If you don't need professional level 3-D tools, or you simply want to dabble in 3-D, take a look at LogoMotion, an easy-to-use 3-D package that’s eminently affordable. As its name suggests, LogoMotion is designed to facilitate the production of 3-D flying logos, like those from TV-movie-of-the-week tides. LogoMotion enables you to extrude text objects from TrueType and PostScript Type 1 fonts, apply surface textures to the objects, construct animated sequences, and render finished images.
But LogoMotion is more than a type extruder. It offers enough modeling, rendering, and animation power to make it a decent all-around 3-D package for budget-conscious graphic designers, entrylevel users, and budding animators.
LogoMotion derives from Specular’s Infini-D but emphasizes simplicity. For example, LogoMotion offers front, side, and top views, plus one camera view. The resizable camera-view window is the main work area; the other fixed-size views are for orientation. And LogoMotion’s palette holds only text, lathing, and extrusion tools, along with object-manipulation and -scaling functions.
LogoMotion keeps Infini-D’s Workshop feature, which lets you edit the outlines of lathed and extruded objects, as well as edit EPS outlines imported from Aldus FreeHand and Adobe Illustrator. LogoMotion supports publish and subscribe, so editing EPS outlines in the originating program automatically updates the 3-D model in the Workshop; it also imports objects in DXF and Swivel 3D formats. LogoMotion’s modeling features are essentially equal to Infini-D’s.
The same cannot be said for LogoMotion’s animation and rendering tools, but its simplified animation Sequencer is more than adequate for the program’s flying-logo mission. And LogoMotion includes important controls such as motion ease-in and ease-out, as well as some more-advanced animation features such as spline-based motion paths and the ability to morph both surfaces and objects. Overall, LogoMotion’s animation capabilities strike a good balance between the sometimes contradictory demands of power and usability.
And LogoMotion makes it easy for novices to get started in moviemaking, by providing a useful assortment of StageHands — plug-in backdrops, cameras, environments, lights, and props — that automate the creation of animations.
LogoMotion comes with almost two dozen surfaces that you can edit for color, metallicity, reflectivity, and specularity, and from which you can create new surfaces and new surface libraries. The program offers two levels of rendering: a fast setting that generates flat shadings, and a better setting that produces images with reflections, fog, and environment effects.
LogoMotion can produce 32-bit renderings with alpha channels, even on Macs without 32-bit video. Generally speaking, images produced with LogoMotion aren’t broadcast-quality, but they’re perfectly adequate for graphicdesign applications and corporate presentations. If you need better rendering, LogoMotion can export models to Infini-D for ray-tracing.
LogoMotion runs without a whimper. You know a developer is confident when the manual encourages you to Icam the program by clicking about and seeing what happens. The manual itself is understandable and even fun to read. It could be a bit more thorough, but that might run counter to the theme of simplicity.
The Last Word
All in all, LogoMotion is a terrific program. It’s great for creating quick flying logos for corporate presentations — its intended purpose. However, with its excellent balance of modeling, rendering, and animation features, LogoMotion may find just as much use as an entry-level 3-D package for nonprofessionals and maybe even the education market.
Martinez, Carlos Domingo. (November 1994). LogoMotion 1.0. Macworld. (pgs. 59, 61).
Specular International
Applications
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Logo_Motiontm_1.5.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
