The entries for the latest challenge, "It's that time again", have been posted to the challenge page and your admin challenge voting page.

Even if you don't enter the challenges, please show your support for those that do by voting and letting them know how much you enjoy seeing their efforts.

View the entries for the May 2008 StrataCafe challenge

Strata is pleased to announce a new series of free seminars hosted by Chris Tyler.

Chris Tyler, 3D Illustrator and Animator
Chris Tyler is a Seattle, WA based illustrator and animator, with a focus on lush, realistic lighting and modeling in the advertising industry. Chris has given back to the design community by writing training materials, such as the "Art & Science of Strata 3D CX", teaching at the Red Rock Revival, and consistently helping out users on Strata Café with animated tutorials and walkthroughs on new application features.

Strata will host the online seminars every Tuesday at 11:00 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time from February 19th to March 18th. You can view the recorded version of the February 19th session, Modeling Like a Pro, here: http://www.envisiontelconnect.com/p62302387/

The February 26th seminar, Texture Creation, is happening right now! Visit the Winter Seminar page on Strata.com to learn how to get into the free seminar. View the 2008 Winter Seminar Series Page

With the Strata CX Suite 1.5 designers will be able to create powerful, multi-purpose 3D content like never before. This revolutionary fusion of the Strata CX Suite, plus the integration with Adobe® Photoshop CS3, means users can atake a massive step forward in the way they design rich content.


Strata Foto 3D 1.5 lets users capture existing real world items as 3D models by using a digital camera. Users can use Photoshop to load a series of masked pictures to Foto 3D and return a real-time 3D object to a 3D layer in Photoshop® CS3 Extended.

See what's been added to Strata Foto 3D 1.5


Strata 3D CX 5.5 allows users to model, render and animate 3D content. Users can also match 3D into a Photoshop® document, edit 3D models, render to layers in a Photoshop document, and much more.

See what's been added to Strata 3D CX 5.5


Strata Live 3D 1.5 gives you the power to put your work into real-time 3D to enhance websites, PowerPoint presentations, and PDF documents. It now works with 3D objects from Photoshop® CS3 Extended or 3D from all major 3D applications.

See what's been added to Strata Live 3D 1.5

Learn more about the entire Strata CX Suite

In marketing Strata's products, we've always found that it's much more compelling to show a real world project done by one of our users than it is to talk esoterically about the product's feature set. You use our products to create amazing imagery and prove how powerful the applications are every day. So it seems Strata should turn the spotlight on your efforts far more frequently than we do, plus it would help you get the recognition and exposure you deserve for your great work.

Strata would like to put money behind that sentiment. We would like you to summarize and showcase the jobs you're most proud of, with a clear focus on your workflow. While magicians can appreciate the occasional disappearing rabbit, they mostly want to know where it went. We're very interested in projects that utilize Strata's products in conjunction with Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and other graphics applications. While it's fun to watch Rinaldo bounce a soccer ball on his head, you don't know how good a player he is until you see him working with the entire team.

If you'd like to make a little extra money off the jobs you've already completed, please visit our Case Study Submission Form and tell/show us a little bit about the jobs you're most proud of. It's hard to put a dollar figure on case studies, as the length and quality of the final piece could vary so wildly, Strata will compensate you for your efforts, and you will be featured on the Strata website and regular email bulletins (which are distributed to hundreds of thousands of users and people generally interested in 3D).

And remember, not all jobs have to be Lord of the Rings. Most graphics professionals are working in exhibit design, or product design or architectural rendering, or thousands of other vertical industries that aren't going to produce blockbuster, mainstream projects. We want to hear about them all. We want to showcase the "down to earth" projects, the stuff that people just like you are tasked to complete on a regular basis.

So please, head over to our Case Study Submission Form and let us know what you've been working on.

Wow, it seems like there's a lot to talk about since the last time I posted here.

As many of you know, Strata has released the Photoshop CS3 Extended plug-ins we've been talking about for some time. If you haven't had time to check them out, they really are a small miracle.

