Art-O-Matic

Art-O-Matic is a 3D drawing/rendering program by 3Dize. An image library is included with Art-O-Matic and you can import 3D objects into Art-O-Matic as well.

Art-O-Matic renders the 3D objects almost as fast as you can move them. Needless to say it is a quick rendering program. I ran this program on a 166 MHz Pentium with 64 megs of RAM. There are several import/export file formats allowed in Art-O-Matic. 
3D Object imports: .3ds, .x, .3dz, .bmp;
3D Object texture: .bmp, .jpg, .ppm;
Background image imports: .bmp;
Image exports: .bmp, copy/paste.

Art-O-Matic gives you the chance to learn as you go. The above image shows the Art-O-Matic work space using the beginner toolbar. You can leave it that way, or, when you feel more comfortable with rendering in Art-O-Matic, you can switch to the advanced toolbars as shown below. I found these options extremely helpful while learning the software. Once I was comfortable I switched to the advanced toolbars.

You can see part of the object library on the bottom right of the screen. To use an image simply drag and drop into your canvas space. The 3Dize site, also has a huge listing of places to pick up free 3D objects for use in Art-O-Matic.

If you don't like toolbars using up valuable workspace you can turn them off from the view menu and use the edit and interactive menu to access the toolbar options.

Above is the main Art-O-Matic toolbar.

By combining your Art-O-Matic 3D Objects with backgrounds and images from other programs you can create some truly unique 3D images. The software is extremely easy to use and very easy to understand, making this an extremely accessible program for most users. Although I wasn't really "wowed" by the 3D objects included with the software and the 3D object library is limited, there is a link page at 3Dize with all kinds of links to free 3D objects you can import into Art-O-Matic and use. I was impressed at the speed with which Art-O-Matic rendered images on all changes that were made. The software did not bog down at all. Visit this page to see three really nice examples of images using a combination of Art-O-Matic and Vue d' Esprit.

There are other programs out there that are better than Art-O-Matic, however, they are much more expensive. Art-O-Matic is the only program for less than $100 that can render cartoon lines.  For example, Art-O-Matic can render a technical illustration of a 3D object by making the object and background white (with lighting off) and then setting the cartoon lines on.

I would recommend this program as a "get your feet wet in 3D rendering" for those people who have never used a 3D program before. You can download a free trial of Art-O-Matic and try it out, and you can't beat the price at $20.00

System Requirements

Win95/98/NT
DirectX 5.2 (Available from a link at 3Dize)
Approximately 7 meg of hard drive space
Price:  20.00$

You can get a free trial version of Art-O-Matic at 3Dize.

Copyright Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved