Xara 3D Maker 7.0

Xara 3D Maker 7 - The number 1 tool for creating stunning, professional-quality 3D web graphics

Traditional 3D programs are notoriously difficult to use and understand. Not so Xara 3D Maker. Unlike many 3D programs that take an age to learn and understand, Xara 3D Maker has been created to perform one job, and performs that job with style, speed and simplicity.

Xara 3D Maker is solely designed to create the highest quality 3D text and graphics, such as headings, logos, titles and buttons. It's the perfect way to add impact to your web pages, mailshots, movies and presentations (all images are fully anti-aliased for that smooth, professional quality). Xara 3D Maker can also create awesome 3D animations in seconds - GIFs, AVIs and simple Flash movie sequences - and you can even enhance your desktop by saving any animation as a screensaver!

Xara 3D Maker is so simple to use, literally anyone can produce high quality 3D graphics in minutes.

Both professional web designers and home users choose Xara 3D Maker to make still and animated 3D text and graphics, such as logos, titles, headings and buttons.

3D graphics and animations are the perfect way to add impact to your site - and we guarantee there’s no easier way to create them than Xara 3D Maker!

3D Graphics made Easy

With Xara 3D Maker’s clean design, intuitive tools, interactive editing (just drag on the image to change the position, the extrude or bevel) and ready made styles, you will create your first 3D graphics in minutes.

Whatever 3D graphics you need

Ideal for onscreen 3D graphics or animations (AVIs or animated GIFs), wherever you need to catch your visitor’s attention - headings and titles, logos and buttons, sales and offer notices. Perfect for web pages, mailshots, newsletters, e-cards and presentations. And any animation can even be saved as a screensaver.

Xara 3D Maker is solely designed to create the highest quality 3D text and graphics, such as logos, titles, headings and buttons. It's the perfect way to add impact to your web pages, mailshots and presentations (all images are fully anti-aliased for that smooth, professional quality). Xara3D can also create awesome 3D animations in seconds - GIFs, AVIs and simple Flash movie sequences - and you can even enhance your desktop by saving any animation as a screensaver!

Quality Graphics

Xara has pioneered technology to create the highest quality onscreen results, with compact file sizes - ideal for web pages and presentations.

Testimonials

"Hi Guys! Just to let you know we received the 3D package and are well impressed with it.

Would also like to advise our appreciation of Xara's attitude to its customers and end users! Well done people! We thank you!"
- Linda R.

"Xara 3D Maker is so simple that I was publishing professional looking illustrated text within minutes of installation. My friends and colleagues were amazed at my new found tool. I love it and it was so inexpensive too. Thanks for making my work more of a joy."
- Jay Robare

"What an awesome program! It is so easy to use, even my youngest can do it, and loves to experiment with the different effects. I have noticed that the rendered text consistently saves to some of the clearest, smoothest image files that I have ever seen."
- Brigitte Walsh

Creating and Importing

You'll be creating 3D text headings in minutes and it's a snip to add borders or backgrounds. What's more you can import 2D shapes and extrude them into 3D.

Easy Text Headings Text headings can use any TrueType font installed on your computer. 13 fonts are included in the trial download and there are 64 in the full download.
Simply select the font from the drop down menu and type away, you’ll create your first heading in seconds!
Full Text Controls There's full control over every aspect of the appearance of the text, including alignment, sub & superscript, line spacing, tracking and kerning values for individual characters or over whole selections.
Character Sets There's also instant access to full character sets from within the text dialog.
Importing 2D Shapes But you're not just limited to text headings. You can create non-text headings by importing 2D graphics as Windows metafiles (WMF and EMF) or Xara Xtreme/Xara Designer/Webster files (XAR and WEB) and extruding the outlines.
Borders, Boards & Buttons An automatic design-making tool instantly adds a border to your text or turns it into a button, board or board with holes at the click of a button.
Top On-Screen Quality Xara 3D Maker offers top quality on-screen display, with full anti-aliasing, and real-time solid shading with optional error-diffusion dithering.
New Controls New in V7: A View Options panel which gives additional advanced control over the X/Y position of an image against its background, allows you to precisely change the angle of rotation and viewpoint, and offers a new wireframe mode which can simplify the display and speed up animation viewing time.

Editing and Applying Special Effects

Xara 3D Maker offers comprehensive, interactive and intuitive controls over everything including extrude depth and bevel, text styles, colors, textures and lighting.

