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3D by Kids

Dinosaur renderings(136) and animations in Lightwave(58) and Bryce(78).

WebGuru Xara

With the divx codec, view our animation
made with Lightwave by Adam, a fifteen year old whiz kid.
640x480 pixels, 30 fps, 86k. That's right jellybean. 86k.

Bryce by Corel
Features: Dedicated to designing, rendering, and animating breathtaking natural 3-D worlds and abstract 3-D sculptures. Extremely easy to use and comes loaded with libraries of presets. Lets you create your own surface materials, skies, and more. Now includes multiple import and export formats and a new sky lab. Instantly turns free USGS data into 3-D models. If, as a graphic artist creating off-planet scenes, you find that your needs run toward rendering fly-bys, Bryce 4's interactive movie previewer is for you. With the newest version of this popular software, you can render a thumbnail preview or a storyboard-style interface, making the process of keyframing animation much easier. Top Selling 3D application world wide:

Product Description:
Product Description Bryce 4 is dedicated to designing, rendering, and animating breathtaking natural 3-D worlds and abstract 3-D sculptures. Bryce is a perfect application for both beginners and advanced users because it is extremely easy to use and it comes loaded with libraries of presets to use in your own work. As you become more proficient, Bryce allows you to easily create your own surface materials, skies, and more, while making the creative process every bit as entertaining as the final output. Start by building your scene, using basic objects such as mountains, seas, rocks, balls, and blocks, then assign different textures to the objects, adjust the sky, place lights within the scene, and render. You can even use the animation controls to create breathtaking movies. Simply edit these shapes to create exactly what you want. Bryce 4 now includes multiple import and export formats, a new sky lab, and instantly turns free USGS data into 3-D models. Also shipping with Bryce 4 is an extra disc full of tutorials and presets for you to use and learn from and will quickly get you started in creating wonderful 3-D worlds. Import Index (3D): 3D Studio (.PRJ)/(.3DS), AutoCAD (.DXF), Heightfield (.HF), LightWave (.LWO)/(.LWS), Portable Greyscale Map (.PGM), TrueSpace (.COB)/(.SCN), USGS DEM (.DEM), USGS SDTS (.DDF), VideoScape (.VSA), VistaPro DEM (.DEM), VRML1 (.WRL), Wavefront (.OBJ), World Construction Set (!ELEV) Import Index (2D): BMP, JPEG, PICT, Photoshop, Targa, TIFF Animation Export: Sequential PICT, QuickTime (.MOV), RealMovie (.RM), AVI (.AVI) Export (Textured Terrain Objects): 3D Studio (.3DS), AutoCad (.DXF), Heightfield (.HF), Infini-D 4.0 (.ID4), LightWave (.LWO)/(.LWS), MetaStream, Portable Greyscale Map (.PGM), RayDream Studio (.RDS), RayShade Height Field Export, trueSpace (.COB), USGS DEM (.DEM), VideoScape (.VSA), VRML1 (.WRL), Wavefront (.OBJ) Export (2D): BMP, HTML, Photoshop, PICT, TIFF
$170

3D Map example from USGS data with Bryce.Click for larger image.

Both Mac and Windows are on the same CD.

Samples

StrataVision 3D Pro
Product Description: Strata 3D is a high end yet easy-to-use 3-D creation package that enables you to quickly create 3D renderings and animations. Drench your imagery with realism. New export features allow you to port stunning content to the Web for e-commerce solutions. Within minutes, create 3-D models, apply sophisticated textures, and add dramatic lighting to render stunning 3-D effects. $440

And for the BIG BOYS...

