Artlantis Studio

Despite its rich functionality and rendering capabilities, a CAD program doesn't have too much to offer when it comes with presenting a building or other drawn objects as realistically as possible. You could turn the camera to a certain angle, throw in a few textures and lights, but that's about it. Artlantis Studio can impress even the most demanding customer with its enhanced rendering features. The software can take mostly any CAD project and turn it into a high quality rendering or animation. It can generate a realistic-looking view of individual rooms and objects to an entire house.

The software comes in two versions. Besides Artlantis Studio, which excels at creating animations and panoramas, you can also find Artlantis Render, which is aimed at creating still images. The program is free to try for a limited period of time, but without any serious restrictions. The setup package is roughly half a GB and it may take several minutes to complete the installation process. Also, the program's hardware requirements are a bit demanding, so you can't run it on low-end computers.

The first thing that should be clear is that Artlantis Studio is not a CAD program, so you can't use it to draw 2D or 3D models from the ground up. Instead, you can import existing CAD projects and give them a high quality look. Artlantis Studio can seamlessly interact with project files from 3DS Max, ArchiCAD, SketchUp and other CAD programs.

Normally, when you hear about CAD projects, you would expect an overloaded interface and countless menus to go through, but this is not the case with Artlantis Studio. Its user interface is clean and efficient and it should not take long to learn its controls. Available projects are displayed on a home screen and you only need to click one to load it.

Once a project is loaded, its rendering will be displayed in the program's main editing area, where you can zoom, pan and travel in the rendering itself, in real time. Furthermore, you can make numerous visual tweaks, with the available options, located on several ribbon menus and on a tool pane, on the left side of the interface. The software allows you to switch between different sky types for the background, insert various objects, plants and 3D people. To give the rendering a realistic look you can set up artificial lights and lens flares, set an ISO rating, add textures and much more. You can also save one or more perspectives and switch between them instantly.

When it comes to adjusting the scene's light, the program is not limited to a few sliders. You can make all sorts of adjustments, like modifying the sun's intensity, direction and elevation, increasing or decreasing the shadow sharpness and you can even adjust a pollution level. Also, the program can automatically adjust the natural light, based on a user-defined time and date and on a selected city or other geographic positioning information. In other words, you can show a house and its rooms in any imaginable conditions.