The power of a professional 3D package at half the cost
Ray Dream Studio, by Fractal Design, is a professional quality 3D modeling and animation program for the Macintosh. One of RDS's main advantages over other applications of this caliber is it's price, a mere $250. With a mix of these two features, it has to be good!
Plenty of new features Since the
previous version, at least seventy-five percent of the problems and parts
that seemed to be missing have been fixed or added. The major feature is
speed - everything now works considerably faster. The time it takes to
preview your art now takes 1/4 the time and, unlike the previous version,
you can preview most animations at the speed they are designed to run at
once rendered.
A new and interesting tool is the mesh form modeler, which allows people to add organic looking objects such as snakes, cows, or anything in their imagination. The use of the new "sphere of attraction" tool is what allows you to do this.
Another new and long-awaited feature is
the new Boolean modeler, which allows the user to add or subtract one object
from another or make an object from where two objects intersect. In other
words, this allows you to easily make a moon with craters or the Deathstar
from Star Wars. 
The new fountain, fire, clouds, and fog primitives are rather self explanatory but give new and realistic life to scenes. Also, the infinite plane allows you to make your scene appear to be on the ground or on a strange planet. The new visible light sources allow you to make stars that glow or lasers from a sci-fi movie. Previously, these two features were only possible with an extra $100 add-on.
Still the easiest 3D application Fortunately,
Fractal Design didn't leave the beginner artist in the dust while implementing
all these new features. The new layout of the interface makes learning
and using the program much easier. The pallete that used to contain only
the single shaders palette has been turned into a multipurpose filter palette.
Drag and drop shaders,
deformers, clipart, and objects are all condensed into a single palette.
The object info and the scene setup windows were also condensed into a
single palette that is placed next to the perspective window, although
the timeline, a window that shows the progression of your artwork, has
not been changed much.
Ray Dream Studio 5 is the easiest 3D
application available at the moment. In fact, a focused and determined
beginner can learn to create quality 3D artwork in only a week . The manual
is amazingly clear and all parts of the program are as simple as possible,
which gets rid of the intimidation-factor that many other 3D programs contain.
Also unlike some other similar applications, the manual is highly in depth,
therefore making it extremely long, but once you finish reading you will
know everything you need to know. An important thing to note, though, is
that just because it's easy doesn't mean that it's less useful or powerful
than the other 3D applications. 
The amazing animation capabilities of Ray Dream Studio 5 are another thing that makes this program so great. Animators who use 2D animation work with what are known as key frames, which are important positions that an object or a character may be in, whereas other animators have to make all of the frames in between. Ray Dream Studio 5 also uses key frames, the only difference is that you don't have to make the in between frames yourself since the program does the in-between for you. Also, just like he fluid movements of an object in real life, Ray Dream Studio 5 allows objects to fluidly ease in and out, such as a car speeding up or slowing down. The cameras and lights are also, of course, allowed to move which makes this program unique from other less advanced programs that can't.
Some bugs weren't squished... The biggest downside to RayDream Studio 5 is that some of the major bugs from previous versions were not fixed. The program still crashes frequently which can ruin a project that hasn't been recently saved. Of course, you can get around this problem by saving every few minutes, but you shouldn't have to do such a tedious task in a program as advanced as this one.
The importing of files still doesn't work
with .3dmf and .dxf all the time and still doesn't import major file formats
like .3ds or .mod, both of which are widely used formats. Importing allows
you and others with different 3D programs to interchange files without
any problems, but unfortunately this isn't always the case with RDS5.
The unfortunate downside to RayDream Studio 5 is its increased RAM requirements. It now requires about 30 megs of free RAM to work relatively well, something that most amateur artists (which this program is directed at) don't have.
A 3D extravaganza! When all is said and done, RayDream Studio 5 is an impressive upgrade. The added speed and features should convince users of previous versions to upgrade without a second thought. For the artist who is venturing into 3D for the first time, I highly recommend RayDream Studio, it's ease of use and relatively low learning curve will help you establish yourself as a true 3D artist faster than any other program will.
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 SRP: $299.99; Upgrade: $99.99 |