Swift 3D V4 Review

A while ago the kind people at Electric Rain decided to let me unleash my thoughts on their latest release of Swift 3D. I have been way too busy and so one of my fellow authors, Alias, a Flash Games Developer, has given the program a good once over for me and i have to say hes done a damn fine job…

A few years ago, the concept of a vector render was almost unheard of, outside the R&D departments of big animation studios and the occasional experimental graphics package (the ancient Adobe Dimensions springs to mind). Now, several years after its first release, Swift 3D is now in version 4. Swift 3D, for those of you who don’t already know, is a 3D rendering application which outputs vector images rather than bitmaps - which means you can fit complex, scalable animations into small swf files. It also be used in conjunction with Vecta 3D’s Optimaze, which will compress Swift 3D’s already small files into even smaller files.

Swift 3D comes in a few different flavours, as it’s composed of a few different parts - so first let’s look at the components involved.

Firstly, and most importantly, there’s the vector renderer itself, Ravix III - which is, it has to be said, the best of it’s kind. It has evolved from its early days as part of standalone 3D program which was only capable of outputting simple two-tone solid shade and line images, to the industry standard vector renderer, capable of dealing with complex highlights, shadows, transparencies and textures. This is the core of the Swift 3D product line.

Ravix III has shipped as a plugin for 3DS Max, Lightwave, and is also included in Maya,Softimage XSI, Autodesk VIZ, Strata 3Dpro, and Carrara 2. So as far as vector renderers go, it’s almost the only game in town. It’s only significant competitor (that I’m aware if) is Illustrate!, which is more geared towards film and traditional animation work, and is somewhat disadvantaged by being tied to 3DS Max. Ravix also has the advantage of being written specifically for Flash from day one.

Ravix 3

Ravix outputs flash, illustrator, and SVG files, as well as its own SWFT fotmat, which is great as it seperates the different elements of an image (highlights, colours, shadows) into seperate flash timeline layers when you import it, which means you’ll have a much easier time getting everything into flash when it’s done - importing a swf directly often ends up giving you mangled outlines. It doesn’t insert the frames as symbols into the library, which may be a good or bad thing, depending on your project and workflow requirements - it’s good in that it doesn’t pollute your library with loads of symbols with names like “frame#0027″, it may be bad if you have to go through a really long animation and individually create symbols to add to the library. However - this could easily be automated via JSFL, and it’s much easier to add stuff to the library than it is to take it out, so I think Electric Rain probably made the right decision there.

Electric Rain have gone to great lengths to make vector renderers available to as many different levels of skill as possible - from the professional fully rigged & skinned character animation (e.g Maya, Swift 3D Max, Swift 3D LW) to the beginner/intermediate 3D artist, with their own Swift 3D package - aimed at the designer who doesn’t already have the baggage of already knowing another 3D application, and at the lower end, Swift 3D Xpress, which integrates with Flash itself, allowing close integration between your flash artwork and the renderer.

Swift 3D V4

I must admit, coming to Swift 3D v4, I found it a little difficult to get my head round the interface - however, since I’m used to 3DS Max, it’s hard to say how easy or hard this would be for a newcomer to 3D. It uses a timeline very similar to flash’s own, except that all the different object properties (position, pivot, rotation, scale, shear, material) have their own layer. Animation is actually pretty easy compared to flash, as the keyframes get added automatically. The interface for manipulating objects is a little unusual - there is a sphere which represents the rotation of objects which sits outside the view window, so it’s difficult to get a feel for an object’s rotation - I have to say I did find this quite annoying. The lighting system works in a similar fashion, but in the context of moving lights around in relation to an object, the method is much more intuitive - I’ve spent many hours fidding with lights just to try to get a basic lighting setup. Manipulating the scenes and the cameras works nicely, much as you’d expect, and the tracking and panning is very quick and responsive. The scene’s objects are displayed in a tree view panel (think Movie Explorer) which lets you get at the elements easily. It’s also very easy to animate camera moves, which is very important for the type of work you’re likely to be doing at this level. There’s also a lathe editor, an extrusion editor, and a basic mesh editor. All the stuff you need to get to grips with if you’re just starting out with 3D modelling. However, if you’re used to the luxury of a high end 3D package like 3DS Max, you might find it a little basic - but hey, we’re talking orders of magnitude in price difference here, too. Swift 3D does also import 3DS files, so you can use 3DS models and animate them in there.

There’s a number of predefined sweeps and camera moves, materials and lighting configurations to get you started, and which are likely to save you time at the beginning, and may be useful for visualisng a scene for a client, or just getting a feel for the program’s capabilities and trying out how certain lighting conditions look. There’s definitely massive creative potential for complex texturing and lighting effects. The texture editor makes a pretty good stab at rendering out textures as vectors, although with complex ones you maybe running the risk of ending up with a file larger than the equivalent bitmap - however the fact that it’s a vector and therefore infinitely scaleable might be very hand if you’re creating output for print or web - swift 3d can be very handy for print illustration too.

Overall, I’d say that Swift 3D 4 is a great 3D program to start learning 3D on, and considering how cheap it is, and the fact that it comes with the best of breed flash vector renderer gives you a massive canvas to work with if you want to get into 3D for flash, without the massive expense of buying a high end 3d program only to use 2% of its features. The modelling capability is pretty basic, but that’s not the point - the fact is, it’s rendering artwork in a way which is totally from the way most 3d packages do things, and that output is tailored specifcally for flash. That means it can do things that other programs just can’t - and the ones that can are almost definitely using the same rendering technology to do so, so if you need something more high end, you’ll already be familiar with the renderer’s capabilities.

Swift 3D Xpress

The newest arrival in the Electric Rain stable is Swift 3D’s little brother, Swift 3D Xpress. Xpress is an extension for Flash MX 2004 which actually integrates the Ravix renderer into the Flash authoring environment. This means you can draw a shape, run a command, and immediately have your geometry to manipulate in 3D. The integration is very smooth, and once you’re drawn your shape, you can bevel, extrude or scale your object in 3D. Admittedly, this product seems designed almost entirely to create 3D Logos, basic flybys and so forth, but as every designer knows, nothing makes a company CEO more excited than seeing his company logo in 3D. “Give the people what they want” is what I say, and Swift 3D Xpress allows you to do that in a really quick and efficient way - you can churn a really good looking 3D logo out in literally seconds. It’s also available at a huge discount when you buy Swift 3D, so at that price it’s a good bargain if you’re likely to be doing that kind of work.