... Continued from Page 1

Colours are applied by going to the gallery toolbar at the bottom right of your screen and selecting a colour that suits and dragging it to the object on the stage. An object can have different colours applied to different faces if it has depth.

It is not possible to import textures as these would create very large files and the idea Swift 3D v2.0 is to produce something with as small a size as possible, especially if you are using it for making a web page.

You can import .AI Illustrator files or .EPS files, so an image created in Illustrator, CorelDraw!, Zoner Draw or other vector based drawing program can be imported to be used. This opens many possibilities.

Editors
In addition to the main Scene Editor there are two more drawing views that must be investigated. One, the Extrusion Editor will allow you to draw flat shapes using vector drawing tools with bezier curves, and the other is the Lathe Editor. I am not sure how this works but it is wonderful to play with. By drawing on one side of the green line, axis of rotation, which runs up the left side of the page you can create a 3 dimensional object that looks as though it has been turned on a lathe. The difficult thing here is to work out how to draw the half that then creates the whole.

This shows the Extrusion Editor with the points placed with the pen tool which creates straight lines between them. The right hand object has been selected and then the curved point icon selected, making the points into nodes with handles (bezier points) which have then been adjusted to create a rounded effect to the outline.

This looks just like the Extrusion editor and drawing is done in the same way. But the difference is when you go back to the Scene editor when this is treated as though it has been turned on a lathe. See the wheel image below.

This shot shows several things at once. Firstly, the way that the two images drawn in the editors look when brought into the Scene editor, and secondly, how a scene that looks right in the left pane can be situated in different spaces in the view on the right. This takes some getting used to.

Primitives
Most of the objects that you will work with in this program are the primitives to be found along the toolbar at the top. These consist of a variety of shapes such as cubes and spheres and pyramids etc. These are the basic building blocks of most 3D objects, and are able to be re-shaped to make the exact shape you are trying to achieve. If you have learned drawing you will know that circles and squares and triangles are the basic blocks of most illustration, they are just manipulated to fit, and it is so with Swift 3D v2.0 .

Here is one of the primitives (torus) having been selected and imported into the viewing pane. Other primitives are the red shapes along the top. Note the different views. It has been selected by clicking in the left pane and is shown on the trackball at the left. On the lower right is the Gallery Toolbar with your choices of colours ready to be applied to the object.

Continued on Page 3 -->