Swift 3D - Tool Information


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Swift 3D

Latest Version:
3.0

Developer:
Electric Rain

Category:
Graphics > 3D

Platform:
Windows 9x, ME, 2000, XP, NT4, or MacOS

License:
Commercial, List Price $169

Rating:
8.6 (1 vote)

Date added:
Nov 14th, 2001

Last updated:
Oct 30th, 2002

Review:
Swift 3D lets you export 3D stills and animations to Flash (SWF), Adobe Illustrator (AI), EPS, or SVG formats. In fact, this inexpensive program is more than just an exporter; it lets you create 3D primitives, extrude 2D objects, or rotate a drawing around a central axis (lathe), which is ideal for creating symmetrical shapes such as a vase or wine glass. In version 3.0, Electric Rain added an entry-level ray tracing engine called EMO (stands for Electric Motion) that can produce raster output complete with procedural and bitmap-based textures. There is now also an importer for Flash MX that lets you work seperately on outlines and colors stored inside Flash layers. Highlights, shadows, reflections, and transparency have their own layers as well if the generated output contains them.

Swift 3D consists of four editors: The scene editor is the heart of the program where you can view and edit all the objects in your scene. Primitives, cameras, and lights can be created and edited here in addition to importing 2D (AI, EPS) or 3D (3DS, DXF) objects. Animation is keyframe based, and there are plenty of presets for common animation tasks such as spinning logos. Swift 3D lets you use two configurable viewports for viewing your scene. Unfortunately you cannot freely resize them, nor can you open a third viewport. Also, you cannot make a camera isometric to compensate for perspective so precise arrangement of objects can sometimes be hard. These issues aside, the interface is well designed and intuitive. We particularly liked the trackball concept to rotate objects in your scene (it is similar to Bryce, but actually works better).

The extrusion and lathe editors are essentially identical to each other in terms of how drawing tools work. People who are uncomfortable with traditional bezier drawing tools will feel right at home since drawing is just point-and-click, but that doesn't mean you are confined to drawing straight lines only: you can always turn your points into curve or tangent points.

You can preview the final render, and play with the render settings in the last editor: Preview and Export. Switching between vector and raster outputs is just a matter of click on the vector or raster buttons, and the render options will change accordingly. RAViX, the vector rendering engine of Swift 3D can render just the outlines or produce single, two, four, or full color cartoon output. RAViX can also apply gradients to individual surfaces or polygons for better quality but that usually produces bigger file sizes. EMO, the ray tracing engine looks promising, but don't expect the speed and output quality of expensive high-end 3D programs such as 3ds max. Both renderers can generate specular highlights, shadows, reflections, and transparency for improved realism at the expense of file size.

Plug-in versions for 3ds max, Lightwave, and SoftImage available.

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Related Links:
Swift 3D
Official web site

3D Cafe
Hundreds of free 3D models

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