What is Realsoft 3D?

This is the latest incarnation of the 3D package now at version 4.2. Version 4 is a completely new application from its predecessor Real3D v3.5 with hundreds of  improvements over its older counterpart. I have been using this software mainly as a hobby for nearly seven years and these are my personal observations on the package, for more detailed information please go to the Realsoft website from the links page.

The Interface

The Realsoft interface is almost completely customizable, you can arrange any number or types of windows and controls in any position you like. With a simple click you can minimize whole display sections to a tiny button to free up large amounts of space for other displays. You can model in a single real-time OpenGL view, use a more traditional real-time quad view or create your own layout.

The main tool bar is context sensitive and instead of flooding you with hundreds of controls it only shows tools that can be applied to the current object. Another feature called the 'compass menu' also allows you to apply commonly used functions to objects by just moving your mouse in a single stroke by a few pixels. You navigate your creations with an indispensable control called the 'Select Window' and while you can select items through the OpenGL display if you wish, the select window gives you an enhanced tree style display of your project providing a quick, clean and accurate way to select objects.

Almost all modeling operations: extrude, sub-divide, knife, cross-section, rotate, sweep, etc are both dynamic and interactive in the display giving you instant feedback on the effects of the tool you are applying.

Click for an example of the Realsoft Interface

Modeling

Realsoft 3D has a comprehensive and diverse array of modeling tools, which in combination with imagination and a level of experience provide everything necessary to build anything you can imagine.

Realsoft 3D has an outstanding implementation of SDS (Sub Division Surfaces), once you have started using SDS you will hardly want to use another type of modeling. SDS allows you to create a freeform cage from weighted vertices, edges and faces and into this Realsoft generates a single ultra-smooth surface without tessellation or the use of polygons. You can extrude, sub-divide, tunnel, merge and cut SDS faces making working with SDS more like working with clay (for more information on SDS please take a look at my tutorial page for beginners).

Click for an example of simple modeling with sub-division surfaces

Realsoft also have an excellent set of tools for working with NURBs curves and solid geometry allowing you to create weighted Polygonal, Quadric and Cubic NURBs curves that you can rotate, sweep, cross-section, displace, extrude, fillet, trim and weld into complex surfaces. There are of course many other types of special modeling objects like cameras, groups, light sources, Metaballs and particles. Most of which can be manipulated with a simple common set of tools

Texturing

The first part to colouring your objects is creating your paints, if you download the materials library on my resources page you will have access to over 400 separate materials and creating new ones is very simple. You can simply use a paint package or a digital camera to provide the pictures of the surface of your object, its colour, its roughness, even things like its reflectivity and transparency and then use these pictures to texture surfaces with the built in wizards provided..

Beneath all of this is an incredibly flexible and graphical material language called VSL (Visual Shading Language). Any 3D beginner can use this language in simple ways to create powerful  procedural materials using sliders and curves, while the more mathematical users can use formula to create complex and animated procedural materials. VSL does a good job of making this as simple as it can but you still need a good understanding of how the software works before you can use it.

A sample of the VSL Material system

Realsoft 3D contains lots of tools for applying your paints to your objects. Firstly you have can project your materials onto your objects in many different ways. Bellow you can see spherical, Cylinder, Disk, Parallel and Cubic mapping all of which can be used in simple texturing tasks from labels on bottles, bricks on walls to surfaces on planets, quickly and easily.

More intricate colouring options are available for the more complex organic forms like for example a tree which doesn't fit at all into the round or square methods above. In this instance you can use a technique called UV mapping to basically peel the skin off your object and lay it out over your material and then use all of the normal editing tools on the skin so that the texture of the bark fits convincingly onto your object.

Click for an example of the benefits of UV mapping

Animation

Animation has been turned upside down from the previous version and now uses a more conventional key frame system, simply click the record button, slide to a frame and move your objects to the desired positions. For old users like myself this is quite a shock as the animation system in version 3.5 used to be revolutionary and in my opinion superior, but that is not to distract from the simplicity of use and power of the key frame system.

If your animations deal with the simple motion and rotation of objects then you can use the path and rotate animation methods where you draw a NURBs curve in three dimensional space and then use it to define the movement and rotation of objects a very intuitive and simple method of animating your objects.

Click for a path based animation of an electric rail motor

Realsoft includes several physics based animation methods such as gravity, friction, fluid mechanics, magnetism and collision detection that allow you to hit the button and let the animations create themselves for simple creations governed only by physics. Also in this category is scripting, scripting allows you to write small scripts that define your own rules of how objects should move, they are difficult and skill intensive to set up but are in the end can give thousands of of separate objects in a scene very individual motion.

Skeletons form the final important animation component here you can create hierarchical skeletons systems that you can then attach to your models and then modify the models simply by moving the skeletons underneath, in a similar way to  a metal frame skeleton under a clay model in traditional animation. The Realsoft system is much more flexible though allowing you to do things like specify how the muscles on the character might  bulge when the skeleton is bent.

Click for a simple example of character animation

Rendering

Even though lots of other software will require a rendering plug-in (that would often cost more than Realsoft 3D itself!) this doesn't apply to Realsoft whose render output is competitive straight out of the box. It sports a very fast ray tracing engine which in conjunction with new area lighting features produces beautifully realistic and vibrant images.

Affordability 

One of the most significant features of the software is its price, its one of the cheapest professional packages available which made it affordable for me to get cutting edge 3D software without breaking the bank. Realsoft also produce most upgrades for free there after and I have only had to pay for two major software updates in seven years with charges I have always found to be very fair. 

So what's wrong with it 

Its not all roses however, there are still a few things wrong with the package the collision detection is dated and should work much better and more importantly the skeleton system although vastly improved still has several quirks that need to be corrected to ease the creation of character animation. Under windows 98 and ME the application has a tendency to get 'stuck in the background' which can be very annoying when you have to minimize your applications to get to it.

As with most applications (especially of this huge complexity) there are the occasional crashes, fortunately Realsoft have implemented an auto-save feature where your project is automatically saved to disk under a temporary filename which means that even in the event of a crash you are unlikely to lose more than 5 minutes of work.