eFrontier Shade 8 Standard

by e frontier America, Inc

Product Features

• 3-D graphics toolkit for designers, illustrators, and architects
• Intuitive Bezier curve/surface modeling and sophisticated rendering
• Create initial massing and design studies and stunning walk-throughs
• Seamlessly integrates with Poser; import/export many file formats
• Vast available library of highly detailed 3-D objects

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000BCKM9Q
• Item model number: SHS-W80-DE-R
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 9, 2005
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,879 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Create detailed design projects with the richest tool set available, all at an impressively low price. Shade 8 is the 3-D graphics toolkit for designers, illustrators, and architects. Bring your ideas to life quickly with intuitive Bezier curve/surface modeling and sophisticated rendering!

Architectural Design

Import the most popular architectural file formats and let Shade’s sophisticated rendering engines create photorealistic results. You can also use Shade to create initial massing and design studies and stunning walk-throughs.

Shade 8 for Architects and Interior Designers
Create advanced exterior or interior visualizations, or just initial design and massing studies, with Shade 8. Explore design alternatives, from initial design through construction document production.

Architecture
Since Shade can import many popular CAD formats, it is possible to use Shade as a rendering engine, taking advantage of its unsurpassed rendering capabilities which include Global Illumination with Photon Mapping, Path Tracing, Raytracing, and Radiosity. Shade’s rich material palette allows architects to explore many different finishes and claddings or to present various alternatives to clients.

Many of Shade’s 200,000+ users are architects who use Shade to create either initial massing studies or sketches of their building on the front end or stunning rendering of the finished building on the back end. Shade also helps architects to place people in scenes in order to create scale or visualize traffic flows inside the buildings.

Interior Design
Shade allows the creation and manipulation of interior spaces from store to office design, public, or residential interiors and much more. Designing in Shade is easy; interior designers can import existing CAD models of rooms into Shade and simply drag-and-drop furniture and other elements from a rich library of over 5,000 available 3-D objects (some sold separately).

A superior library, partly delivered on a CD, partly downloadable from different Web sites, including e-frontier’s Content Paradise, offers an infinite array of different furniture and building elements, styles, materials, and finishes. This allows for changing finishes and materials on the fly. Lighting options render scenes under any lighting conditions with the greatest realism available.

Product Design

Employ Shade to visualize products or create actual prototypes. Sophisticated and easy-to-use modeling tools such as Bezier-based sketching and advanced mesh editing streamline the design process.

Shade 8 for Industrial Designers
Create 3-D models with Shade's superior design tools! Hardware acceleration, OpenGL drawing, and Network Rendering allow more time for design. Develop from concept to reality while creating alternative designs for internal reviews or test marketing.

Prototyping
Turn ideas into actual prototype designs with intuitive Bezier curve design tools! It is easy to establish basic shapes which can be extruded or rotated into complex 3-D shapes. Built-in Python scripting allows for the automation of common tasks, saving even more time.

A brand new suite of mesh editing tools can handle the most complex shapes and add details to initial sketches. One hundred levels of Undo/Redo provide the ultimate in design flexibility. Moving parts could be animated for visualization with the help of advanced animation tools in Shade’s extensive toolset.

2-D and 3-D Visualization
Using Shade’s powerful render engine capable of Global Illumination, Photon Mapping, Path Tracing, Raytracing, and Radiosity, designers can render photorealistic imagery with amazing lighting, reflection, and refraction effects, soft shadows and natural color bleeding on surfaces.

Output images in unlimited size (professional) or up to 4000 x 4000 pixels (standard). Fast Callisto rendering cuts your production time and automatically smoothes curves for supple curving shapes. Output 3-D mesh files suitable for rapid prototyping and the creation of physical pre-production plastic models.

Character Modeling

The perfect complement to Poser. Shade seamlessly integrates with Poser, allowing easy import/export of files between the two for superior rendering. Better yet, Shade lets you create props and clothing for Poser figures.

Shade 8 for Character Designers and Animators
Harness the power of Shade, to produce superior renderings of your Poser creations, and to produce the props and clothing that your figures always dreamed of. You can even produce actual plastic statues of your favorite characters and artifacts!

Character Modeling
Artists can create life-like characters by using intuitive Bezier curve modeling to create designs or trace models from 2-D images and 3-D templates. Powerful mesh editing tools help add details or explore alternatives. Characters created in Shade or imported from Poser can be rendered from highly realistic images to a cartoon rendering, an option new in version 8.

Import/export many file formats: 3D Studio MAX (3DS), Animation Master Export, AVI, BMP, BVH Motion File Import, DirectX Export, DXF, EPSF (Illustrator) Import, GRAPHISOFT (GDL) Export, IGES5.3 Import/Export, JPEG, LightWave 3D OBJ, PICT, POV-Ray3.0 Export, PSD (PhotoShop) Export, QuickTime (MOV), RIB Export, ShockWave3D Export (Windows only), Targa (TGA), TIFF Export, ViewPoint Export (Windows only).

Poserfusion
Populate Shade scenes with Poser male, female, animal, and fantasy figures. Play back 3-D characters that run, strut, gesture, and talk. Create 3-D content for Poser, including new 3-D characters, props, cloth, and more. Use Shade for superior rendering of Poser scenes.

Create actual 3-D figures of your favorite Poser character. Simply import any high resolution Poser figure complete with clothing and hair into Shade, create a pedestal or base, create and add additional props as needed, and output the new figure into an STL-compatible file. Service bureaus can turn these files into actual plastic 3-D statues in different sizes and with a variety of finishes.

