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PolyTrans addresses a lot of 3D file translation problems that affect game developers. Anyone who has ever had to deal with file translation issues will benefit from this package. For this review, I tested PolyTrans release 2.2 on an HP Kayak XU-400 with a Matrox Millennium II 8MB board and an IBM Intellistation M Pro 6889 with Intergraph Intense3D Pro3400 graphics adapter. The package was very stable, and I never experienced any crashes. Clearly, Okino has spent countless hours tuning and refining this software package. A fast CPU will certainly help on large batch translations, but memory wasn't so much of a concern, as the data storage algorithms seem to be very memory-efficient. The only problem I ran into was with display flickering during animation playback. Okino customer support was quick to point out that animation playback works best in Shaded mode using hardware-accelerated OpenGL.
Real-time game developers including technical directors, technically minded 3D animators, and tools programmers will all appreciate PolyTrans's support for most standard professional 3D packages, along with MultiGen's OpenFlight, Nichimen's Game Exchange, and Cinegraphics's UView UV plug-in for LightWave. PolyTrans's OpenGL C code, DirectX, and VRML 1.0 and 2.0 export capabilities can all come in handy for quick prototyping of in-house tools or game engines. These capabilities will be of most interest to producers looking to save their teams some work by buying an off-theshelf package instead of writing their own conversion utility.
Anyone with a minimum of exposure to 3D software will feel right at home with this package. The standard orthogonal and perspective views are available with a choice of bounding box, wireframe, or shaded geometry displayed. The interface is straightforward and fairly simple, considering the wealth of choices facing the user....