Entry-level 3-D program is easy to use but limited.
Jeff Battersby and Jim Shatz-Akin
Rating: Acceptable (3 of 5 mice)
Now shipping with every Power Mac, Apple's QuickDraw 3D System Extension puts powerful 3-D rendering onto everyone's desktop. The first program to harness that power in a creative tool, 3D World, from Microspot, is a generally easy-to-use introduction to 3-D creativity. But spotty documentation, a far-from-intuitive lathe tool, and a stingy set of supplied textures limit its value in comparison to similarly priced, more powerful (if harder-to-learn) 3-D applications.
3D World's interface is simple and straightforward. Four palettes provide access to tools for creating objects and manipulating, lighting, and viewing them in a scene. Anyone familiar with basic Mac 2-D drawing tools will quickly understand the tools for creating solid objects such as spheres, cubes, and cones, which can be grouped and combined to create more-complex shapes. Far less intuitive is the lathe tool, which allows you to create complex tooled objects (such as decorative table legs) as well as helixes (such as corkscrews or bolts).
Once you've created the objects you want to work with, you can change views, using the Camera palette; place and adjust lights, using the Light palette; and specify object size and position, using the Info palette. (You can move and resize objects by dragging them instead, but using the Info palette gives you greater precision by letting you enter size dimensions and position coordinates for your objects.)
After you've finished a scene, you can use 3D World's handy orbit tool to take a flying tour around the place. You can easily stop at any time during the trip and set up a new camera view or make adjustments to the positions of objects.
3D World's architecture allows for the addition of plug-in enhancements. Microspot supplies 6 plug-ins with the program and another 14 when you return your registration card. A few of these plug-ins simply fill in important gaps in the program: The align tool, for example, is essential for snuggling objects against one another for assembly into larger structures -- a process that's truly difficult using the Info palette alone. More-innovative plug-ins include Light Director, which lets you direct lighting to specific locations on an object by pointing and clicking, and 3D Text, which creates 3-D text from any of your fonts. Unfortunately, the only documentation provided for the plug-ins is skimpy and comes in the form of Read Me files.
Render Me Speechless
3D World's greatest strength lies in its real-time rendering capabilities. When you create an object, it appears fully rendered on the screen. Double-click on it, and you're presented with the Info dialog box, which lets you specify several aspects of the object: its size and position on the x-, y-, and z-axes; its color; and its shininess and reflectiveness. If you have a QuickDraw 3D accelerator card installed, you can even render it transparent. If you drag a PICT or 2-D map onto an object, it wraps around it. Macintosh Drag and Drop capabilities also allow you to embed sounds or URLs in 3D World objects -- clicking on the object plays the sound or links to the corresponding Web address. A separate library program that ships with 3D World lets you store colors, textures, bitmapped images, and views for reuse in 3D World. Unfortunately, the only sample textures Microspot supplies are a handful of swatches from the Apple Scrapbook and Desktop Patterns DAs. Compared to the scores of realistic metal, wood, and stone sample textures and shaders supplied with other entry-level 3-D packages, such as Ray Dream Studio (now sold by Fractal Design) and MetaTools' KPT Bryce, this is a big flaw.
3D World can be enhanced by installation of a QuickDraw 3D accelerator card, but this is by no means necessary. Even with the minimum required RAM (16 MB, mostly required by the QuickDraw 3D extension) and a small amount of virtual memory, the program ran without a hitch.
The Bottom Line
3D World is easy to use, very stable, and genuinely fun. Although it's not going to take the place of programs such as Specular Infini-D or Strata's StudioPro, it most definitely provides adequate 3-D drawing capabilities to the average user. However, for the price, you might do well to consider some of the slightly more complicated but fuller-featured competing programs. They may be harder to learn than 3D World, but they provide higher-quality object rendering plus more sample images and textures to help you generate top-notch 3-D objects.
3D World, $139 (list). Company: Microspot, Saratoga, CA; 800-622-7568 or 408-253-2000; http://www.microspot.com/.
Easy-to-use tools in Microspot's 3D World allow you to create 3-D scenes like this one quickly.
