COOL 3D 3.5

Rating:
Summary: Great at what it does -- if you need what it does
Review: As a multimedia producer, I use this product quite a bit for animated text intros. I also use it for digital video, but because version 3.5 can export in Flash format, it is one of my primary tools for Macromedia Director multimedia production.

If you're not familiar with the concept of key frames, the program may be a little confusing at first, but once you get the hang of key frames, and Cool 3d's rather limited and small key frame "tool," you can do some pretty impressive stuff -- to a point.

Don't expect incredible 3D model building (although simple items can be built with enough time and familiarity with the application), or morphing, or the kind of animation that makes a character walk around -- and ignore the included preset animations, most of which are incredibly tacky. Play with them, but don't use them.

Instead use Cool 3D to do what it does best: text animation. Use a bold font and have the text spin in from the distance or move and maybe spin across the screen with a good, subtle imported background. Add a cool sound effect once it's in Flash or Director and it's golden. Play with the lighting, colors and bevels on the text, and, above all, keep it simple.

Bottom line: I recommend it. For 50 bucks you cannot go wrong if you need text animation.

Rating:
Summary: pretty impressed
Review: normally, i wouldn't give much praise to ulead products, but this one is definitely an exception. there's this big rave with electric rain's swift 3d and its relevance to flash. i've been using swift 3d version 2 for a while, and being open minded, i thought i'd give this a try. well, what do you know... it has the same vector capabilities(it exports flash swfs as well as many other conventional formats) and much more... they're both very intuitive products so... learning them should not be a problem. but the difference is the price... cool 3d is about $100 cheaper than swift 3d. even if the price were same, i don't understand why there's this big praise for swift 3d...

i have yet to try version 3 for swift 3d which claims it has a more photorealistic raster output engine, but i'm highly skeptical b/c these vector 3d and flash 3d outputs come out too cartoony.. nothing like radiosity rendering... but we'll see.

it's no 3ds max or lightwave, but if you have great ideas with "cartoony" 3d, then it's worth adding to your weapons list.
the only downside to this software is that it's a memory(ram) hog.... but if you have more ram than i do(128mb) and a fast processor, i think it won't pose any problems