If not. Why? 3D in Coreldraw is very dated and primitive and AI's is very good....especially the vector mapping around the 3D object's surface. NOT just bitmap texture, but vector mapping! Good stuff!
hywelharris said: I'd prefer Corel spend dev $$ on better 2D capabilities. There is so much room for improvement and progress. 3D is a very niche effect, I'm not sure I have ever missed it.
I'd prefer Corel spend dev $$ on better 2D capabilities. There is so much room for improvement and progress. 3D is a very niche effect, I'm not sure I have ever missed it.
3D effects are important if you work on both Illustration/graphic Arts and Video editing. You want your less than 10-second Animated Logo/Video intro into your video projects beautiful, and no amount of AI/CD expertise can make your animated logo looks professional, except by editing it with a full 3D application like Blender.
I think and believe that Graphic artists need not to stay on the 2D world, but explore also 3D it is an additional tool as a graphic artist. There are very good tutorials(still a noob in Blender) in youtube and also in blender.org.
It is because of you mentioning Blender that I have begun to explore it's possibilities. So thank you! I'm thinking of using it in the sign industry to build 3D mock-ups to better illustrate proofs and designs. 2D works well to a degree but doing simulated 3D in CorelDraw takes too much effort if a change is required. I wish CorelDraw had better 3D tools like Illustrator does but, it doesn't. I'm trying to learn Illustrator but it's so unnecessarily complicated compared to CorelDraw to do basic things in my opinion.
Anyhow back to Blender. Blender 2.71 (www.blender.org) is a free piece of software and is a small download (55 MB) on Windows 7-64 bit. There's a 32 bit version available too but if you have a 64-Bit machine, take advantage of the extra RAM in your machine. It works on Windows 8, 8.1 and even Vista. Mac 10.6+ and GNU/Linux too. There are tonnes of tutorials out on the web and YouTube is full of them too. Personally, I prefer to watch video tutorials and I found that Lynda.com has a title called Blender 2.6 Essential Training which is very impressive. I would highly suggest it to anyone interested.
I'm not sure yet if Sketchup or Blender is better suited to my needs but Sketchup looks incredibly easy to use. I'm really surprised Google let this baby go. It's one program Corel should have purchased and sold off a whole bunch of other software instead to pay for it - looking at you WinZip amongst many others. My first impressions of Blender is that it is very nice but there's a lot to learn. But I will explore Blender for the time being and make it through the Lynda.com title I mentioned earlier. I may end up trying Sketchup too afterwards. Lynda has Sketchup tutorials also by the way that are top notch.
Anyhow, wish me luck! I'll probably need it :)
HI Drew
wish you luck with blender it' is impressive for freeware. Illustrator cs6 is complicated for sure, we use it for what corel x6 won't do. eems to be more and more X7 just isn't ready to run in our environment we get paid for what we produce not what we fix.
We hope one day corel draw 2d will add 3d extensions.
ross blair
Good that you've tried it. Actually, Sketchup is easier to use. Blender has the reputation of being difficult to use, especially if you came from other 3D app such as Maya. But I think this is not the case for you, so you can just use Blender for 3D mockups. Sketchup is not free however(A stripped down free version is available), but when you will get used to Blender, it is more capable than Sketchup since it is a full 3D application. Your imagination is the limit.
Happy modeling..
Allan
I think I'm going to try Sketchup Make first (that's the free/stripped version). Just lends itself very well to the 2D type drawing we're all used to (almost bezier like drawing). That and the instruction videos are shorter in duration. I just want to get my feet wet first and then make an informed decision ($590 USD for a Pro license) There is another amazing 3D program called FormZ 8 http://www.formz.com that is apparently like Sketchup but on steroids however it's almost twice as expensive ($995).
I plan on learning Blender too, well at least the basics through the Lynda.com tutorials. I know Blender is much more powerful than Sketchup. FormZ is just as user friendly as Sketchup too, in fact the interfaces are similar. But the thing is, learning 3D allows a totally different career opportunity for 3D printing, manufacturing, prototyping and even other directions. So yes, I most definitely think 2D designers should have some 3D skills too. It's the way industries are going. 3D printing is never going away. I mean, if I could 3D print complex sign cans or channel letters in one go someday instead of using a bending machine, I'd be all over that. FormZ allows "unrolling" which is basically taking a 3D object and then squashing it flat into a cardboard like cutout, complete with bending points. It's pretty amazing and I know that would lend itself to what I'm interested in down the line.
So much to think about, so much to learn. Better get started! I know what I'm doing as a new hobby from now through the winter!