Ulead Cool 3D Studio

Everyone can be a digital moviemaker thanks to the popularity of DV camcorders. But although video editing software is inexpensive, these programs rarely offer much functionality beyond the basics.

With Cool 3D Studio, Ulead aims to take its 3D logo animation package into the DV world by filling the gaps left by low-cost video editing software with regard to titling and animated graphics.

The original Cool 3D was a fun program for creating spinning logos and bouncy 3D animations.

Typically you'd type some text or import a 3D object file, apply surface textures and lighting, then add dynamic effects through a timeline. Its big selling point was that you could apply these attributes by dragging and dropping preset effects onto your artwork.

The Studio edition introduces extra 3D design tools plus a heap of video functions and animation effects.

Our favourite new feature is the Lathe Object Editor. It makes the creation of symmetrical objects faster and simpler by only requiring you to draw the outside shape of one side of that object; the software then wraps the shape around the central axis to form the solid, as if you were carving a block of wood spinning on a lathe.

Otherwise, Ulead has directed most of its efforts to attract the video editor who wants decent graphics in their movies but can't afford, let alone spend time learning, expensive professional packages such as Adobe After Effects.

At the most basic level, you could use Cool 3D Studio for all your titling. Even if you don't make use of any of the 3D effects, the smooth, fonted titles and nifty animation capabilities of text objects will be far better than anything your video-editing software can muster.

Since you can export the animations as video overlay files with alpha-channel transparency they can be integrated into most editing programs, apart from Windows Movie Maker.

Studio goes further by supporting object as well as background transparency. In principle, this means you could prepare some animated titling which is partly see-through for a classy effect when overlaid on your movie clips.

In practice, you will need to use video editing software that supports this kind of transparency overlay: obviously you'll have no trouble integrating the effect into Ulead Videostudio or Mediastudio Pro.

There is a choice of particle systems, producing bitty moving visuals such as explosions, snow, fire and smoke. More advanced functions have been packed in, such as the ability to use video clips and animated textures as scene backgrounds.

You can even import audio files (including MP3s) to prepare the entire graphics sequence as a whole before sending it to your video-editing package as a complete ready-made clip.

Beyond these new features is a useful bunch of extended presets. There are more object effects, for example, and an interesting Cartoon Shader which posterises the normal 3D shading for a more graphical and less cheesy photo-realistic result.

Output has been improved, too, with a number of extra formats. As well as being able to save sequences to avi, tga and gif movie files, you can now export to Flash swf and Realtext3D formats.

Models you create within Studio can be saved to DirectX and 3D Studio Max format for further development by 3D graphics experts.

Studio is not a simple program to learn or use. While many functions of 3D design have been simplified to drag-and-drop techniques, amateur 3D designers will still need to master alien concepts, such as the object-based timeline and placement in the Z axis on a 2D screen.

This can be overcome with the help of good documentation, but Ulead's manual only offers a 100-page sprint through functions rather than proper tutorials. A friendlier approach would make Studio easier to learn and a more compelling purchase.

Contact: Ulead 01327 844 755
www.ulead.co.uk

System requirements:
Any Pentium with 64MB of Ram; 120MB of free hard disk space; graphics card supporting DirectX 8.1; Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP.