Effect3D Studio Review

Effect3D Studio is akin to a flashier but ultimately more useless version of Windows Microsoft Office Clip Art.
While initially drawn to the idea that I - as a non-3D graphics animator - could create my own 'professional' looking images, I was quickly let down by the sheer clumsiness of this package.

While the install was smooth and straightforward, making it an excellent piece for a beginner, it quickly became clear that the interface itself was not as simple as the 'drag and drop' system advertised in the producers description. I was overwhelmed with an array of unintuitive and unlabled buttons and left without direction. Although there was a help guide to get started hidden away behind a submenu, I quickly found that as I progressed in making my image that questions came up that could not be answered by the Help section. What seemed like useful 'start-up tips' that popped up when I first ran the program were well displayed but in my opinion a tad technical for the audience they were aiming at.

The rendering itself was quite good for such a small program, (12 MB) but it soon became clear that the range of objects were just too limited and cliched to be of any real use (much like Clip Art?).

The option to render 3D font was of more value, however the system struggled to cope with some of the fancier fonts I tried to render - with some appearing as gobbeldy-gook and others taking up to a minute to render (and that's everytime one moves it even slightly!).

The last straw came when the program continued to crash on me after a few minutes of use.

I would obviously not recommend this to any advanced 3D animators, nor to any beginner with a desire to render a particular image. While fun to play with (if it stays running for that long!) it eventually becomes frustrating when you want to create something truly worthwhile.

A further note would be to read the Agreement before using this software as they seem to retain a license on their own 3D objects - which is really all you would want to use with this software. Those advanced enough to render their own images wouldn't want to touch this with a barge pole.