Universe by Electric Image
$1675

Sun/Solaris platform
Windows/PC platform
Macintosh 9+ platform

Lightwave 3D is a powerful animation-production package for professionals. It is built upon the fast, accurate 3-D Inverse Kinematics (IK) engine. With radiosity, caustics, subdivision surface animation, Skelegons, thousands of enhancements, and an unsurpassed workflow, LightWave is everything you need in an animation system. With LightWave you own a robust tool set for manipulating these revolutionary surfaces, including interactive modifiers that allow you to model in multiple "soft" modes. LightWave also allows you to sculpt "digital clay" by directly manipulating it at the vertex level, controlling groups of points or polygons with an extreme list of operators. Real-time subdivision surfaces, extensive texturing tools, character animation tools, HyperVoxels, and ray tracing are all incorporated into an extremely powerful animation system.$2,655
Windows
Macintosh

This software package is intended for use with hardware systems costing three to twenty times the software price. As with most software costing in this range, between $1,500 to $3,000 or more, there is a dongle key which must be used whenever the application is used. There are skads and skads of dialog boxes full of options. Each option may lead to further dialog boxes with more options. This software is for professionals. You would not have a clue as to what the terms mean if you were to start with this software to try to learn 3D rendering and animation. There is an associated meta language with its own vernacular. Formal instruction classes would be the best bet. Could you get really proficient with it quickly? Not in a week. Not even in a month. But once you were able to master it you could really make professional work. It will of course do things which other applications can not do. And you can visualize your scenes while setting them up much more easily. Motions and path motions are as automated and intuitive as drawing a line. Here are some screen shots:

We asked our neighborhood 3D Guru what three apps He first thought of or maybe even would recommend if He were us and had up to $3,000 to spend on a professional application package irrespective of operating platform. He rolled His eyes with an air of annoyance. We bowed apologetically and assumed the air of fawningly servile sycophants. We had our pencils ready and our tape recorder running. But the microphone wasn't working. It was making a loud noise so three of us had to try to fix it. Two of us gripped the plug with a pair pliers while two of us pulled on the microphone cord. That didn't work so we had to try to turn it off. Two of us held the off-button tightly with a set of pliers while the two of us pulled the tape machine away from the pliers. For some reason, he rolled his eyes upwards again. He pulled the electrical cord out of the wall. All by Himself. With only one hand. Wow. What a dude, man.
He ran so fast through a litany of things which we didn't quite get.
He did say broadcast quality was important only 3D. He impressed us that He was an instructor of commercial 3D animation at two universities. We bowed obsequiously once again and assured Him that we were duly impressed and begged Him to tell us what He had taught this week. We got two names, Maya and Electric Image, so we jotted them down and nodded, feigning intimate knowledge, hoping he would show us on the computer how the magic was done.
He flatly stated the names of the three apps and with an effeminite caesar-like wave of His hand He turned around and left, pushing the door closed behind Himself.. Our interview was finished. Because none of us could figure out how to get a good grip on the door to turn it clockwise. Heck we couldn't even figure out how to get a good grip on the doorknob with the pliers.

Mary Gypsy wrote: Hello 3D World Builders, Futurists and Visionaries, Here is your latest update from www.geo-metricks.com.

COMING SOON TO GEO-METRICKS - NEW SPEC, LOW POLYGON 3D MODELS 3D Studio Max realtime, low polygon models coming soon. Soft skinned seamless (continuous mesh) 3D avatars/game characters. Ready to go 3D character models - parent/child hierarchy, pivot points, bones, single patchwork UV texture maps. Typical polycount : from 1000 to 2500 trangulated polygons Single ‘Star’ 3D models aswell as new ‘special offer bundles’ CURRENT PRODUCTS - LOW POLYGON 3D CLIP ART COLLECTIONS: 1. Humans Pack 2 - 12 TX Avatars - Multi-Cultural 2. Humans Pack 1 - 24 Interchangeable 3D avatars 3. Cyber Gothics - 10 weird elongated 3D avatars 4. Cyber Punks - 14 night time futuristic street people 5. 101 Interiors - Modern furniture - 20 different styles 6. 101 Space - (‘Super Prims’) spaceships, structures, spacestations, satellites etc. 7. 101 Historical Structures - (‘Super Prims’) castles, temples, ruins etc. 8. 101 Trees - Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter - 2D Tree collection. www.geo-metricks.com.

For the nuts and bolts types there is a free ray tracer called POV-Ray at:
povray.org/ The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows 95/98/NT, DOS, the Macintosh, i86 Linux, SunOS, and Amiga. The source code is available for those wanting to do their own ports. For an example of the top-quality output that POV is capable of, check out IRTC, particularly,

First Strike at Pearl

Shooting,