Strata Design 3D[in] is a slightly pared down version of CX 5.1, tied directly to Photoshop CS3 through their new plug-in SDK. If you think about how you use 3D on a regular basis, a lot of the work you do in CX is destined for Photoshop anyway. At a very basic level, this allows you to render directly from Strata 3D to Photoshop. Bye bye, "untitled_render_47.pct", I'll try not to miss you. But there's so much there that's hard to categorize. Being able to pass a vanishing point grid from Photoshop to Design 3D[in] takes a lot of the guess work out of photo-matching. So much so, that it makes the experience pleasant and somewhat addictive. "Of course I own a Porsche, see, here's a shot of it in my driveway" =). I know, I'm evil.

New support for the Collada file format, which is getting a lot of attention these days, means that models can be transferred directly between Strata and Photoshop CS3 Extended. It's hard to quantify how much time that's going to save you (and it is) but it's harder to quantify just what a workflow changer this all is. Photoshop CS3 and Design 3D[in] are so intertwined now that the possibilities really are endless.

Foto 3D[in] works a lot like it does on it's own, but now works directly from a layered Photoshop file, and returns a model back to Photoshop. Live 3D[in] has been pared down somewhat, with the removal of animation and scripting, but there's something pretty shocking about being able to export a Live 3D PDF or Live 3D web page directly from Photoshop. It's a lot more firepower than I'm used to seeing in Photoshop, and puts very sophisticated tools into the hands of designers without requiring a lot of training. You could easily download models from Google's 3D warehouse and export a real-time 3D webpage 10 minutes after you install the apps, with no prior 3D experience. That's saying something.

I think we have a pretty good 3D[in] section up on Strata.com, with a lot of information on what to expect and how it all works: check out the 3D[in] page on Strata.com

Our feeling is that simply saying that there are a lot of possibilities isn't going to cut it. We have to show you what some of those possibilities are. To that end, we've got two Photoshop pros on board: Dave Cross, Director of Education for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), regular host of PhotoshopTV.com and contributor to PhotoshopUser; and Colin Smith, owner of PhotoshopCafe, published author of several Photoshop training DVDs and Photoshop-related books. They've been posting some excellent video tutorials to 3dlayer.com, with more to come: check out 3Dlayer.com for 3D[in] tutorial videos.

And finally, we've announced a new set of free Adobe Connect seminars. As many of you know, the last set of seminars was a resounding success. The utility of Adobe's online conference tools cannot be overstated. Seeing live video and audio from the Presenters machine, and being able to pose live questions while the conference is in progress is sublime. Short of teleporting these guys into your home to give you personal training, this really is the best alternative. Colin, Dave, and the crew here at Strata will be walking you through the 3D[in] plug-ins, and try to highlight what some of the possibilities are. Hey, it's free and educational, what's not to love? Visit the 3D Power Summer Seminar page to see what's being presented and when, and sign up for email reminders.

I'm always aware of my precarious position here, balancing somewhere between community and marketing. It makes my job so much easier when Strata is producing tools that really do cater to the user. I'm happy and excited about these products, and I think you will be too.

Now that Strata 3D CX 5.1 has made the transition to a Universal binary, Foto 3D has been created for the Mac, and Live 3D PDF is ready for Mac and Windows, the Strata CX Suite is complete!

Capture, design and deliver 3D content integrated with your favorite Adobe apps.

The Strata CX Suite is designed to transition 2D designers to 3D in record time. Capture 3D objects with textures in Foto 3D using your digital camera. Publish your interactive, real-time 3D models to the web or PDFs with Live 3D. Render photorealistic images and animations with Strata 3D CX 5, our flagship 3D application.

No other 3D Suite gives you this kind of flexibility or ease of use at this price.

Included with every full Strata CX Suite:

The Art & Science of Strata 3D CX, by Chris Tyler A $79.95 Value! - This guide features material for both beginners and advanced users in a PDF perfect for searching while you work, or having printed for easy reading. This edition contains almost 300 mb worth of new video tutorials! Learn more...

Strata Live 3D PDF A $99 Value! - Now it is easy to take any PDF and quickly add a real-time 3D object to it. Strata Live 3D PDF includes all the power to incorporate 3D files into PDFs directly from Strata 3D CX, Strata Live 3D, XMM files, or even other PDFs! Learn more...

Learn more about the Strata CX Suite

Visit the Strata Store to buy the Strata CX Suite now