 3D graphics Put your hardware to the ultimate test with these 3D drawing, animating and rendering tools. As well as being powerful, some are also much easier to use than you would expect. This section provides some of the same packages that are used to create the 3D animated logos you see on TV and movies. |
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| BladePro | |||||||||
| BladePro is a plug-in for Photoshop and other paint programs that adds textures, bevels and reflections to your text or image. Great for creating 3D buttons or text effects. Combine different textures, light sources, bevels, reflections and tarnish effects. Sounds complicated? It is, but BladePro also comes with lots of textures and presets to get you started, and playing around with the settings for a while can be very rewarding. | |||||||||
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Check out the Readme files for each version here:
Download the version for your operating system here:
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| Requirements: | Shareware | ||||||||
| Install instructions: | Download to your local drive, then unzip (for help click here) into your paint program's plug-ins folder. | ||||||||
 Links online: |
http://www.ccn.cs.dal.ca/~aa731/blade.html | ||||||||
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| Bryce 3D | |||||
| Create natural looking 3D environments with this powerful animator. Bryce's Natural Environment Engine mimics the laws of nature, creating realistic mountains, clouds, skies, fog and rainbows. Anyone familiar with Kai's Power Tools will instantly recognise the interface as being from the same developers, but it might take a bit longer to work out what all the controls are for. At its simplest, you can drag objects like mountains, rocks and water into the 3D workspace, and move or resize them. You can also apply atmospheric effects like lighting, fog and clouds. After this it starts to get complicated, but with patience the results can be spectacular. | |||||
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Download the version for your operating system
here:
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| Requirements: | Demo. You cannot save your work. | ||||
| Install instructions: | Download to your local drive, then unzip (for help click here) and run the setup.exe file. | ||||
| Links online: |
http://www.metacreations.com | ||||
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| Ray Dream 3D | |||||
| Combines power and user-friendliness to make 3D rendering and animating easy. The scene wizard helps you get started with backgrounds and lighting effects. 3D objects can then be drag-and-dropped. Another wizard helps you create complex 3D objects. Colours and textures can be dragged from the large gallery of samples and dropped on to objects. The gallery also contains a wide variety of objects, realistic light sources, animation behaviours and still and moving cameras, all of which can be applied by dropping them on an object or in the right spot. A time line window helps you keep track of complex animated sequences. We highly recommend the BungieCam moving camera. | |||||
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Download the version for your operating system
here:
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| Requirements: | Demo. You cannot save your work. | ||||
| Install instructions: | Download to your local drive, then unzip (for help click here) and run the setup.exe file. | ||||
| Links online: |
http://www.metacreations.com | ||||
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| Simply 3D | |||||
| Some clever design features make this 3D animator easy to use. Everything is drag-and-drop — objects, colours, textures and animation properties. As well as this, there is a separate window called the scene explorer, which allows quick access to all the objects and their properties in a tree structure. Colours, textures and animation properties can be dragged into the scene explorer as well as on to the objects. You can choose between a 3D rendered view, three 2D views (top, side and front), or all four at once. The 3D rendered view must be updated manually, which makes moving objects around in it tricky. Some nice preset objects and textures are included. | |||||
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Download the version for your operating system
here:
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| Requirements: | Demo. | ||||
| Install instructions: | Internet Explorer users just click on the file and choose Open to run the setup program straight from the CD. Nestcape users download to your local drive and run the EXE file. | ||||
| Links online: |
http://www.micrografx.com | ||||
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⌐ Australian Consolidated Press 1998
