I need to make a 3D ball-shape with hard edges that, when viewed from the front, would look like an octagon. Illustrator can’t do it with its basic 3D tools, Photoshop doesn’t appear to be able to do it, and I don’t have Maya installed on this computer. So I went looking for an alternative.
Advertisements in various Adobe-related magazines praise 
Strata 3D CX as if its the messiah of 3D programs. The price is certainly a lot nicer than that of the ‘competition’ ( 3DS Max, Maxon’s Cinema 4D, Maya) but is it as good?
The short answer is no. The long one isn’t a whole lot longer.
Where Max, Cinema and Maya at least have the basic tools function in a more or less intuitive fashion, in Strata 3D CX 5.5 even moving a simple polygon around is near impossible. The tools don’t function as expected, and it looks as if you’re messing about in a Windows 95 program.
Thank god they offered a trial, because even though it is one of the cheapest “professional” 3D programs I’ve found, I can’t see it being worth the $695 they want for it.
Don’t let Cinema 4D’s ‘low’ price fool you though. The big players (3DS Max and Maya) come with features Cinema doesn’t have by default. To get the same features (such as hair, advanced rendering, toon rendering, etc.) you need to purchase so-called modules which will end up costing you several thousands of US$ too.
For now I’ll continue my search for Maya-like software that won’t cost me thousands to begin with and then another grand every year just to upgrade to the latest buggy version.
