Review: DX Studio 2 3D authoring

DX Studio is an authoring environment for creating interactive 3D applications. It consists of a DirectX real-time 3D engine and a suite of editing tools.

The program is intended to make the process of developing 3D interactive applications quicker and easier, and will appeal to anyone who wants to put together games, simulations and other 3D applications with limited resources.

Previous versions didn’t include modelling tools; you had to produce them in a 3D modelling application and import them. This version now includes a fully integrated model editor which includes extrusion, lofting and UV mapping.

Other features introduced in this release include a new lighting engine that supports graphics cards with pixel/vertex shader 2.0+ technology, per-pixel bump map support, a new material editor and multitexturing. There’s also support for the open standard XML-based Collada (.dae) format originally developed by Sony for the PS3 and PSP.

The Application interface is well organised and, despite the fact that there’s a lot going on, remains uncluttered. The central section is occupied by the viewport with objects and layers palettes to the left and properties, mashes, particles, sounds, environments and fonts palettes docked on the right. These palettes can be floated to create a custom workspace, but the docked layout makes good use of the available screen space with pushpin control to autohide palettes if you’re short on space.

DX Studio uses Javascript. Assigning scripts to objects is a reasonably simple exercise, aided by a Javascript editor with a library of event handlers and functions. But for anything other than trivial applications a good working knowledge of Javascript is a prerequisite.

There’s plenty of help available, making this an ideal application for anyone starting out in game development. A wiki-based tutorial panel provides basic getting started walk-throughs, complete projects and script tutorials. These, along with the comprehensive tool tips, meant we were able to produce and manipulate models and environments within a few minutes of having launched the application for the first time.

The fact that the interface is highly intuitive makes moving beyond the basic stuff less painful than it otherwise might be.

DX Studio 2's integrated model editor will undoubtedly meet with approval from existing users and make it a much more attractive proposition to those starting out. For one thing users are now less reliant on importing models from expensive applications like 3DS Max and Lightwave. A small library of models is included and more are available free on the dxstudio.com website.

Like the other elements of the application the model editor is well-designed and intuitive in use, though there’s often a lot of mode switching and button-clicking required to change views and object positions, and if you’re coming from another 3D application some adjustment will inevitably be involved.

The balance between sophistication and ease of use is about right with tools for drawing primitive shapes and extrude, lathe, subdivide and tessellate operations. The model editor also supports more sophisticated features such as UV mapping – the technique used to wrap 2D image textures onto a 3D mesh.

Project playback uses the DX Studio player, which is free to distribute in standalone .exe format and as an ActiveX DLL.

The application is available in two versions – Standard (£58.75 non-commercial, £205.63 commercial) and Pro (£117.50/£440.63), with the standard version lacking player network capability, database integration and customized loading screen options. There’s also a Freeware edition which is identical to the Standard edition but limits the number of meshes in a scene and objects in the physics engine, lacks player plug-in support, pixel shader effects, doesn’t allow multiple player instances and has no technical support.