Modeler 3.6 review

Microspot's Modeler application has picked up quite a few new features on its way to 3.6 status.

So many, in fact, that its name is now something of a misnomer, as it includes lighting, texturing, rendering and even animation. It also shares a lot of its interface elements with its companion product, Interiors, so tools such as the Navicam, Camera tripod, Nudge and Info palettes will all be immediately familiar. Also familiar will be the slightly time-warped appearance of a lot of the buttons and interface elements, but Microspot promises a facelift to coincide with the Universal Binary release.

For its basic modelling tools, Modeler relies on the standard primtives, such as box, sphere, cone and torus, but supplements these with a few tools based on Bezier curves. Basic object creation is simply a matter of clicking and dragging, but there are a few options to increase your scope. Holding down Shift while dragging displays a set of 3D diagonal axes that you can use to constrain your object to equal proportions in X, Y and Z. Once created, selected objects can be scaled by grabbing their red corner handles (the Shift-constrain works here, too) and they can be moved around the scene by simply dragging inside their bounding boxes. Using the control key will constrain object movement to the ground plane. One other neat trick for object creation is to hold down the Shift key while the cursor is over the face of any other object: this will constrain the created object to that face, and is a neat solution for drawing directly in 3D - especially since Modeler doesn't support the traditional four-view window scheme - although you can open additional windows onto the same scene.

The more sophisticated modelling tools are the Irregular Polygon, Lathe and the Constructor. Irregular Polygon allows you to define a profile by drawing a Bezier path. Once the profile is defined, a default height is assigned. This gives straight-sided volumes, but for more complex objects, a Lathe object is supplied. Drag to select an axis direction, then you can define a Bezier profile. Double-click to finish and your object is lathed. Lathed objects, however, remain 'live' and their Bezier profile can be accessed from the Sections palette. The full 3D object can then be edited in real-time to your heart's content, adding or deleting points to refine its form. The Constructor palette is used to perform Boolean operations on objects - adding, subtracting, unioning and deriving intersections. Finally, of course, there's a Text tool for 3D logos and the like. Interestingly, the Sections palette can be used to alter polygonal text outlines, too. One other neat feature is Cloning. This allows you to make duplicate objects that are referenced back to the original. Therefore any change in the original is reflected in the clone. But it's a two-way street: change the clone object, and the original updates, too.

Textures and lighting are also supported. Ready-made textures reside on the Library palette, along with Modeler's extensive collection of ready-made objects. These can simply be dragged and dropped onto objects and then scaled and rotated by using the textures palette. It's important to note, however, that higher-end attributes like bump mapping and transparency masking aren't supported.

Animation control is also built into Modeler. Basically, almost anything that can be done to an object can be animated, such as movement, scaling, rotation, texture orientation or transparency. Cameras and lights are also animatable. Animation is controlled via three palettes: Tweener (basically, your timeline where you set keyframes), Player (the transport controls) and the most interesting of them all: the Path palette. The Tweener allows you to set the length of the animation and keyframes for objects, cameras, ambient light and sunlight. Keyframes are set at a default two seconds apart, but can be moved independently to fine-tune the movement.