Download/HomepageCartography Shop is an application that you use for serious 3D
modeling. I had the privilege of reviewing and testing this program when it was
version in 2.07 and now that it has had a major upgrade to this current version
I felt that you (as well as the program itself) may deserve another updated look
at it too. So if you develop games you'll soon learn that if you want to create
it in 3D you'll need something to create your "world" in. Cartography Shop is
easy to use and allows you to create royalty free 3D models.
If you are seriously into creating 3D applications and need a 3D Editor that you
can pass along to your users, there is a special version of Cartography Shop
that may be licensed that allows saving to your own special format and may be
distributed free of charge or included with your product
To begin using Cartography Shop all you really have to do is start placing
Objects in your scene, move and scale them and for finer control, adjust any of
the Vertices and you soon keep building upon your level until you have a
complete scene. Specking of Objects, you have all your normal Primitives (that
can also be Hollowed or Carved) along with Meshes (for higher detail of work).
After you've created any Object you can then assign any of them User Define
Entities as well as add lights to your scene!
Cartography Shop is fairly easy to use so almost anyone should be able to get up
and running in no time at all. With this newest version there have been numerous
changes, which most notably to me was the ease of creating Object, and
especially when using/applying textures! This was a great addition when the
author made it possible for more personal textures to be used within Cartography
Shop itself. For example, you can add texture to your Object, assign it some
values and it will then only allow light to pass through certain pixels to
create some nice, complex shadows!
PROS:
Cartography Shop keeps getting better and easier to use. And although it is
simple, you can still build various types of worlds using many types of
geometry. Within the world you create you can place lights and set the light
distance and color, adjust texture mapping, create some complex shadows, etc.
Cartography Shop can be used to build complete "Doom" like or "Quake" like
worlds. You can also design personal plugins to be used with Cartography Shop
with its SDK or just grab some currently available from the Web site.
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. There is now a better forum where you can get help if you need it,
or go there for some inspiration. Overall from my first review to this one I
found Cartography Shop much better so I added some stars under User Friendly and
Support.
CONS:
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 but you may find help around the Forums as
well.
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