VIDI's Presenter 3D Lite received a Five Mice rating in a review published in the June issue of MacUser UK. The article states that, Presenter 3D Lite is functionally identical to its full-blown version. The author says that, " the Modeler module is one of the best 3D generating packages around, with support for Digital Clay, the ability to sculpt meshes and create organic forms." and that, " Modeler's spline tools are very Illustrator-like and easy to learn." He continues by saying that, "Its such an advanced modeling environment that many Electric Image users are turning to it."

Regarding the Presenter module, he says that, "It's based on a traditional timeline set-up, but is superbly usable and intuitive", that "It is the only Mac package to fully integrate sound by placing virtual microphones in the scene", and that "On the rendering side, there's a fully features raytracer and Phong shader which is almost equal to Electric Image in terms of speed."

In closing he says that, "It's something of a novelty to see a program like Presenter 3D Lite, which offers the complete features of its professional version, but at a 90% discount."

Based on his reputation as the premier aerospace artist and designer in the field of Strategic Visualization for NASA, Popular Science commissioned Bob Sauls to design a entire series of cover and article art for Popular covering the future of aerospace products and technology. Already well known for his visuals and animated simulations of the shuttle docking with the Russian space station and sequences depicting future voyages to set up colonies on the moon and Mars, Bob has expanded his visualization horizons to other areas of aerospace design. See the Popular Science review for examples of the cover art illustrating future designs for daylight stealth fighter plane, miniature spy planes, passenger spacecraft, and new helicopter technology.

Bob Sauls has already had a significant impact on the field of Aerospace Design and Space Visualization. Designed and animated with VIDI's Modeler and Presenter 3D, Bob's shuttle docking, moon exploration, and Mars exploration visuals and animated simulations have appeared on national news shows and the Discovery Channel. As reviewed in the previous article, he advanced his visualization horizons to other fields of aerospace design and the print media. His reputation and expertise in space visualization brought him to the attention of Dreamworks. They were in need for an asteroid sequence for the movie Deep Impact and chose Bob to create a moving asteroid field for the movie.

In response to an increased download activity of the demo version of Presenter 3D and requests for more and better online documentation, VIDI developed the tutorials content that can be found on the Tutorials area on the web. Thanks to tutorial contributions from Peter Ratner, we have been able to put an online tutorial package together that provides you with a more effective and productive evaluation experience. It covers the basic 3D modeling tools, camera and light operation, basic animation, and advanced Behavioral Kinematics character, facial, and lip sync animation. If you have questions, would like to see what others are saying, or have suggestions for improving the tutorials or other aspects of the website be sure to sign on to the VIDI-LIST and let us know.

By providing an automatic link to the AltaVista Translation Service, you can view the text on VIDI's web site in either French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish. The option to do the translation is located at the bottom of the VIDI home page. To change the text to French, just click on the Translate button. This brings up the AltaVista dialog and you click on the Translate button. To change the language, click and hold on the French option, drag to your language choice, release, and click on the Translate button.