The new version of Strata and why it's so good now and for the future.

I have to say that I haven't seen the team at Strata work so hard on a new release of there software than I have this time around. The reason it was such a huge task was that a lot of it was re-written from the ground up. With a hybrid mesh that supports triangles and quads (four sided polygons) and a mix of both is something that will make even the hardest object to model look easy. I'm sure you all know the limitation of that dreaded one undo limitation we had to worry about. Well not any more! Not only is there multiple undo but there is a history now ala Photoshop. This was a big accomplishment and was a huge task to undertake. This seemingly little item was in every aspect of the program and had to be rooted out everywhere, but it was well worth the wait for the added undo's and history.

With the new mesh type and the new history the future looks bright for CX. Hopefully we can look forward to even greater additions to this great app in the future now that it has a rock solid foundation to build on.

Import/Export

Strata plays nice with other applications now. That's right, you can import and export to .obj now. That means you can export your models to wings right out of CX and then back into it from Wings or Silo for that mater. CX will also render out a file to photoshop format with layers and all. This is great because you can have tremendous control over your final image from within photoshop after the render is done. Control how much reflectivity, shadow, and other items after the render with photoshop. This simple feature alone will save you tons of time. Imagine a raytraced render that has hard sharp shadows. With the render to layers option you can have the shadows rendered to a separate photoshop layer that you can blur into softness. Soft shadows without the long render time is great.

New tools

There are a few new tools in CX too. One is the linked mirror. It works like a real time mirror of geometry. Once you mirror some geometry with it and keep making changes to one half of your model the other half follows simultaneously. It's a nice little tool for symmetrical objects. Some others are fixes with the boolean tools. They are so much cleaner now, I will actually use them now. Before I would avoid them like the plague.

Mesh enhancements

Some of you may be asking what is the big deal about the mesh enhancements? Well, let me tell you this is huge. Before we only had triangle meshes. That was okay until you tried to model something that needed to be symmetrical or intricate. You may have noticed how the triangle meshes started to distort the more complicated they got. Or it looked like it was starting to wind around itself. That's because they were made with triangle polygons (tri's). What we really needed were four sided polygons (quads). Quads make nice even symmetrical meshes but when your model gets intricate you need to make sure you don't have any polygons with anything but four sides or it starts to pinch and fold on itself. This new mesh type that CX has uses both the tri and quad polygon. Together you can make any model smooth and wind free. It makes modeling in CX more like sculpting, and that's fun.

Rendering stuff

Finally render dialogue boxes we can all understand. There have been significant changes to the verbiage and terms in those pesky render settings. You no longer need a computer science degree to understand the render settings. It's all in plane language now, and easy to understand what exactly you are doing when you render your images. They have also added a nice little gem in there. You can select to have your reflected images blurred to add even more realism to the raydiosty render.

Scripting too!

For all you propeller heads out there this is incredible. Using Lua scripting you can extend CX on your own. Animating objects without making a key frame is one of the things you can do with Lua scripting within CX 5.0. A couple lines of code and you can animate a whole solar system. That's just one simple example of the power of scripting within CX 5.0.

New bones and poser support!

There is a new bones engine all together in CX 5.0. It supports IK and FK and behaves the way a bone system should. No more pulling your hair out trying to rig something just to have it fall apart on you. It has automatic weighting and mesh attachment. Be prepared to spend some time learning this new system because it is very deep.

To much to write about

I think I could go on and on about the new things that are in this new version of CX but it would take too long. Of course I am biased in my view of it but you probably are too since your at this web site. I can't say enough good things about CX 5.0 it is the best upgrade to strata to date. I would recommend getting the upgrade as soon as you can, you can't go wrong.

Check out the Strata web site for upgrade and purchase details.