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  YOU ARE HERE : Home > Categories > Software > 3D Rendering > ViewBuild Professional v3.6
  ProdID: 1548 - ViewBuild Professional v3.6Developed byViewBuild Product Score: 9.3 
ViewBuild Professional v3.6

Price : $400 +gst
Supplier :
Available : via the website

Turn your 2d building plans, blueprints or even rough drawings into a fully interactive virtual reality model of your construction project.

Visualise your ideas and your plans. ViewBuild Professional is suitable for residential, commercial and industrial construction projects.

Includes hundreds of context objects and a construction materials library that you can extend with your own digital camera. Explore shadow mapping in any country of the world and produce high-resolution output images for printed 'artists impressions'.

PDF Instruction manual and 90-minute training DVD included.

Website: www.ViewBuild.co.nz
Value for Money
Features
Ease of Use
Personal Choice
Tucker   Review #2249 - Dated: 21st of October, 2007
  Author: Tucker

After playing with the basic version previously and finding it a heck of a steep learning curve, I wasn't too sure if I was going to be able to drive this beastie... so I sat down with the tutorial DVD and the help file, and spent a few weeks going through it over and over... this gave me a headache, but also a great grounding in how the programme works.

So, with a renewed sense of empowerment, I opened a previously built model file, I dived right in to the new features... and promptly got lost. LOL Icon So, back to my copious notes, and after a few more minutes of head-scratching, and a few symbolic-logic doodles to try and figure out the 'wheres and whyfors' of things, I was soon back to building.

Basically, this version is a few steps up from the other version, with some added enhancements, naturally. The major enhancement is the cluster of animation tools... primary amongst them the Path Tool and it's associated animation features. These allow you to take your models into the 4th dimension, time. For example... take a model of a car, add a motion path along the road and into the garage... but hang on, isn't there a door in the way?

So, you set a path point located at the end of the driveway, and write a little action script that pauses the motion of the car long enough to run another little script that animates the door to swing up and open. When the pause is over, the car resumes it's motion into the now open garage. Want to get really fancy? Set the final point of the car's path as an action script trigger to run an animation of the door closing again. This took quite a bit of trial and error, and a few handfuls of pulled out hair (-ouch-) to figure out, but by the end of it I had a nifty little script. I was then able to enhance things by adding an external light to the house that was triggered in the door-opening script, so that as the car pulled up, the lights came on and then the door started to open.

After that, I had a lot of fun... making little animations of planes flying low overhead and dropping assorted objects, (yes, including kitchen sinks LOL Icon), traffic intersections with lights that changed as cars approached... that kind of thing. Quite basic, but lots of fun.

However, this is where my biggest gripe with the programme also revealed itself... You see, the object library comes with some pre-defined cars, one of which I selected to use in animations... the problem was that as soon as I 'attached' it to a motion path... it started to travel SIDEWAYS! The car's axes were aligned such that the motion path ran through the doors, rather than the hood-to-boot axis. Despite much adjusting of the object, including using all of the inbuilt mirror/flip axis tools... in the end I had to export the object as a DXF mesh and do some nasty editting work to re-align the object so that it moved correctly.

One of the other 'extras' is the landscaping 'contour' tools, which allow you to adjust the land heights and contours. This is quite a stunning tool, but I admit I couldn't really get used to using it, so ended up making only minor use of it to create gentle slopes that didn't intersect with buildings at all.

Another major feature is the hugely expanded object and texture libraries... all of which can be expanded and enhanced by your own efforts... a majorly useful feature, well worth the extra $80.00 if nothing else is. The extra resolution you can output is another biggie, but let's face it... even the 'sketch' version saves out some pretty high-res images that are suitable for a number of uses.

Overall, this is by far the better package, but it's extra features requires some very intense learning... what you gain in features you lose in ease of use so for me it pretty much evened out as good as the other version. However, with a new 'super' version on the horizon, this is looking to become the 'entry level' version anyways, so you may as well get started on this one.


