PhotoVista 3D Objects

Rating:
Updated: 22 Apr 2001 at 5:00 GMT, by James Rigg [Panoguide]

This review refers to version 1.0

PhotoVista 3D Objects is the cheapest of all the Object movie software yet is quite probably the most feature rich of all of them. PV 3D Objects is available on its own or as part of PhotoVista Virtual Tour (which would probably be a fairer comparison with most of the other object movie apps which are designed to do panoramas and virtual tours as well as object movies).

The clear, simple interface makes PhotoVista 3D Objects fast and easy to use. You can create a straight forward one or multiple- row object movie in no time at all. But more importantly PV 3D Objects allows you to create a mask with which to edit out the background if you want to, and can automatically remove it by using a reference colour (i.e. a blue screen or green screen kind of trick), or by using a photo of the turntable without the object on it. You can of course manually edit the mask too.

If you failed to keep the camera steady, or if you had to move around the object, you can adjust each frame's position to eliminate the 'wobbling' effect caused by poor centering of the object in the frame.

So once you have successfully created a perfectly smooth object movie, you can then save it in a number of formats and with a lot of controls. You can re-size the output image if you like and specify the target application, such as if you intend to then use the object with Reality Studio or with PhotoVista Virtual Tour.

Unfortunately it is the output options which are my only criticism. It could easily be confusing to know what to choose and not all combinations of features are possible. You might have thought that a Zoom Object was a single standard and that was that. Oh no. Unfortunately there are inconsistencies between the plugin viewer and the various Java viewers, with the result the output interface of PV 3D Objects is a bit unwieldy.

Although it is not really surprising that QuickTime is not supported given ISeeMedia has its own ImageWorlds VRML based viewer and format, this would be nice as an alternative. Having said that, if you have access to a Mac, you could use Apple's free QTVRMakeObject to convert the output image from PV 3D Objects to a QuickTime object, but you would have to cut the image into its constituent frames again first.

PhotoVista 3D objects provides great functionality and all at a great price too. Providing you don't need QuickTime, you should look for this when creating object movies.

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