eRain's Swift 3D was designed for Flash developers. It is easy to use, has a good balanced feature set, and has excellent rendering capabilities, both to vector and raster based output formats. While the program still aims at Flash users with strong Flash output support, it gets closer to a full-blown 3D application with every new release. In version 5, Swift even supports 3DS files.Of course, Swift 3D is no match for Maya or Cinema 4D. Those programs have been designed with realistic 3D animation and rendering as their primary objective. Swift, on the other hand, has been developed with Flash export capabilities in mind. It therefore has strong animation capabilities—among the easiest to use that I have come across—and strong vector output support—almost up to par with Cinema 4D’s.
Swift 3D has a scene, lathe, and extrusion editor and a preview render window. Its vector render engine is the RAVix III engine, developed by eRain themselves. The raster render engine is called Emo and is also self-developed. Ravix III is powerful. At the time it was used in Carrara and even in Maya (I don’t know if these applications still use RAVix III). Emo is less powerful, but still capable enough to come up with very decent photo quality renderings.
New features in Swift 3D make life easier and working with the program more powerful. Except for fine-tuning of the interface and the way you work with the program, Swift 3D now allows you to switch any camera in the Scene Editor to Orthographic view from the Viewport menu. A yellow border in the viewport now represents the stage size. Whatever gets outside that border is not visible after rendering and objects crossing the border are cropped.
If your Mac is up to it, you can have all viewports update in real-time.
A very powerful new feature in my opinion, is the ability to have objects render differently in the same scene. For example, when you want one object to have outlines and all the others not, you can assign that one object to render with outlines and not touch the others, and your scene will have a mixed ‘feel’ to it that previously was only possible with post-Swift editing—costing a good deal of effort as well.
Swift 3D v5 edits meshesYou can now edit the mesh of an object. Just as in Cinema 4D or Maya, you can drag, twist and perform all the other mesh deformations in the Advanced Modeler.
Pivot points can be changed, and they can be easily reset using a new multi-functional pop-up menu in the Rotation Trackball. And Swift 3D also finally gains the ability to transform paths the same way as you’re used to doing that in almost every other graphic application: by using the mouse and dragging the handles.
In the animation department, you’ll notice a new keyframe easing graph.
And in the output domain, you can now export (not render) to 3DS, which means you can import your scene or objects into for example Maya or Cinema 4D. In the render with RAVix window, an extra output option is XAML, a Windows Vista interface XML language.
I couldn’t test all the new features, but I did give the animation ease graph a go, the new mesh deformer and the 3DS export capability. I also tried to render objects with different rendering options. I must say the animation concept is still the easiest to use in any 3D application I know. You can’t do much wrong there; the program will often just do what you want, without you having to think over the order of your actions, etc.
The rendering quality of the scenes still is great without being amazingly natural, but the 3DS export capability implies you can now render with any sort of professional render engine you might have installed on your system. The 3DS export was very accurate in my test setup, which was not overly complex, but still had intersections and text.
I’m sure the mesh deformer is great, but I’ve never been a great fan of mesh deforming. I always have trouble only changing exactly those elements that I want to change.
Swift 3D v5 still is a fantastic 3D application for people who are used to working with Flash and with vector art. It’s not as easy to use as it was when it could only do three or four things, but it remains one of the most user-friendly 3D programs I know. Its export and rendering capabilities are exactly what you need when you’re using this for Web orientated work.
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Swift 3D V5 offers more power and better integration with high-end 3D applications
eRain's Swift 3D was designed for Flash developers. It is easy to use, has a good balanced feature set, and has excellent rendering capabilities, both to vector and raster based output formats. While the program still aims at Flash users with strong Flash output support, it gets closer to a full-blown 3D application with every new release. In version 5, Swift even supports 3DS files.Of course, Swift 3D is no match for Maya or Cinema 4D. Those programs have been designed with realistic 3D animation and rendering as their primary objective. Swift, on the other hand, has been developed with Flash export capabilities in mind. It therefore has strong animation capabilities—among the easiest to use that I have come across—and strong vector output support—almost up to par with Cinema 4D’s.
Swift 3D has a scene, lathe, and extrusion editor and a preview render window. Its vector render engine is the RAVix III engine, developed by eRain themselves. The raster render engine is called Emo and is also self-developed. Ravix III is powerful. At the time it was used in Carrara and even in Maya (I don’t know if these applications still use RAVix III). Emo is less powerful, but still capable enough to come up with very decent photo quality renderings.
New features in Swift 3D make life easier and working with the program more powerful. Except for fine-tuning of the interface and the way you work with the program, Swift 3D now allows you to switch any camera in the Scene Editor to Orthographic view from the Viewport menu. A yellow border in the viewport now represents the stage size. Whatever gets outside that border is not visible after rendering and objects crossing the border are cropped.
If your Mac is up to it, you can have all viewports update in real-time.
A very powerful new feature in my opinion, is the ability to have objects render differently in the same scene. For example, when you want one object to have outlines and all the others not, you can assign that one object to render with outlines and not touch the others, and your scene will have a mixed ‘feel’ to it that previously was only possible with post-Swift editing—costing a good deal of effort as well.
Swift 3D v5 edits meshesYou can now edit the mesh of an object. Just as in Cinema 4D or Maya, you can drag, twist and perform all the other mesh deformations in the Advanced Modeler.
Pivot points can be changed, and they can be easily reset using a new multi-functional pop-up menu in the Rotation Trackball. And Swift 3D also finally gains the ability to transform paths the same way as you’re used to doing that in almost every other graphic application: by using the mouse and dragging the handles.
In the animation department, you’ll notice a new keyframe easing graph.
And in the output domain, you can now export (not render) to 3DS, which means you can import your scene or objects into for example Maya or Cinema 4D. In the render with RAVix window, an extra output option is XAML, a Windows Vista interface XML language.
I couldn’t test all the new features, but I did give the animation ease graph a go, the new mesh deformer and the 3DS export capability. I also tried to render objects with different rendering options. I must say the animation concept is still the easiest to use in any 3D application I know. You can’t do much wrong there; the program will often just do what you want, without you having to think over the order of your actions, etc.
The rendering quality of the scenes still is great without being amazingly natural, but the 3DS export capability implies you can now render with any sort of professional render engine you might have installed on your system. The 3DS export was very accurate in my test setup, which was not overly complex, but still had intersections and text.
I’m sure the mesh deformer is great, but I’ve never been a great fan of mesh deforming. I always have trouble only changing exactly those elements that I want to change.
Swift 3D v5 still is a fantastic 3D application for people who are used to working with Flash and with vector art. It’s not as easy to use as it was when it could only do three or four things, but it remains one of the most user-friendly 3D programs I know. Its export and rendering capabilities are exactly what you need when you’re using this for Web orientated work.