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rendering

Featured Freeware: Blender

If you've ever thought about making professional-quality animations but decided not to because of the cost of the software, your excuse just got up and walked out the door. For Windows, Mac, and Linux, Blender is a free, open-source 3D rendering program that puts the power of the medium back into the hands of the artist.

Blender features a laundry list of animation essentials that can be broken down into categories: Interface, Modeling, Rigging, Rendering, Animation, UV Unwrapping, Shading, Physics and Particles, Imaging and Compositing, and Real Time 3D/Game Creation. The interface, though loaded with complicated tools, is … Read more

DAZ Studio provides 3D for free

Google SketchUp landed with a big splash last year, but it's not the only freeware option for budding 3D designers. From the makers of the popular scene-rendering program Bryce comes DAZ Studio for Windows and Mac, a powerful freeware 3D modeling and CAD program that looks great, but is a resource hog and can be sluggish for the average user.

The publisher recommends at least 256MB of RAM, but I found that to be wishful thinking at best. The program runs choppily on anything less than 1GB, although some of the more complex rendering was processed more slowly than … Read more

Face scanning made simple

This certainly beats trying to copy your face on a Xerox machine.

"FaceSCAN III" is a 1.4-megapixel scanning system that uses a halogen lamp to create 3D facial renderings for "online games, avatars and everything narcissistic," as Red Ferret says. Its manufacturer, Germany-based Breuckmann, says FaceSCAN "offers maximum cost-effectiveness"--though the last version reportedly cost nearly $60,000. Everything's relative.

There's just one feature that struck us as somewhat odd: The device is "capable of capturing up to three persons simultenously." Is there some new trend we're missing?… Read more