Canoma...Can't Capture reality! (Metacreations Canoma)

Member Name: martial_loh

Product:	Metacreations Canoma
Date:	10/07/01 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good idea

Disadvantages: Badly executed

The concept of this product is very good. Take a photo of a building, stick some basic 3d shapes to make a general outline of the building, then "glue" the photo onto the shapes. Presto - a 3d model!

I tried a demo version of this product about a year ago. the tutorials were very easy to complete, and the results were pretty good. So when I got a 30 day working trial sent to me, I was contemplating purchasing the product.. Its a good thing I tried the program out on some of my own photos...
For one thing I realised that the user interface is over-simple. There is a real lack of detail.
The shapes you create are positioned on various layers of 3d space, and you can't tell exactly where the points of a cube have been placed. This results in malformed buildings and things floating in the middle of the skyline....
I know that if I wanted to get a good representation I should have used 3D studio Viz, but I was only after a simple representation of a building!! And even that was quite difficult to get to grips with.
Metacreations is reknowned for their very visual-styled applications, but I just don't like em. Their simple-approach leaves a lot to be desired for. 3D programs are all about options, options, options. There are many perfectionists who like to tweak settings to the exact decimal place.... and this program will definently not appeal to them!

I applaud metacreations on this novel idea, but I hope someone else will relaunch the title with some better options and a better user interface...

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