Ray Dream 3D is a subset of MetaCreation’s full Ray Dream Studio, designed for the 3D beginner. This program holds your hand through the initial learning of 3D and offers a fair amount of power once you are up and running.
Anyone intimidated by 3D will be grateful for MetaCreations’ efforts to make this program easy to learn. The manual is clear (although it was derived from the Ray Dream Studio manual and mentions features that aren’t in Ray Dream 3D) . The online help system is great, making use of AppleGuide, Balloon Help, and even Stickles (you can add notes to the hdp flies). And neophytes get loads of premade 3D materials.
A new Ray Dream 3D project starts either with an empty scene or in a Scene Wizard. Scene Wizards walk you through premade back-grounds for 3D images and animation, and automatically place lights, cameras, backdrops, and props in a scene. Once a scene exists, other premade materials from the program’s Browser libraries — including objects, textures, image maps, cameras, and lights — can be added. There even are drag-and-drop behaviors for creating basic animation.
Although some users may take advantage of the premade models or the modeling wizard to step through basic modeling, Ray Dream also provides a formidable spline-based modeling environment, which is very similar to the workshop in MetaCreations Infini-D. Both programs create models by extruding cross sections along a path, which can be adjusted in 3D space. Though Infini-D separates this process into different windows for the path, cross sections, and resulting object, Ray Dream integrates them into a single window, giving a much better sense of the way the 3D path and 2D cross sections interrelate. Ray Dream 3D, however, lacks a mesh modeler found in both Ray Dream Studio and Infini-D.
Ray Dream uses shaders to add textures to objects. A shader can include color, highlight, shininess, transparency, reflection, glow, and bump information. It also can include texture maps from bitmapped images and QuickTime movies. Multiple shaders can be layered on an object with varying degrees of transparency. One great tool in Ray Dream 3D is the 3D brush offering a MetaCreations Painter style brush for applying one shader over another. This allows mixed surfaces, which would be nearly impossible to achieve in other programs.
For an entry-level program, Ray Dream 3D sports a number of surprising features. Among them: up to 64 levels of undo; the ability to export VRML for putting 3D on the Internet; pointable and trackable cameras, lights, and objects; and controls for linking and grouping multiple objects. There is also a spherical camera for creating 3D virtual-reality environments.
Ray Dream supports QuickDraw 3D for fast previewing and offers four rendering modes for final output. Use Draft Z-buffer, the quickest renderer, for test renders before moving to the slow, high-quahty, Raytracing renderer. The Adaptive Renderer uses Raytracing when it’s needed and switches to a faster A-buffer renderer for the rest. The last renderer, the Natural Media Renderer (licensed from ThinkFish Productions) renders 3D animations in a variety of artistic styles that look more like hand-drawn animation than photoreahstic 3D.
One of the few complaints we have about the program is that some extensions built into the interface are not available until purchased separately. When you attempt to access them, you are prompted to type in a serial number and given a phone number for purchasing the extension. This type of sales pitch inside an application is annoying; hopefully, it will not become a trend.
Ray Dream 3D is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get started in 3D design. Eventually you may require the advanced features found in more expensive programs such as Ray Dream Studio, Infini-D, or the ElectricImage system. When that happens, upgrade to Ray Dream Studio for just $99 (MetaCreations is considering offering an upgrade to Infini-D as well) . By the time you have a need for ElectricImage, you probably will be making enough money from your graphics work to easily afford it.
Florio, Chris. (March 1998). Ray Dream 3D. MacAddict. (pgs. 62-63).
MetaCreations Corporation
Applications
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2020-09-13 / 
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Ray-Dream-3D-102.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
