Strata Design 3D CX 8 for Mac & PC
The latest upgrade of our professional modeling and animation app for users of Design 3D CX 7.0 or newer.
For a very limited time – upgrade ANY version of Design 3D – including CXi, & SE – regular and Mac App Store versions. If you own Design 3D, you qualify for the steep discounts offered on upgrades! Just select the upgrade option of your choice on the right side of this page.
This must-have new version includes Embree raycasting by Intel®, 64 bit power for larger projects and faster rendering and LiveRay which gives you interactive rendering in the modeling views. New anti-alias filters help to smooth out your renders – which can now be HDR images. Check out all of the latest features listed below. With our total flexibility purchase options – that let you buy in subscription or standard license – the time to get this upgrade is now.
The latest release let’s you explore and share your designs in VR.
Render VR new camera type (VR 360° Stereo) generates images that allow you and your clients to step directly into your projects for a fully immersive experience using a standard smartphone and simple, inexpensive viewers (such as Google Cardboard).
Publish VR makes it easy to interactively experience your designs in a full VR environment using Strata Spaces VR and HTC Vive headset. Just select your model in Design 3D CX and hit the Publish to VR button.
Maybe you mean: 'university'
All the Power in One Integrated Solution
Simplified 3D Learning Curve
Model Anything in 3D or Import Existing 3D Assets
Apply Surface Textures with Precision
Sophisticated Lighting, Backgrounds & Cameras
Photo-Real Images & Animations at Blazing Speeds
Fundamentals Video: Rendering
Learn Design 3D CX Online at Strata 3D University
Tightly Integrated with Photoshop® & Illustrator®
3D Printing, Augmented Reality & 3D Web Publishing
Designers and Clients using Strata Design 3D
In-Depth Feature List
Strata Design 3D CX makes it easy for 2D designers to get started in 3D. You can import 2D elements from applications like Adobe Illustrator or you can draw 2D and 3D objects directly in Strata Design 3D CX.
- 2D/3D Text
- 2D Drawing Tools (rectangles, ellipsis, etc.)
- 3D Primitives (cubes, spheres, etc.)
- Spline Curves (Bezier lines/regions)
Modeling Features
Strata Design 3D CX offers an incredible array of modeling options. You can model using familiar Bezier splines, but now in 3D: traditional polys- but now with Quad Polysplines (subdivision surfaces); MetaSurfaces to meld objects together; Extrude and Lathe; Boolean to combine or subtract: Skin; Mirror and more!
- Polyspline SDS (subdivision surfaces)
- Meld MetaSurfaces
- Bezier Surfaces
- Extrude
- Lathe
- Boolean
- Skin
- Polygonal Modeling
- Path Extrude
- Construction Objects
- Shy Objects
- Shape Instancing
- Replicate / Duplicate
- Object Manipulation
- Drop a Curve
- Hide Objects
- Fillet
- Thickness
- Mirror
- Hull Surface
- Deformation Lattice
- Grids – World, Custom & View
- Guides – Custom and Default
- Smooth Mesh
- Decimation
- Segment Edge Command
- Show Face Normals
- Point Snap
View Features
Unlike your favorite 2D applications, Strata Design 3D CX gives you the opportunity to examine artwork from any angle. With the power of 3D perspective comes new challenges for control. Strata 3D rises to the occasion with split-able views, connected views, multiple views, depth cueing and even special views for cameras and light sources. OpenGL gives you quick previews while LiveRay gives you photo-real previews.
- Familiar Interface
- Split Views
- Camera View
- Multi-Views
- Depth Cueing
- Image/Movie Backdrop
- Spotlight Views
- OpenGL
- LiveRay
Environment Features
Sometimes great design is about the “negative space” – the area that surrounds your 3D model. Strata Design 3D CX gives you many options and an easy to use interface to control your “environment”.
- Ground Plane
- Air Refraction
- Visible Backgrounds
- Reflective Backgrounds
- Atmosphere
- Gravity
- Wind
Lighting Features
You’ve heard of “looks good in any light” – now you’ve found the tool that gives you that elusive “any light”. Strata Design 3D CX gives you point lights, spotlights, global sun-style lights, environment based lightdomes, High Dynamic Range Image lighting, glowing surfaces, gels – all unlimited and fully controllable.
- Point Lights
- Spot Lights
- Global Lights
- Glowing Surfaces
- Lightdome HDRI
- Intensity
- Host Object
- Soft Edges
- Ambient Light
- Gels
- Animatable Lights
- Overflow Handling
- Spotlight Window View
- Effects Applied to Light
- Direct Manipulation Interface
- HDR Light Studio Integration (optional)
Special Effects Features
Any image or animation can be spiced up with special effects like Lens Flare, Auras, Particles – and the new Script FX. Add multiple effects, place effects on any object, even animate the effects.
