Swift 3D from Electric Rain

Well here it is! The best application for easily creating 3D for Flash. Oh I know, we can do 3D in Flash. We can trace, and we can draw from scratch and we can spend weeks and months creating the simplest of 3D objects without anything else but Flash. But why would you want to do that when there is Swift 3d?

Swift 3D does not only allow you to export your work as swf, you can also animate. Even animation has more than one option in Swift 3D. Oh sure, we can all animate an object, but Swift 3D goes farther than that. With Swift 3D you can animate the lighting.

Swift 3D is a stand alone application that allows you to either create your 3D object right in the application or you can import 3D objects modeled in other applications. You can create orbs, cones, tubes, torus, and 3D text right in Swift 3D without the necessity of any other applications.

Swift 3D comes with built in animations that you can apply to your objects by simply dragging and dropping the animation or you can create your own animation similar to the way you do it in Flash now with a timeline similar to Flash's' own.

You can animate the lighting or just change it around. Add lights, remove lights, the possibilities are almost endless. The interface is user friendly and pretty much point and click or click and drag.

Along with the pre-built-animations are pre-built-colors to apply to your objects. If you don't find a color you like, you can make your own and add it to the library.

"What about file size?", you say. Well as with anything, file size is going to depend on what you're doing. Take a look at the screen shot below. All the objects were rendered in Swift 3D. The objects in the upper left and lower right corners were modeled in Rhino 3D. All the other objects were created in Swift 3D. The file sizes showing are what they were after importing them into Flash. I did not have to do any color touch up at all. What you see is out from Swift 3D, into Flash and back out again.

My little guy below is linked to his movie if you'd like to see a simple animation of him walking back and forth. The final swf file out of Flash was just 10K. All of it was created in Swift 3D except the eyes and mouth which were created after importing him into Flash. If you click on the image a new window will open with the movie. It's a simple movie designed only to show the complex animation you can create in Swift 3D in relatively little time.

But how about those 3D models imported into Swift? How do they do? Below is a screenshot of a simple scene created in Flash with the exception of the man and woman. Those are Poser models imported into Swift 3D and exported out as swf. It's that simple. In and out. There was nothing else to it save a little alteration of lighting and there was no touch up necessary in Flash when I imported them in. The swf file size for the scene below is 13K. Image that. The screenshot below weighs in a 32K and it is much smaller in physical dimension than the swf file which can be resized without losing quality because everything is vector in the swf. Click on the image below to open the Flash movie in a new window. Resize the window and watch as the images stay perfect without any quality loss.

Swift 3D is truly amazing.

Now, are you going to just sit down and whip out 3D animations one after the other? It depends on the animations. It depends on the complexity of your models. It's like anything else, it always depends on something. One thing I can assure you of is that without Swift 3D it would take months for me to achieve what I achieved above in less than a day.

Need some 3D text or a 3D logo? Create them very quickly and easily in Swift 3D. Check out this 3D logo created in minutes. File size is 87K and it will open in a new window. Yes, I know that size is pretty big for a Flash movie, but depending on what you do and how you set up the text, logos can be as small as 15K from my experience with Swift 3D. Again it just depends on what you are doing. When creating 3D text you have options to flatten the front or back, the size of the bevel, the shape of the bevel and more. All these things can help to create terrific animated logos and text.

If you have to have 3D for your Flash movies there is only one application that can get the job done for you and that is Swift 3D. Check it out at Electric Rains' Swift 3D site.

One other thing I'd like to mention before I finish and that is the cordiality and speed of the Electric Rain support team. Emails are answered and help is provided in a timely fashion. The folks at Electric Rain seem dedicated to customer satisfaction.

Features:

1. Imports 3DS, EPS, and Adobe Illustrator generated AI files

2. Gradient shading

3. 3D text with True Type fonts and you can control size, color, depth and bevels

4. Apply materials to objects

5. Pre built drag and drop materials and animations

6. Supports animation through keyframes and tweening

7. You can add up to 16 lights to your animation

8. Animate the lights as well as the object you are lighting

9. Export to the swf file format

10. Import into Flash

Swift 3D is available in downloadable and CD ROM formats.

If you want to do 3D in Flash you need this application.

$139.00(US)

System Requirements
200Mhz Processor
Windows 95/98/NT
64MB RAM

Copyright Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved