D animation in the Extreme FX postproduction application, using the same sequencing interface as that of Extreme 3D.
Extreme 3D for both the Mac OS and Windows will be available in October, for less than $795. An update to version 1.1 next year will support QuickDraw 3D's interactive renderer and the 3DMF file format. 415-252-2000.
