Earth Volumetric Studio 2016.9 has been released and is available for immediate download. New sample projects and an updated PDF Converter have also been released.
We certainly can’t claim that this software release rivals the August release which was the formal release of Earth Volumetric Studio and our first 64-bit software version. However, it does offer some very important features that will affect virtually every user and therefore, I encourage you to take a few minutes and read this email carefully so you understand the important changes that we’ve made.
- 3D Publishing: For those who have embraced 3D Publishing to either 3D PDFs or Sketchfab, you are almost certainly familiar with the texture_colors module and the fact that it is essential to creating good 3D PDFs and that has been incompatible with Sketchfab.
- You’ll be surprised then to find that we have deprecated texture_colors. However we have a great reason. Virtually all modules in Studio now create output that uses texturing for coloring. This means that the coloring challenges for 3D PDFs are gone.
- For those of you who haven’t used texture_colors before, it provides significantly improved rendering of surfaces, especially those with high gradients. The changes we have made will make everything you do look better. Sometimes it will be a subtle difference and sometimes dramatic.
- The greater news is that we’ve figured out how to make Sketchfab support textures, including texture_colors type coloring, textured geologic layers and aerial photos. This means that Sketchfab and 3D PDFs are virtually identical in their ability to create 3D model content.
- You’ll also find that colored lines like axes and streamlines work in both 3D PDFs and Sketchfab. There are still limitations to both of these media, but both are dramatically improved.
- New 3D PDF Converter Required: With these changes, a new 3D PDF Converter was required. It is on our website for download and everyone with current maintenance (all Premier customer are automatic) can install it and it should run without any license updates from C Tech. If your PDF Converter license is out of maintenance, this new version will not run, but you can contact sales@ctech.com and we can provide a quote to bring your license up to date. Please note: VRML files created with this version will not convert to 3D PDFs with the older version of the 3D PDF Converter.
- New Publish To Sketchfab exporter: We now provide the functionality to directly publish to Sketchfab. This will take care of ~90% of the details that we taught in the 3D Publishing Class for you automatically, such as:
- Properly setting the view in Studio
- Unlocking the background
- Turning off all items in the 2D Overlay including Forward Facing Fonts
- Creating the VRML File with appropriate settings
- Logging into Sketchfab and uploading the file
- Setting Sketchfab background color to match Studio background
- Optimizing Sketchfab settings to match Studio lighting, colors, etc.
Thank you,
C Tech Development Corporation
Software Sales Department
Phone: +1 (941) 315-5740