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Flashy 3D Text, Graphics at an Affordable Price

Creating cool graphics and animations is easy with Ulead Cool 3D.

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Special Effects

I tested a shipping version of Cool 3D on a 500-MHz Pentium III with 128MB of RAM, and I found it refreshingly easy to produce a variety of 3D text and graphics. For example, I used the one-click Object Toolbar to select "Insert Text," typed a title in the dialog box, clicked OK, and--voila!--Cool 3D instantly rendered the 3D text in the work space. From there, I could easily manipulate the text's position and orientation by simply moving my mouse. Changing the text's scale, color, texture, bevel, and lighting were also child's play.

Using the EasyPalette's drag-and-drop feature, I found it a breeze to add colorful preset backgrounds, graphic objects, and special effects to further embellish the image. For instance, Cool 3D's new Blast effect takes pieces of text or objects, explodes them, and then transforms those pieces into a different text or object--a great way to add a dynamic touch to a Web banner.

Although some Cool 3D features, such as the new vector-based drawing tools, require some time and effort to learn, the package includes an excellent printed guide, ample help screens, and several demos to help you get started. (To run Cool 3D, you'll need to be running Microsoft Windows 95 OSR2 or higher, or Windows 2000--this program does not work with Windows NT.)

In addition to the $80 boxed version of Cool 3D, a $59.95 downloadable (13MB) version and a free 15-day trial version (fully functional) are also available from the Ulead Web site. If you're looking for an easy way to improve your documents, on-screen presentations, or Web site content with striking 3D text and graphics, Cool 3D is a viable, likeable, and--best of all--low-cost option.

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