First announced in July when the Windows versions shipped, Swift 3D 4.0 and Swift 3D Xpress for Mac OS X were released on Wednesday evening, a month later than developer Electric Rain Inc. originally expected to ship them. Swift 3D Xpress is a Macromedia Flash MX 2004 plug-in that converts 2D text and artwork into 3D animations, with the added ability to pull vector objects off the Flash stage and customize them with the plug-in before rendering.
Swift 3D 4.0 is a separate application that provides an environment for creating vector- and raster-based 3D animations for export to Flash and other popular formats. The upgrade adds a better modeling environment, the ability to use Bezier curves with control handles to more precisely designate objects’ paths, galleries of pre-built models, animations and other items that can be dragged and dropped into the workspace, performance enhancements and more.
Swift 3D Xpress is US$129 and Swift 3D 4.0 is $189, with upgrades from version 3.x running $99. Anyone who purchases Swift 3D 3.x within a month will save $10 off the upgrade and receive a free copy of Swift 3D Xpress. Both applications’ system requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2, a 400MHz processor (1GHz recommended), 128MB RAM (512MB recommended) and 25MB hard drive space.