Swift3D...good, bad or just plain ugly?

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Forums

Okay, don't brow beat me, all you bigtime Maya, Max and SI folks!!!

Hi-dee-ho!

Here at my actual 9-to-5 job (I freelance most of my creative stuff at night;) ), we use Flash for computer based training. Pretty simple animated stuff...but we're going to need some basic 3D here in the near future.

Knowing the steep learning curve for some of the afore mentioned software, is Swift3D (being vector-based and all) a good choice to take a serious look at?

Any input is welcomed...really!

Cheers!

Splatman:D

SPLAT digital

I used to use Swift a lot to create vector art from 3D scenes (changed jobs, so I'm not using it any more). I used it as a rendering engine after doing the animation in Max or Lightwave; never used the native animation tools, because what we were doing was beyond its capabilities at the time.

Anyway, I always found it to be easy to use and provided satisfactory results. Sometimes I went in and tweaked things by hand after the render, but that's because I'm picky :D

How are you planning on generating the models you'll be running through Swift?

Hi DSB!

Most of the models that we'll be creating are basic enough in shape that I believe we could build them in the latest version of Swift.

We also have a guy who (says) he knows Max well enough (at home) to handle any challenging models and animations in a pinch...which could then be run through Swift...in theory.

So assuming we have a genious on staff, with a lead nimrod (whom shall remain anonymous at this time;) ) wanting to test the 3D waters on the company dime...I was curious to see if this would be an avenue to meander down.

And so here I sit!

Thanks for the input!
Splatman:D

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SPLAT digital

The standalone version works well - at least it did when I was using it, and I can't imagine it's done anything but improve. I've been impressed with Swift since version 1 (a version that I broke so often they put me on the Beta test team for v2, assuming I'd find ways to break it that they hadn't even conceived of...). The eRain team has always been helpful and responsive - good folks.

Play around with it and see what you can do.