Easy Extrude All the contols are full interactive - so for example you can change the 3D extrude depth by simply dragging on the side of the heading!
Real Time Positionning And you can position the heading in real time around three axes by simply dragging the image on screen.
Individual Character Settings The many attributes such as bevel, color, fonts, textures, animation and text settings can be applied to individual letters or whole headings
Copying Styles The Style Picker allows you to easily grab any or all of the settings of an existing image and apply them to another.
Boundless Bevels There's no less than 33 different bevel types, and the bevel size can be adjusted by simply dragging the bevel edge on screen.
Interactive Light Controls The lighting is interactive and easy-to-use with three adjustable light arrows which can be dragged around the image on-screen.
Setting Colors and Textures There are flexible interactive controls over the color and/or texture of every part of the image, and the background.
21 textures are included in the trial download, and over 400 in the full product. You can also import your own GIF or PNG files to use as foreground or background textures.
Textures can be scaled, rotated and colored.
More Style Controls You can make the images matt or shiny. They can also be displayed with front and back faces or you can make them hollow.
Simple Soft Shadows Images can have a soft-edged shadow, and an intuitive interface allows you to easily alter the shadow blur, transparency and color.
Unlimited Undo With so many controls to play with it's easy to get carried away. But don't worry - unlimited undo makes experimentation easy!

Animation

There's a huge range of animation types to choose from, with full control over speed, direction, loops etc.

Choice of Animation Types Images can be animated in many different ways, such as Rotate, Fade, Ripple, Pulsate, Step, Fade and Swing, using a simple interface.
New in V7: headings can now scroll in and out. You can set the direction and speed, so for example an image could drift in slowly from the top and exit quickly right! Absolutely perfect for creating opening titles and closing credits for movies.
Movie and Slideshow Titles Animations can be exported as AVIs, making them perfect for opening titles and closing credits for movies - especially the new scroll in and out animations.
Additionally V7 can export animations with transparent backgrounds in a special MAGIX format, compatible with MAGIX Photostory and MAGIX Movie Edit Pro, so that they can be super imposed as 3D animated captions on movies and slideshows created in these MAGIX products.
Copying Animation Styles The Animation Picker lets you easily copy the animation settings of one image to another.
Individual Character Settings You can easily apply different animations to individual characters or sections of text.
Multi-Page Animations What's more, you can step-through multi-page animations of different images.
Animation Controls The animation controls are comprehensive. For example you can set the number of frames in a sequence, the rotation direction, the speed, pause and number of loops, all with simply, intuitive controls.
Timeline An animation time line allows you to step through each frame, pause and export a single frame.
Light and Text Rotation Lights and text can be rotated separately.
Easy Animated Buttons Xara 3D Maker is great for creating animated buttons.

Exporting Your Results

Xara 3D Maker can export in all the common web formats - GIF, JPEG etc - and you can even export your 3D animations of screensavers!

Full Format Support Xara 3D Maker can save images in all the formats you'll need for use on-screen, in presentations or for movie titles and credits, including JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG (including full PNG alpha channel), ICO (icon) and CUR (cursor). And for animations you can export as animated GIF, AVI and SWF (vector and bitmap).
Screen Savers Any 3D animation can also be exported as a screensaver.
Background Transparency The export dialog offers optional background transparency, so your 3D image can blend seamlessly into any page background.
Optimizing For The Web The export dialog also offers color reduction and palette-optimization for maximum quality with the smallest file size, ideal for web pages.
Image Size As you would expect there is also complete control over the image size, including a handy Fit To Width feature (with pixel size shown on screen).

What's New in Xara 3D Maker 7

We know Xara3D 6 is already addictive and now it's going to be even more so, with a couple of great new animation types and even more bevel styles to experiment with. You have been warned!

Plus there are new controls over X & Y position and viewpoint, a wireframe mode and some essential updating for Win 7. Here's a summary of the new features in Xara 3D Maker 7:

'Scroll' animation type added

A new 'scroll' animation type. Now you can scroll text vertically, horizontally or into and out of the screen, with full control over the speed. Both the scroll and new scroll in & out animations are perfect for movie and video opening titles and closing credits (export as AVI, compatible with any movie software).

'Scroll in/out' animation type added

A second new 'scroll in/out' animation type, which includes separate control over how the text enters and leaves the screen - so for example it could scroll in slowly from the right, hesitate and then exit quickly upwards!

Integration with MAGIX movie & slideshow products

Xara 3D Maker 7 can export animations with a transparent background in a proprietary format called CFX which can be imported into MAGIX slideshow and movie editing software, Photostory on CD & DVD 9 and Movie Edit Pro 17. Which makes 3D Maker the perfect choice for creating overlaid 3D captions for movies or slideshows produced in MAGIX software.

Bevel types added

7 new bevel types, increasing even further the range of different styles you can create.

'View options' panel

A 'View options' panel which gives additional advanced control over the X/Y position of an image against its background, allows you to precisely change the angle of rotation and viewpoint, and offers a new wireframe mode which can simplify the display and speed up animation viewing time.

Save & restore

Automatic save and restore of the current design on program exit and start-up, or on Windows shutdown.

Compatible with Windows 7

Official Win 7 compatibility. Also optionally for Windows 7 rarely used fonts are hidden to unclutter the font list.

Easy access to samples

Instant access to over 700 ready made Xara 3D Maker samples via a new Open Samples option in the File menu.

Other software compatibility

You can now cut and paste your 3D images to Microsoft Word and other programs.