- Lens Flares
- Particle Collision Detection
- Script FX
- Auras
- Caustics
- Fountain Effects
- Global Gravity Control
- Global Wind Force Control
- Global Air Control
- Fire & Smoke
- Hair
- Hotspots
- Pixie Dust
File Import/Export Features
Being able to talk to other programs in your design studio is an important issue. Strata Design 3D CX offers a number of options in this area.
- U3D (in)
- Collada (in/out)
- Illustrator/EPS (in)
- Photoshop PSD (in/out)
- STL (in/out)
- XMM (out)
- Quicktime (in/out)
- PICT (in/out)
- Quicktime VR (out)
- TGA (in/out)
- TIFF (in/out)
- BMP (in/out)
- JPEG (in/out)
- 3DS (in)
- PDF (in)
- DXF (in/out)
- AVI (in/out)
- MiniCAD (in)
- Amapi (in/out)
- OBJ (in/out)
- VRML 1 & 2 (in/out)
- Flash SWF (out)
- True Type Fonts (in)
- Postscript Type Fonts (in)
The core of what makes Strata Design 3D CX so good – and what it’s famous for – is the high quality rendering. Rendering is the process of taking the design you worked to put together and creating the final image.
- OpenGL
- Toon
- LiveRay
- Photons
- Raytracing
- Raydiosity
- Render to Layers
- Flat Shaded
- Hidden Line
- Outline
- Pointcloud
- Smooth Shaded
- Wireframe
- Scanline
- Transparency
- Alpha Channel
- Anti-Aliasing
- Oversampling
- Glow
- Reflectivity
- Blurry Transparency and Reflectivity
- Instance Rendering
- Anti-Matter Effect
- Field Rendering
- Atmospheric Effects
- Shadows
- MIP Mapping
- Soft Shadows
- Stereoscopic
- Custom Environments
- Specular Highlights
- Suspend Rendering
- Marquee Select Rendering
Animation Features
Design 3D CX takes a simple approach to animation: Everything can be animated. And it takes a simple approach to controlling animation: keyframes, a timeline, and scripting. Even if you’ve never booted it up, you already know how to use it.
- Scripting
- Hierarchial
- Visible Paths
- Everything Time Variable
- Animation Preview
- Shatter
- Explode
- Jiggle
- Convert to Path Event-Based
- Cycle Back & Forth
- Key Frames
- Velocity Graphs
- Life Checkbox
- Align to Path
- IK (Inverse Kinematics)
- FK (Forward Kinematics)
- TCB, Spline & Natural Paths
- Proportional Event Scaling
Texturing Features
“What if” is as simple as drag-and-drop in Strata Design 3D CX. Select from the palette of hundreds of pre-made surface textures or make your own using features like live-linking to native Photoshop and Illustrator files – make a change in Photoshop or Illustrator and Strata Design 3D CX automatically updates the model surface.
- Native UV Mapping
- Scripting
- Hierarchical
- Visible Paths
- Photoshop Linking
- Illustrator Linking
- Displacement
- Box Wrapper
- Normal Maps
- Mist
- Image Textures
- Corrosion
- Starfield
- Rainbow Reflection
- Mock Tile
- Shadow Catcher
- Ripples
- Solid Brick
- Silk
- Solid Candy
- Solid Concrete
- Solid Marble
- Solid Moonscape
- Solid Rock
- Solid Stone
- Solid Terrain
- Solid Wood
- Wildlife
- Mock Plank
- Surface, Solid & Volume
- Layer & Mix
- Fog
- Haze
- Clouds
- Burn UV
- New Conform to Mesh option; using Least Squares Conformal Maps technology
- LSCM unwrap (Conform, Conform Connected) Unwrap entire objects, single UV island or just selected polygons
- Pin UVs (Toggle pinned vertices on or off)
- Fit (to UV, U or V)
- Fit Each (to UV, U or V)
- Rotate Connected (to Grid, U or V)
- Move (to U, V; Center to U, V)
- Select Perimeter
- Select Pinned UVs
- UV Edge Seam Assignment
- Select UV Seam Edge
- LiveRay Texture Preview
see all texture effects with interactive rendering directly in the modeling view
Camera Features
A great camera can make even the novice photographer look good. Just think of what Strata Design 3D CX will do for you with all these imaging options at your finger tips. These options include four kinds of motion blur, depth of field, and six styles of cameras including panoramic.
- Scripting
- Hierarchial
- Visible Paths
- QTVR
- Motion Blur
- Depth of Field
- Boom
- Pan
- Dolly
- Arc
- Pitch
- Yaw
- Roll
- Host Object
- Target Object
- Focal Distance
- View Angle
- Stereoscopic Camera
- Panorama Camera
- Cubic Camera
- Fisheye Camera
- Spherical Camera
- Shutter Speed
- Live Window Updates
- LiveRay Scene Preview
Scripting Features
Strata Design 3D CX includes a Lua based scripting language. Lua is a widely used language, particularly in gaming, with companies like Blizzard (World of Warcraft), Criterion Studios (NBA Ballers, ESPN Major League Baseball), BioWare (Neverwinter Nights), UbiSoft (Far Cry), Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts), Nival Interactive (Blitzkrieg) and many more. Even new favorites, such as Adobe Lightroom, utilize Lua.