User Comments
snester
If you create a cube and attach that to the animation path first and then attach the other objects you want to the cube you then have full rotational controla of the objects (such as cars) it is also allows you to animate cluesters of objects.

Developer3d
There is now a free entry level edition available at http://www.visualsupercomputing.com

The library is also much improved, check it out.

KIWIreviewer-00
PLEASE NOTE: The product stated in the URL below is *NOT* affiliated with ViewBuild. it is a competing product, and a cut-down version utilising the same rendering engine only.

For the genuine article, please go directly to the authorised websites only.

[This is an authorised Service Announcement from KIWIreviews.co.nz]

Developer3D
Its very interesting that the same person that wrote the review here has sprung in with commentry about the new software.

Why would a reviewer know this ? I smell a rat, I think that this review process might be fabricated .

Particularly since I can add tag lines like the one they use as well haha.

[This is an unauthorised Service Announcement not from KIWIreviews.co.nz]

Hmm interesting

KIWIreviewer-00
Thank you for your commentary, and clarifying your level of professionality in public. You are, of course, Mr. Shane Wallace, former CEO of ViewBuild (Aust) and now developer of a competing product.

I am an on-staff reviewer for KIWIreviews, and I know such information because it is part of my job to research any such claims with the suppliers. The information posted by me was taken from an authorised representative of ViewBuild (NZ). There is no 'fabrication' here, and we are happy to disclose any relevant details to reassure the viewers of our unbiased and impartial assessments of the products listed and reviewed.

Nice Try Mr. Wallace.

ViewBuild NZ
There is also a free entry level edition available at http://www.viewbuild.co.nz/prod01.htm

Developer3D
There has been a number of posts on here concerning the independance of reviews, hard to prove but pretty obvious to anyone what is going on here.

There has been no fact checking at all.

If you have any question about the validity of claims I have made pop over to DIGG, you can see a similar post promoting ViewBuild NZ only this time they stupidly placed a shameful post where "goodwineguide" comments on his own postings saying how much money he saved.

And for the record I was the CEO and owner of ViewBuild Internationally and ViewBuild NZ was the company we appointed as the sales agent in New Zealand, Dave Moore runs his own business never actually worked for me as an employee, he was and is a sales agent for ViewBuild Software

http://digg.com/business_finance/3D_Virtual_Architectural_Modeling_Visualisation_Solutions

KIWIreviewer-00
Hello Mr Wallace, welcome back.

The tone of your recent posts has become a matter of grave concern to us, and the implied accusations need to be addressed. I invite you to leave your contact details via the Contact Us page on the site and one of our staff will get in touch to address your concerns regarding the impartiality of our service.

For the record, we are not, never have been, and never will be, employees of, paid by, or directly connected with any ViewBuild organisation.

After all, why would a 3d modelling company want to review over 1000 other products, over the span of 5 years, just to mask a couple of reviews of their product? A moment of thought would reveal the utter implausability of your accusations.

We look forward to your contact... if you actually have *genuine* concerns. If you just want a soap-box to spit from, please find one elsewhere.

ViewBuild NZ
Just for the record, ViewBuild (NZ) Limited is a wholly NZ owned organisation. Mr Wallace is not connected to ViewBuild in NZ in anyway and does not represent this company. ViewBuild NZ is a bit more than a sales agent given that we produce the software disks, packaging etc here in NZ. We have had the rights to sell ViewBuild software throughout NZ since 2003. This was negotiated with Sergei Nester, the founder of ViewBuild in Australia, and was agreed well before Mr Wallace become involved.

ViewBuild NZ
Please note: The reviews of our software were undertaken independently by KIWIreviews and NOT by ViewBuild. KIWIreviews approached ViewBuild unprompted and requested copies of ViewBuild software to review NOT the other way around. The opinions expressed by the reviewer are his/her own and are not necessarily the opinons of ViewBuild.

Dave Moore
ViewBuild Limited

 

Printed at 01:09:51am on Friday 29th March 2024