A fully featured, 3-D modeling application has come to Apple’s iPad tablet computer that is said to be powerful enough for professionals but simple enough for beginning modelers: Verto Studio 3D.
Michael L. Farrell, a software developer, designed the new iPad-only program. The application uses OBJ format files and has controls for panning, moving, rotating, scaling and selecting objects, as well as material properties and other controls such as real-time Gouraud shading, dynamic lighting, vertex editing, multiple camera angles and an auto mode for manipulating every object in a scene simultaneously.
The program allows the importation of wire-mesh models or original creation and can handle lighting and texture mapping using the normal iPad interface. Compared to desktop 3-D program with dozens of menu options, Verto Studio uses 15 buttons, enabling users to set a mode and then work with the object directly using taps, pinches or swipes to control the manipulations. A second button opens a corresponding window for each tool for more precise control using a virtual keyboard without blocking the view of what is being worked on.
The program also features an extensive undo, six standard views plus a variable view in camera view, four types of lighting (diffuse, highlight, emitted and ambient) and more precise controls over lighting type, position, direction and intensity. There is also the capability to create additional objects and a terrain generator.
