Re: FLASH: 3D Vector Program for MacOS

[J. Lutes (pixelTwiddler)]

At 06:21 PM 5/30/00 +0000, you wrote:

>>I'm looking for a great 3D program for the MacOS -- any suggestions?


There are no great dedicated options, depending on what you consider

"great."  There are plenty of great 3-D programs for the Mac, just few

which output to vectors.


Electric Rain has promised a future Mac release of Swift3D, which will be

your best option generally-speaking (for the range of possibilities).

However, until then...


If you have a technical drawing program, or a CAD package, which allows you

to write out HP-GL plotter files (Hewlett Packard Graphics Language) to the

hard drive, you could manually "animate" something, then open the frames

(saved as HP-GL -- .PLT), one at a time in Freehand (as a step toward Flash

import).


Most of these visualization apps seem to have some sort of 2-D projection

option for contracting the 3-D space/objects onto a 2-D plane for .AI,

.WMF/.EMF, or .CGM output, though there is no shading output or animation

-- just lines.  Form-Z is a good example of this.


Plugging my preference...  For the PC, Rhinoceros (Rhino) is my all-time

favorite.  Nothing beats it for clean, efficient vector line output.  Nothing.


>The best two options I have found are  KPT Vector effects (plugin for Abobe

>Illustrator) or Adobe Dimensions.


Dimensions is not a bad option, contrary to what the uninformed might tell

you.  After all, many design studios (like hillmanCurtis.com) are using it.

 The main highlight of this product for me is its ability to map vector

artwork to the contours of a 3-D object.  Awesome!  Many possibilities here.


Vector Effects from MetaCreations, now Corel, is also nice, but animation

is a manual process.  Along the same lines, there is 3D Invigorator from

Zaxwerks, or the discontinued Vector Tools from Extensis, now CreativePro.

These are plug-ins you might already own, though Vector Effects has the

only PC flavor.


Freehand has been mentioned also.  It has some interesting options for

creating 3-D -- the Perspective Grid menu option/tool(v.9), the ability to

animate layers upon SWF export, release to layers for blends, and 3-D rotate.


If you don't mind crunching through some questionably useful items

(especially without the accompanying explanation), you can download a 3-D

in Flash tools comparison that I was passing out at some presentations I

recently gave.  It is approximately 116 Kb, in Word format, and the tools

comparison is at the end of the six-document compilation (pg. 15).  There

is a useful list of links to tool developer Web sites in there too, for

getting more info on the products (pg. 2 & 3).  It is at

http://www.grafikimagism.com.  This document is somewhat outdated already,

and was not intended to be totally comprehansive, but it's a good start.

E-mail me with any questions or suggestions for improvement.


Thanks.



-

J A S O N   L U T E S

ICQ: pixelTwiddler (#18046724)

E-mail:

jasongrafikimagism [dot] com

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