Shade Content

Wow! Shade has a vast available library of highly detailed 3-D objects, such as furniture, musical instruments, cars, buildings, and much more. We also have extensive libraries on our Content Paradise Web site! Content Paradise is your gateway to leading marketplaces that provide both free and for-sale Poser and Shade content.

Content Libraries

Volume 1: Interior Design
Tons of fast loading, fashionable furniture that you can quickly arrange to your liking. Get dozens of stylish chairs, tables, sofas, cupboards, and more to quickly complete your designs!

Volume 2: City
Create a city! Houses, stores, buildings, schools, hospitals, halls, sports fields... for business or for fun, this collection of Shade models is ready for you to use.

Volume 3: Cars and Transport
Add excitement to your Shade scenes with these 690 cars, trucks, motorcycles, vans, buses, and more. Or even better, give your Poser characters some wheels with a simple import.

Volume 4: Rock Instruments
Create your own stage or studio with over 150 guitars, basses, drums, amps, PA's, and more! Includes four scenes all set up and ready to go.

Volume 5: Orchestral Instruments
Add a musical touch to your 3-D scene with this collection of orchestral instruments, all beautifully modeled and rendered in Shade.

Volume 6: Decorative Plants
Over 100 different kinds of plants from cactus to philodendrons and figs including high and low polygon count versions of each model.

Volume 7: Office Essentials
350 computers, LCD monitors, calculators, phones, stationary, desk lamps, filing and storage equipment, even coffee makers!

Shade Features

New features in Shade 8 include support of OpenEXR Import/Export, one of the film industry’s standard image file formats developed by Industrial Light & Magic. It provides a high dynamic-range (HDR) image and a high-quality picture.

What's New in Shade 8?
Shade lets you explore many alternatives and produce the best rendering comparable to images by other software costing many times more! Shade's powerful rendering engine includes raytracing, radiosity, and Global Illumination. Check out a list of the many features in Shade 8!

Features:

Improved User Interface

• New Lasso and Trace selection tools provide even more convenient methods of selecting polygons and other objects.
• Pan and Zoom tools have been added to the Toolbox for keyboard-free navigation.
• Continuous mode allows for multiple tool operations without the hassle of re-selecting tools each time.
• The Browser window now offers searchable labels with six different colors, making it easy to find and manage objects in large scenes. The Browser can also be split into multiple views, giving quick access to master surface parts.
• An improved ShadeExplorer interface provides previews of rendered images and file information.
• Real-time background preview with OpenGL.
• Multiple files open in separate tabs within a single Shade environment for easy switching between files (Windows version).

Modeling

• Brand-new mesh editing tools provide an easy way to modify your polygon mesh data, all accessible from the new Mesh Toolbox:
  • Switch between Vertex, Edge, and Face Selection modes for precise control over your polygon meshes.
  • Belt and Loop selection tools facilitate fast polygon manipulation.
  • A comprehensive array of mesh editing tools are right at your fingertips. Choose between Offset, Extrude, Detach, Copy, Mirror, and more.
  • Merge faces and vertices, flip normals, subdivide surfaces, and more all with the click of a button.

Rendering

• New ToonRenderer for cartoon or sketch-style images.
• New ShadowCatcher makes it possible to render shadows separately from the objects upon which they rest.
• Area Rendering, which allows you to select a specific area of a scene to render, has been improved. Now you can move, resize, and save the Area Rendering box for enhanced rendering control and faster results.
• A new rendering server, called ShadeGrid, allows you to share rendering calculations between several computers to reduce the rendering time. Shade automatically searches the local area network for all available computers running ShadeGrid and displays the IP addresses in the Preferences dialog.
• Callisto 2 renderer enhancements include:
  • New Metallic and Translucent shaders.
  • Support for HDRI.
  • Support for background image mapping.
  • Refraction.
• Radiosity enhancements include:
  • Faster calculations.
  • Support for curved surfaces.
• Pixel depth in 32 bits, 64 bits, and 128 bits is supported for all rendering images.
• Enhanced OpenGL preview with streamlined options, UV texture mapping preview, and pbuffer support.
• Choose one of several preset rendering sizes from the Rendering Options, or create and save your own custom rendering size.

Animation

• New SmartKinematics works together with Inverse Kinematics (IK) to provide precise control over the posing and animation of complex joints.
• New AimConstraints allows you to restrict the orientation of an object so that it always faces toward a specified target.
• Enhanced Motion window with improved animation playback.

File Import / Export

• PoserFusion 2 supports dynamic hair for even greater Shade-Poser integration.
• Import TIFF and OpenEXR images for texture maps and background images, and save rendered images as TIFF or OpenEXR.
• Export Adobe Illustrator files.
• Import IGES 5.3 files.
• Enhanced DXF import/export.
• Efficient sharing of texture maps and using the OpenEXR format for storing images reduces file size while preserving image quality.

Content

• Fei-Fei and Terai Yuki limited figures, for posing and demonstration purposes, are available free from Content Paradise with purchase of both the standard and professional versions.*
• 300+ 3-D objects are included free with purchase of the standard version.
• 1,700+ 3-D objects available free from Content Paradise with purchase of the professional version.
• Over 5,000 objects, such as furniture, building, and transportation items, will be made available for future purchase.

*Modifications to Fei-Fei and Terai Yuki cannot be saved, except as rendered output (which will include trademark watermark).

Product Description

Shade is used by over 200,000+ designers for amazing projects, ranging from store design to product prototypes, automotive design, furniture and office interiors, high-end character rendering and animation. With a huge library of over 5,000 objects and materials Shade provides a design environment of speed and ease.