3DPaintBrush Blog

3DPaintBrush release 1.1 now available for download!

Sid — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:53:00 GMT

Release 1.1 of 3DPaintBrush is now available for download.
New features in this release are :

Export to 3DS
Export to TIFF
Full Screen mode

Support for exporting your Scene to 3DS and TIFF (uncompressed), has been added. Full Screen support has also been added. You can rotate, pan, zoom and play your animations in full screen mode. F11 toggles the application between full screen and standard mode.

Performance has also been improved while doing File Open and File Export operations. Toolbars and Menus have been made dockable. You can also selecitvely show/hide toolbars. Check for Updates functionality has been added in the Help menu for you to find software version updates quickly.

Some memory related issues while saving higher size images have also been fixed. You can download the new release from here. To get a free 15-day evaluation of 3DPaintBrush, please click here.

Let us know what you think...

Colors, SketchUp models and Animation

Sid — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:47:00 GMT

Colors provide an easy mechanism to offer choices on your products. One easy and effective mechanism to showcase this variety on your website is through simple animations saved as flash. With 3DPaintBrush, you can animate your 3D models in different colors and export as an animation sequence in SWF, AVI, XAML and even JPGs.

Here is what you can do to create materials and color animations, like the one shown above, in 3DPaintBrush :-

Open your SketchUp or any other model in 3DPaintBrush.
Change material properties of the model to what you would like at the beginning of the animation.
Move the animation tracker in the animation toolbar, and modify the material properties from the properties panel to animate.
A property line gets created in the Animation toolbar.
Repeat the previous two steps to add as many variations as you like.
When you are done, Export as Shockwave Flash (*.swf) and save it on disk.
You can now use this animated SWF file on your websites.

Give it a try. Its fast and easy.

Create 2D/3D XAML from 3D models!

Sid — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:02:00 GMT

Its very easy to create 2D and 3D XAML content in 3DPaintBrush. Just import your models from 3DS, SketchUp, AutoCAD, STEP/IGES/OBJ formats, enhance them with materials, lights, backgrounds and animations, and export them to XAML, with or without animations. You can also get your 3D models inside 3DPaintBrush by searching through Google 3D Warehouse, or capture them from any 3D application running on your desktop.

Variety of options are available while exporting to XAML. You have the choice of exporting your scene as 2D or 3D XAML. You can specify your Control Type to be a Viewbox, Canvas or Viewport3D. The Control Type option essentially defines the kind of UI element the 3D Scene will be wrapped in, inside XAML.

And finally, animations created in 3DPaintBrush can also be exported to XAML, providing you with an animated 3D XAML file. These animations are preserved when you import the XAML file in Expressions Blend.

XAML content thus created can be used for designing rich immersive UI experiences in Microsoft Expressions Blend, or can be used in your Silverlight projects. If you have .NET framework 3.0 installed on your computer, or you are working on Windows Vista, you can also use Internet Explorer to open and view the XAML file you have created.

Two new galleries!

Sid — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:32:00 GMT

I have added two new galleries, Architecture & Interior Design and Industrial Product Design, with around a dozen images in each.

A preview :

Have a look!

A special mention for all the content creators at Google 3D Warehouse. Because of them, the Warehouse has become the preferred destination for quality 3D models. Hats off to them!

And the best part : its accessible from within 3DPaintBrush, just one click away. Happy Painting!

Using Google 3D Warehouse from within 3DPaintBrush!

Sid — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:57:00 GMT

3DPaintBrush has an inbuilt integration with Google 3D Warehouse. You can search and download models from the largest 3D models repository in the world directly from within 3DPaintBrush.

Having access to such a large collection of 3D data can help you ideate and customize your 3D scenes for specific purposes. In the tutorial below, I create a simple scene by searching for a chair, a table, a vase and 3D walls. The copy/paste components, as well as move, scale and rotate components functionality is also shown. I also modify the material properties of these components inside 3DPaintBrush.

Have a look!

Automotive Gallery

Sid — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:24:00 GMT

I have added a dozen more pictures in the Automotive gallery, including some Audi's (R8 & TT), a couple of Aston Martins and a Lexus.

Have a look! Hope you like them.

P.S. : Will be adding a couple of more galleries in the near future, so stay tuned.

Video Tutorials

Sid — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:02:00 GMT

I have added a Video Tutorials section under Learn More. You can find it here. There are currently two tutorials covering the following topics :-

Drag and Drop Materials on components
Modify Material properties like diffuse color and glossiness
Copy Materials from one component and paste them on other components
Drop Shadows
Move components

Have a look!

Supported file formats in 3DPaintBrush

Sid — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:31:00 GMT

A variety of applications exist today for modeling and creation of 3D data. Applications like Google SketchUp, AutoCAD and Autodesk 3D Studio Max are prominently used in creation and consumption of 3D models in various fields and at various stages. Most people have there favourite application for creation and sharing of 3D models.

With this is mind, we have provided native support for various popular 3D data formats. In 3DPaintBrush, you can directly import your models from Google SketchUp (*.skp), 3DS (*.3ds), AutoCAD (*.dwg, *.dxf), Wavefront (*.obj) as well as STEP & IGES (*.stp, *.step, *.igs, *.iges).

This also helps you to save time as you need not export to a supported format to create images and animation videos in 3DPaintBrush. In my next post I will tell you how you can capture 3D data from virtually any application and use it inside 3DPaintBrush.

Alternate download location

Sid — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:37:00 GMT

You can now download 3DPaintBrush from download.com as well.

Just click here to visit and download 3DPaintBrush on download.com.

What is 3DPaintBrush?

Sid — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:32:00 GMT

When we started with 3DPaintBrush, we had only two things in mind, for the software to be able to create images and videos from 3D models :-

Fast
Easy to Use

Going by this philosophy, we have tried to provide all the tools and presets available in the product, in an intuitive and easy-to-use fashion.

On the right hand side, all the presets for lights, materials, backgrounds, built-in animations and primitives are available in drag and drop mode. You can also apply any of these by selecting a component in the graphics area and double clicking.

On the left hand side, all the editable properties are displayed depending on the selection. Just above it, the whole composition of scene is available.

No pesky popups or multi tabbed dialog boxes are presented to you.

Let us know what you think...

Welcome to 3DPaintBrush Product Blog!

Sid — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:57:00 GMT

Greetings!

On behalf of team 3DPaintBrush, I welcome you all to the 3DPaintBrush Community. This is the official product blog and I will be writing in to let you know about what we are upto.

This blog is for people who would want to create amazing near photo-realistic images from there existing 3D assets. Our endevour here is to enable you to do just that, and in real time. To know more about 3DPaintBrush, click here. You can download the software from here. We are also providing a free fully functional 15-day professional key for you upon registration.

We have tried to make 3DPaintBrush as simple to use as possible, with most of the functionality in drag and drop mode. No programing skills are required. We would love to hear from you regarding your experiences on using the product. You can provide your feedback through this blog, via email, or using our support forum. All three of them would recieve immediate attention.

Looking forward to hearing from you, and...

Happy Painting!