Re: Pushing the limits of cheap software

We had Crystal 3D Impact Pro bundled with our Discreet Edit* system and it was one of my favorite toys. Does way more than just flying type, and dirt-simple to use. Basically it was TOPAS, which I had been sgtruggling to learn, with keyframing removed and replaced with canned moves. And while those canned moves were limiting, you could group and stack them to make more complex moves.

When my boys came to visit me at work, they would use the freehand drawing tool, extrusion and grouping functions to build massive galactic star cruisers and killer robots in this program. It was as easy to use as Windows Paint. I often used to it extrude 3-d logos out of a simple business card from a client. One time I built animated prescription pill bottles full of actual individual pills and labels, all out of variations on one single circle, and made a snorkle-type micro dolly move thru my still life composition with an animated camera, all in about an hour, something that would have taken me a week with my sketchy Lightwave skills.

If there wasa way to keep this program alive I would buy a second copy for home use just for fun.

Maybe the successor to Crystal 3-D Impact Pro in the 64-bit world is Zaxwerks, I have only seen online demos but it seems to have a lot of the same feel to it.