Michael Burns - Author - Good Gear Guide

Stories by Michael Burns

Article | 9/11/2010 Daz 3D Bryce 7

Able to design terrains, water and oceans, skies, clouds, fog, vegetation and architecture, along with strong animation and rendering tools, Bryce is ...

Article | 19/07/2010 Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

Adobe is aiming high with the newly native 64-bit Premiere CS5, offering a range of cutting-edge features for the professional video market. First amo...

Article | 11/12/2009 Maxon Cinema 4D R11.5

Maxon’s modelling, animation and rendering software fills a technical and economic niche between the likes of quick modellers, such as SketchUp, and t...

Article | 4/09/2009 QuarkXpress 8.1

QuarkXPress 8 was a fairly thorough restructuring of the venerable DTP application. This update, free to registered users of version 8, is mainly conc...

Article | 12/08/2009 Luxology modo 401

Already a well specified modelling tool, modo gets stronger in animation and particularly rendering with the 401 release. There’s now a preset library...

Article | 17/06/2009 Bonzai3d 1.0

AutoDesSys’ Bonzai3d is a brand-new 3D sketching tool aimed at two camps: illustrators and digital artists who want to mock up scenes in 3D to create ...

Article | 4/06/2009 Adobe Director 11.5

Director, Adobe’s tool for creating interactive content, for both online and standalone applications, gains several key features with version 11.5. Hi...

Article | 15/05/2009 E-on Software Vue 7 Infinite/xStream

The latest version of E-on’s Vue line of landscape-generation applications doesn’t add any new types of elements to its collection of tools for creati...

Article | 1/05/2009 Autodesk 3DS Max 2010

The newest version of Autodesk’s 3D suite contains some major interface changes. On opening 3DS Max 2010, you’ll immediately be aware of the new Graph...

Article | 21/04/2009 Google Sketchup Pro 7

Google’s 3D sketching software SketchUp offers a great way to lay out an initial design for a 3D scene or artwork. Illustrators and digital artists ca...

Article | 17/04/2009 Story Planner Pro 3.1

Story Planner Pro offers a quick way to break the story behind an animation or video sequence down into key scenes.

Article | 16/04/2009 Autodesk ImageModeler 2009

ImageModeler 2009 extracts 3D information from still images to construct accurate 3D models and scenes, to which you can apply realistic textures take...

Article | 12/03/2009 Daz Carrara 7 Pro

The seventh version of Carrara, which is available in Express, Standard and Pro editions, aims to offer a fully featured 3D suite at an affordable pri...

Article | 2/04/2009 Toon Boom Animate

In terms of both features and price, Animate sits between Toon Boom Studio and the more expensive Toon Boom Digital Pro. There are some anomalies, how...

Article | 5/02/2009 iClone Pro 3

In its two previous iterations, iClone was a low-end 3D animation suite, pitching itself at enthusiasts who were happy to work primarily with pre-buil...