There was once a time when I was a gung-ho computer user. I bought many books (at one point, I even belonged to some kind of Macintosh book club), I went to many seminars, and I constantly upgraded all my apps. But now, times are different. I buy books only for the programs I use incessantly, I only attend seminars when I feel like having lunch on the company ("Master 3D animation in three hours!" Right.), and I'm no longer compelled to update software just because the publisher says I should. Will it really hurt me to skip a version or two of Illustrator? No.

Every now and again, however, updates are worth it. I'm not talking about free patches, I mean full, give-us-more-money upgrades. They can fix bugs and other annoyances, improve the interface, offer valuable new features, and so on. Especially with young programs, that new upgrade can be very important. After releasing a new program, developers get user feedback, come up with more ideas, and have more time to tinker around. Upgrades can then become a wonderful thing for users, and such is the case with Electric Rain's Swift 3D version 2.0.

Swift 3D V2 comes in four possible formats; a 3ds Max plug-in, a LightWave 3D plug-in, a Softimage XSI plug-in, and as a stand-alone version, all of which allow you to create and import 3D images and animations for use with Flash. This review will focus solely on the stand-alone app.

Mac users will at first be elated to notice the manual is now Mac friendly. With Swift 3D V1, the program having been freshly ported from the PC, we had to work our way through the PC commands. Not difficult, of course, but annoying.

"The feature list of Swift 3D V2 is so long, this is more like launching a brand new product that just offering a mere upgrade," claimed Mike Soucie Electric Rain, Inc. president, and he's probably right. The new Swift 3D V2 modeling features include:

• Extrusion and Lathe Editors
• PostScript font support
• Targeted cameras and lights
• Automated time line scaling
• Non-uniform scaling of objects
• Numerical positioning of objects
• Ability to animate materials

Most of these features are readily apparent on the top menu bar where, in version one, only the Scene Editor sat. The Extrusion Editor allows you to quickly create 2D paths (similar to that of Illustrator or Freehand) that automatically turn into 3D objects when you move to the Scene Editor.

The Lathe Editor draws simple outlines that "spun," as with a wood shop lathe, into 3D shapes when also moved to the Scene Editor. The Extrusion and Lathe Editors can be combined to create complex shapes. This is a major advancement beyond the power of Swift 3D V1, which only allowed for the creation of simple shapes such as spheres and cones.

The Preview and Export Editor takes advantage of the new, second-generation technology vector rendering engine RAVIX™ II, which is claimed to offer the fastest and most versatile 3D-to-vector conversion available. It's performance in Swift 3D V2 certainly lends credence to this claim; it's much faster than V1. You can now preview every frame before the animation is exported, and even make changes before writing a file.

Other new Swift 3D V2 rendering capabilities include:

• Two, four, and full color cartoon fills extend the list of shading options
• Shadow rendering allows for self, plane and object shadow casting
• Specular highlights that add realism to cartoon fills and gradients
• Line weight, color and detail settings for full control over wireframe output
• Up to 50 times faster rendering while handling 250,000+ polygon models

One of the elements I liked best about Swift 3D V1 was its ease of use. It allowed for quick and painless creation of 3D vector images for use on the web, making for a simple way to impress clients and web viewers. However, the ease of use also meant for a limited feature set. Swift 3D V2 heavily expands upon the program's power, but doesn't bring in too much of a learning curve. The new features are natural progressions of the previous tools, and the improved speed means you can create more complicated images without taking too much longer to render them.

Swift 3D V2 has two things going for it. First, it's pretty much the only option for Mac users to create 3D vector images for Flash. Second, it's a tremendous program. If you aren't yet using it, here's the perfect time to add it to your collection of graphics creation tools. Swift 3D V2 is $20 more than the previous version, but it's certainly worth it. Owners of Swift 3D V1 can upgrade for $80, and believe me, it's more than worth it as well. With it's new feature set, Swift 3D V2 almost is, as Electric Rain claims, a brand new product.

So, if you're like me and just don't feel like upgrading programs that often anymore, justify it by pretending Swift 3D V2 is a new program. It doesn't take much imagination, leaving all your creative resources for your Flash projects. Want to see one? Check out "No Guts, No Galaxy." Wild.

Bet he didn't learn how to do that in a three hour workshop.

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