3DVIA®

3DVIA Shape 3.0 Tips and Tricks

Here are more than 30 video tutorials filled with tips and tricks on how to get the most of 3DVIA Shape 3.0’s amazing new features! Check them out now, gather your ideas and start making them real. Refer back here often to be reminded of the wealth of new ways to create 3D models in [...]

Introducing 3DVIA Shape 3.0 with Freeform Deform

The 3DVIA team proudly presents the latest version of our free 3D modeling software 3DVIA Shape (Version 3.0)! It is the most feature rich release to date!  This new version extends powerful “freeform” modeling to everyone, allowing users to create smooth curved surfaces for boats, planes, rockets, or anything within a user’s imagination.
Here’s a rundown [...]

Tips & Tricks: Uploading to 3DVIA (DCC)

As mentioned in our first Tips & Tricks post, DCC stands for Digital Content Creation.  It is the industry term defining the use of 3D applications like 3DVIA Shape, Maya, 3D Studio Max and XSI  and the creation of 3D content for use in films and real time interactive applications like games and virtual training. [...]

Tips and Tricks: Uploading to 3DVIA

 
There are well over two dozen different 3D applications with a variety of tools and complexity in use by 3D artists around the world today. Our website, 3DVIA supports the majority of these programs through a few key file formats and texture formats.  In this series of articles we will discover the best ways to [...]

3D Engines: Better than a Hemi!

Delving into the software that power our 3D interactive environments or Game Engines can get very technical and daunting.  Considering the number of solutions out there, and the different terminology used to describe them, it can also get very confusing.  In this article we will define what a Game Engine is, a few different types [...]

Immersion Techniques in 3D Environments

 
In games, 3D guided tours, games, environmental demos, games, architectural presentations, games; no matter the scene, the purpose is always to make the user feel like he’s actually in your demo.   To create the illusion of being part of the world, developers use various techniques to maintain the illusion throughout the experience. In this article [...]

Shape 2.1 Update

Making 3DVIA Shape even easier!
The latest upgrade for 3DVIA Shape, 3DVIA’s free, online 3D modeling software, is now available for download.  Developed to specifically address user feedback, the new upgrade features several key product enhancements, including improved UI for object manipulation.
Now 3DVIA Shape users will be able to more easily scale, position, and rotate imported [...]

Using Template Files in Shape 2.0

Why do things more than once? Whatever your passion is in 3DVIA Shape 2.0 modeling, you can create template files like gsmith has and save enormous amounts of time. He shows us how valuable it is to create a single model containing a bunch of common elements that we can then select, copy, re-position and re-texture to [...]

3DVIA Featured Artist – Matthew Viets

mvcomputers (Matthew Viets in the non-virtual world) is a regular 3DVIA contributor that many 3DVIA vistors will immediately recognize from his profile thumbnail.

Matthew always has something positive to say about other models while uploading a steady stream of his own excellent 3D contributions. He has been our 3DVIA Challenge winner three times! His 3D cell phone, Pontiac dragster [...]

Vehicle Design 102: Games

 
In my previous blog we talked about individual vehicle design.  In this blog we will explore vehicle design for games. There are a few considerations you must keep in mind when designing vehicles for games, today we’ll cover 3: Mobbing up, Flavor, and Balance.
Mobbing up
No man is an island, in games, no one vehicle can [...]