Corel, maker of the popular VideoStudio Pro and PaintShop Pro franchises, has today released its newest title, MotionStudio 3D. As Corel's first entry into the animation and motion graphics software category, MotionStudio 3D targets multimedia enthusiasts looking to create stunning title sequences and basic 3D animations. While it's not quite a big-budget Hollywood workhorse, the program certainly appears to be good at what it does.

On top of its basic 3D titling and text animation capabilities, MotionStudio also includes a powerful, yet simple particle effects tool that recreates the appearance and movement of elements like bubbles, fire, smoke, and snow. One-click features like this are sure to attract casual users who aren't necessarily motion graphics wizards. The program also includes tons of animation presets, and lets you manipulate light sources, mimic motion blur, and adjust depth of field among other aspects.

And for the prosumers out there, MotionStudio 3D also boasts some rather powerful import and export capabilities. It can handle vector and raster graphics, and lets you easily work with files from other 3D applications. Meanwhile, it can output to a wide variety of video and still image formats including GIF and Flash (SWF) for the Web. And as expected, MotionStudio lets you easily output projects as 3D anaglyphs viewable with 3D glasses, or as side-by-side images playable... [Read more]

Long gone are the days when Adobe Systems could take its Flash Player's position on the Web for granted.

But Adobe, to counter a strong combination of opposition and alternatives to the browser plug-in, plans to ship Flash Player 11 in two weeks. The debut at its Max developer conference early next month is geared to send a message to programmers: Flash is still relevant, and Adobe is still investing in it.

Flash 11's highlight, an interface called Molehill for hardware-accelerated 3D and 2D graphics, won't change the minds of those who would like to see Flash fade from the Web, nor will it reverse Apple and Microsoft's Flash opposition. But it is a powerful new feature for games, and games are one of the Flash strongholds Adobe is seeking to defend.

"WIth direct access to the GPU [graphics processing unit], you'll see a thousand times faster rendering over prior versions of Flash," said Danny Winokur, Adobe's platform general manager. With the ability to animate millions of objects at a screen refresh rate of 50 frames per second, people can expect "console-quality games" such as those on an Xbox or PS3, but in a Web browser.

At the same time, Adobe has another strategy for maintaining the programming appeal of Flash's cross-platform nature. In cases where Flash apps can't run because the plug-in is banned or simply not insta... [Read more]