June 2014 Video Tutorial - Creating 3D Semi-Transparent Cubes in Xara

[csehz]

That's why I suggest Bryce and Art of Illusion, because "the heavies" are too expensive, and you'kk never learn to use more than 10% of its features.

Gare thanks for these tips, reading your advice I have downloaded today the Art of Illusion, maybe it attracts to the 3D modelling world. What the Blender was not able so far, but probably that is just the lack of imagination. You are attaching sometimes so beautiful pictures from them, so sure my fault.

Basically what I do not like the 'Render' button or how to say in these programs, that not seeing immediately the result, the computer counting rendering and something comes out, typically what I do not like so just closing the program and not trying more

[Gare]

csehz—

Rendering a finished scene to a bitmap is more processor-intensive than you might imagine. Until you click "Render", all you're really dealing with are vectors, and as you know from Xara, vectors are quite quick to manipulate due to their simplicity.

But then you add materials and lights and the program then has to calculate how the materials fit a shape in 3D, and where the light causes highlights,and where shadows fall, and then usually, the render of your shape is done left to right, top to bdttom, pixel by pixel in non-linear time. The rendering engine sometimes has to slow down and "think" of what shows through the glass, what reflects, and all that stuff.

But many programs come with a thumbnail option you can see more qwuickly to see if the full render with anti-aliasing and stuff is what you want. Vue has this option, as does modo, and C4D offers a small fully rendered image that draws quite fast. There has to be a "draft mode" in blender, no?

Usually a modeling program does a progressive render of a scene, and you can halt it at any time, so not to waste time.

My Best,

Gary

[csehz]

Thanks Gare, for me somehow Xara has the magic that I am able to move and rotate extrudes for hours left and right, however in this one the Angle 2 is consequently 0!



CyberLaptopStart.xar

But the real 3D programs so were not able to link to the computer too long yet.

Until you click "Render", all you're really dealing with are vectors, and as you know from Xara, vectors are quite quick to manipulate due to their simplicity.

You used to mention using the strongest parts of all programs, basically how to export the Xara vectors to be able usable in Sketchup for example? On the internet can be read that for example Illustrator can generate .dwg or .dxf formats and Sketchup eats that, but did not find such ones in Xara.

So briefly if I can ask basically which is the format what can be exported from Xara and can be imported to Blender, Sketchup or Art of Illusion?

[Gare]

I, too, believe that Xara has some serious magic to it:



That was, in fact, the title of a selling point for the Official Guide! Xara is the hub for most of my compositions, regardless of what I create in, the finishing touches, or the entire composition finally arrives in Xara for completion.



Okay, this has gotten so off-topic, I've created a new thread called

Xara 2D drawings to 3D modeling programs

Please visit. It took me more than an hour to produce the video!

My Best,

Gary

[wizard509]

Gare, with a few changes, that could make a nice splash screen. In my humble opinion anyway. Maybe not everyone would like it but I would.