With Lua you can script shaders and textures to: access the rendering pipeline; lens scripting for the creation of custom lenses, effects and warps; Filter FX which allows you to write custom Lua scripts to apply filters based on an object’s surface normal, direction, lighting, volume, and by pixel color, depth, transparency, layer within the psd file – and much, much more. In fact, Design 3D comes with a whole series of special effect shaders created using Lua. These “Script FX” let you do things like bounce, vibrate, alter acceleration and more. Each Script FX gives access to the full Lua source code, so you can edit them if you like.
Additional features are implemented directly in Lua throughout Design 3D such as Match Motion and Instance Node Control. If you’re somebody who’s interested in scripting, Lua gives you the opportunity to extend Design 3D in a variety of important ways.
Compare Design 3D Versions
FEATURES | SE | CX |
Basic Tools: Move, rotate, scale, grids and guides, history stack | ||
Lighting / Advanced: Lightdomes, global lights with soft shadows, Sun & Sky global lighting with soft shadows | ||
3D & 2D Primitives | ||
Import / Advanced: Adobe Illustrator .ai, .pdf and .u3d; Match Motion camera matching | ||
Export: Collada(DAE), STL, S3D, OBJ, VRML, BMP, JPG, SWF, PCT, TIF, TGA | ||
Export / Advanced: OpenEXR, Photoshop 16-bit psd, Quicktime, XMM | ||
Publish 3D – Augmented Reality, Web 3D & 3D Printing: Publish 3D output dialog for augmented reality, 3D web embedding & 3D printing | ||
Bezier Modeling Tools: Pen tool, extrude, lathe, path extrude, skin | ||
Bezier Modeling Tools / Advanced: Hull, thickness, fillet | ||
Polygon Modeling Tools / Basic: Move, rotate, scale, bevel, extrude | ||
Polygon Modeling Tools / Advanced: Magic wand selections, inset, inflate, flatten | ||
Polygon Vertex Commands / Advanced: Select Perimeter & Hard; Weld, Flip | ||
Polygon Edge Commands / Advanced: Select Perimeter, Hard, UV Seam Edges & Non-Manifold; Segment Edge, Flip | ||
Polygon Face Commands / Advanced: Select Perimeter, Un-Weld, Flip | ||
Subdivision Surfaces | ||
Meld Advanced Modeling: Meld objects together as metasurfaces | ||
Deformation Tools / Advanced: Deformation lattice, bones | ||
Animation: Keyframing, animated textures | ||
Animation Effects: Shatter, explode | ||
Animation / Advanced: ScriptFX: heartbeat, bounce, rotate, etc. | ||
Texturing Tools / Basic: Multi-channel stackable textures, stone, wood | ||
Texturing Tools / Advanced: Linked PSD textures; Box Wrapper, Corrosion, Displacement, Clouds, and 14 more procedural texture types; edit UV’s | ||
Effects: Fire & Smoke, Fountain, Hair, Hotspot, PixieDust | ||
Rendering / Basic: Raytracing, raydiosity, openGL, toon | ||
Rendering / Advanced: Suspended renderings, fields, stereo, panoramic, motion blur, render to layers | ||
HDR Light Studio support: Use the industry standard in custom global HDR image based lighting | ||
LiveRay Rapid In-View Photoreal Rendering: See your lighting and textures in photoreal preview within the modeling views | ||
64-bit Rendering: Access massive amounts of memory during rendering |
System Requirements
- Intel Processor(s)
- Mac OS X through Mojave (10.14)
- 4GB of RAM (more is highly recommended)
- 5 GB of available hard-disk space for install (additional 2 GB for HDRLS if bundled)
- 1024 x 768 capable display
Photoshop User
MacWorld UK | Editor’s Choice Award
Layers Magazine, Four and a Half Stars
Digit Magazine
MacUser UK
IT Enquirer
That makes me conclude Strata Design 3D CX 8 is specifically tuned for use by graphics and product designers and it does a splendid job for users in this market.”
StrataCafe User Reviews
“Aircraft interiors are a rendering nightmare, but this upgrade blazes trough the geometry with excellent results!” Joe
“The awesome new memory handling with 64-bit addressing practically eliminated any concern for memory limits with large architectural projects.” Tom
“The new rendering gamma control coupled with floating-point color output gives me a degree of control and latitude in post-processing I couldn’t get with the old 8-bit renders. It’s like working with camera raw as opposed to JPEG.” Greg
“Amazing! Strata skipped at least 5 upgrades with this new release. It’s like a whole new program…tons of new features for every step of the workflow yet still familiar enough to make learning and using them easy and intuitive from the start.” Tracy
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