Cartography Shop

Type of Program: 3D Modeler
Supported Platforms: Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP
Authors Name: Joshua Klint
Version: 2.07
Price: $40
Installed Size: 1.9MB (12MB using plugins)

Download/Homepage

Cartography Shop is an application that you use for serious 3D modeling. If you develop games you’ll soon learn that if you want to create the next generation 3D game, you’ll need
something to create your "world" in. Cartography Shop is fairly easy to use once you become familiar with the various views (standard in most programs like this). By using
Cartography Shop you’ll soon be on your way to making your very own 3D world. Walk around it in, setup all types of Entities, Lights, and so on.

It would be best here to simply list the Pros and Cons of Cartography Shop:

PROS:
Cartography Shop is easy to use. Although it is simple, you can build many types of worlds using many types of geometry. Once you have it built you can texture it to your liking. Within the world you create you can place lights and set the light distance and color. Cartography Shop can be used to build "Doom" like or "Quake" like worlds. So in this sense, anything is possible. You can design personal plugins to be used or use many of the ones currently available. Cartography Shop allows you to save your worlds in the DirectX format (.X using a plugin) for use into 3D game engines which in itself is a must for game developers. Overall Cartography Shop was easy to get up and running fairly fast. The program is easy to use in its IDE and as stated, being able to save in the .X format may be a strong point for some types of developers. Other plugins are for BSP, CSG, save a PAK file, save collision boxes and save an entity list.

CONS:
The biggest drawback I found while using Cartography Shop was the lack of being able to place more than 20 images (textures) in the Texture Directory. If you put more than 20 in that Directory it errored out and closed. There is little Help or Examples to work with so if you’re new to this you may be forced to learn it all on your own. Email support lacks a great deal as well. Although there is a forum, it seems to be used very little and finding it was more than displeasure. One positive note to mention here is the fact that Cartography Shop is to be upgraded soon. With this upgrade will come many more enhancements as well as many bug fixes so keep an eye out for the new and improved Cartography Shop.

Performance
User Friendly
Cost
Ease of Installation
Support
Reviewed by Robert Hall
Purchases can be made online from their Web site.

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