Conoa 3D 2.0 review

While After Effects 5 introduced the lighting and compositing of 3D planes, Conoa ads some more basic 3D functionality, such as the ability to work with spheres, cubes, and 10 other primitives.

License: Demo OS: Mac OS X File size: 2377K Developer: Toolfarm Inc Buy Now Price: $284.00 Updated: 02 Jul 2006

0

While After Effects 5 introduced the lighting and compositing of 3D planes, Conoa ads some more basic 3D functionality, such as the ability to work with spheres, cubes, and 10 other primitives. And unlike the 3D in After Effects, the objects in Conoa use reflection maps and reflect off each other in addition to intersecting and casting soft shadows.

Conoa is really a 3D ray-tracer in a plug-in that gets applied to a layer. Using a standard plug-in interface, several primitives can be added to the scene and textured using other layers in the project. Conoa recognizes the positions of AE cameras and lights, making it easy to mix Conoa elements with AE layers ina 3D animation. While Conoa may be far from a whole 3D program, it lets users perform more simple 3D tasks inside After Effects than is otherwise available in 3D compositing.

Here are some key features of "Conoa 3D":
12 different 3D geometric primitives with true 3D (no polygonalization)
A true raytracing renderer
2 material models with ambient, diffuse and specular lighting.
Reflection
Tranparency, with a variable index of refraction
Texture mapping onto any primitive
Shadows may be cast from any primitive to any other
Soft shadow effects with area light sources
Wireframe previews
Bump mapping
Environment mapping
True 3D camera model.

Requirements:
Adobe After Effects 4.1 or later.
Apple Final Cut Pro 3.0 or later.
Discreet Combustion 3.0.
Avid AVX systems.