What is Strata StudioPro 2.5?

For some time, Strata StudioPro, a capable modeling, animation, and rendering package, held a near-monopoly on the creation of rich, photorealistic images on the Mac, with rendering features such as radiosity and surface-normal smoothing that most 3D companies hadn’t even heard of.

But the program also has a history of design gaffes. Starting with version 1.5, it became increasingly unstable. Rushing to endow Strata StudioPro with the newest 3D features, Strata often settled for clumsy implementations that robbed the new tools of much of their usefulness. Bones weren’t really bones, texture maps didn’t stick, Booleans were unreliable, morphing and deformations were clumsy and hardy animatable, and even the much-lauded renderer started to produce strange artifacts. Strata StudioPro began to lose the 3D animation battle to up-and-comers Infini-D, Lightwave, and Bryce.

But Strata hasn’t been sitting on its hands. The newest release of Strata StudioPro, version 2.5.3, fixes many long-standing problems and adds some features that are useful and well implemented. There are still some problems, but this newest upgrade is the best yet.

For general modeling operations, StudioPro 2.5.3 is quite easy to use. All the usual tools are here — extrudes, lathes, sweeps, and skinning — but they can be manipulated in a very intuitive way right in the general workspace. Strata calls this “in-context modeling,” and it’s an improvement over programs that box you into a special modeling window. You can make many objects from Bezier curves by just pulling a few handles. Everything is adjustable after the fact, so the modeling process is fast and easy.

The most versatile mode for complex modeling is the Bezier surface. You can turn most objects (except polygonal mesh objects) into a Bezier surface, and from there the surface is very malleable. You can also add control points at any patch, allowing the creation of complex shapes that would be quite difficult to create any other way. Boolean functions (add, subtract, and so on) are also available. In a StudioPro first, the Boolean functions in version 2.5.3 are stable and reliable. Even when cutting apart complex shapes, the tools leave no extra polygons hanging off the edges.

Unfortunately, using Boolean fionctions on any object immediately turns it into a polygonal mesh object, with all of its spline functionality lost. There is no way to break the surface of a Bezier object at all without turning it into polygons, nor can you blend surfaces between two Bezier objects; this limits the kinds of topologies you can create.

The program also has a good implementation of metaballs, a feature that takes a group of spheres or spheroids and skins over them to make organic shapes. Metaballs are fast and easy to use, and in part this makes up for the difficulties in creating branching topology using the Bezier surface tools. There’s also a nice lattice deformation tool with only one problem: The lattice is set to a crude 3-by-3-by-3 resolution you can’t change.

Since version 1.0, StudioPro has had one exceptional animation tool: the use of “shapes,” individual packages of animated models that you can drop as an “instance” anywhere in the scene. For building large scenes, this tool is indispensable, because you can add as many instances of a shape as you like without creating lots of extra geometry. StudioPro’s other animation tools are unexciting. The timeline is basic, as are the velocity graphs, which feel clumsy and tacked on, unlike the elegant ftmction curves available in other products in the same price range.

By contrast, StudioPro’s texture mapping is mostly well thought out, with a large range of different procedural textures available and several ways to combine them on one surface. This version adds UV moping (in which the map is “stuck,” not “projected,” onto the surface of an object), but the results of using this method of mapping on a polygonal object can be unpredictable. This is a problem when you’re using the bones tools, since bones only affect polygonal objects.

StudioPro’s renderer is justly considered top notch. Rendering and antialiasing options are numerous. It’s especially good at emulating the little telltale signs of reality that are usually absent from computer-generated images, hi addition to depth of field and motion blur, StudioPro can simulate volumetric soft shadows, which become fuzzier the farther they are from the object casting them, and it can generate diffuse reflections among objects with its radiosity renderer. Advanced options add drastically to rendering times, but the results, in the hands of a competent artist, provide that elusive edge of heightened realism.

As an alternative to the raytrace renderer, StudioPro now offers a scanline renderer that is much quicker. The quality difference, however, is very noticeable. Even at the higher antialiasing settings, scanline renderings still look somewhat jagged, especially in texture maps. Scanline rendering is a useful alternative when speed is paramount, but StudioPro’s raytracer is still the star.

On the whole, StudioPro 2.5.3 is a competent package with some serious weakness- es that should be weighed carefully against your needs. Products such as Inspire 3D and Cinema4D SE pack more bang for the buck. Despite all the newer Mac 3D apps out there, however, many Strata loyalists swear by StudioPro. If its particular blend of interface and features appeals to you, you might decide to join them.

Anzovin, Raf. (January 1999). Strata StudioPro 2.5.3. MacAddict. (pgs. 60-61).

Download Strata StudioPro 2.5 for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver