Corel MotionStudio 3D review

1 / 3

It takes a fair amount of skill and determination to get into 3D animation. We’re used to seeing animations with impossibly high production values on TV and at the cinema, and the effort required to produce even the simplest animations can leave home users feeling deflated.

As such, Corel’s announcement of a brand new 3D animation package took us by surprise. However, a bit of digging revealed that this is essentially a repackaged version of Ulead Cool 3D – a program that was last updated in 2002. The interface looks modern with its charcoal colour scheme and tabbed panels, but functionally it’s largely identical. Most significantly, the render engine is showing its age – there are 3D lighting effects but no ray tracing for photorealistic shadows, refractions and reflections. Preview performance is massively improved, though, which is perhaps enough reason in itself for this software to find a new audience.

With its explosions and fire effects, there’s no risk of titles not catching an audience’s attention

The main focus is on text animations but the software also supports geometric shapes – either as 2D shapes with an extrusion or proper 3D shapes such as spheres, cones and pyramids. There’s a lathe mode that uses radial symmetry to turn 2D drawings into round objects such as vases and bottles. The package can also generate particle effects such as snow or smoke, and a collision detection option means particles can bounce off other objects. It’s an impressive line-up, but MotionStudio doesn’t make it easy to position objects accurately in 3D space. Building complex objects by combining simpler shapes is not this package’s forte.

Designing complex 3D models from scratch is a fun challenge but MotionStudio can’t produce photorealistic results

New users should head straight to the EasyPalette, which contains a generous assortment of 3D models, materials, textures, bevels, effects, distortions and animations. There’s a surprisingly deep level of manual editing available, too. For particle effects, the list of parameters include size, colour, rate, density, speed and gravity, with options to vary these values over the particles’ life and introduce a degree of randomness. Elsewhere, objects can be distorted using a wireframe mesh, made to explode or be engulfed in fire.

Objects are animated on the timeline that runs across the bottom of the screen, with separate lanes for each object’s position, orientation, texture and so on, plus various project-wide properties such as lights and camera. It generally works well, but would be even better with keyframe lane on/off switches, copy and paste commands and timeline zoom controls. It’s not possible to animate along a curved path, so animations tend to have a robotic look to them.

Export options include Flash SWF format, in this case saved as a series of bitmaps with transparency so animations can be laid over other content in video-editing software. These imported correctly into Premiere Elements but not Sony Vegas Movie Studio or Cyberlink PowerDirector, and SWF export is limited to 800×600-pixel frames. For wider support and higher resolutions while maintaining transparency, we had to resort to the lower-quality GIF format. Corel VideoStudio imported the native C3D files directly onto its timeline. Bitmap and video exports (without transparency) are available too, although defining an HD export resolution wasn’t easy.

Features such as the FreeForm distortion tool mean there’s plenty of editor power for those who want it

MotionStudio 3D has its merits, but at £80 it seems overpriced. Corel also adds download insurance to the shopping cart for an additional £12.40 – we don’t expect the ability to reinstall the software to be a chargeable extra. Still, there’s a lot of fun to be had here, especially for technically minded people who want to explore the advanced controls. If you’re tempted, give the 15-day trial a go to see if it’s for you.