Get the Free Trial
Thomas Turbografique Østergaard
What’s Included in Your Free Trial
Unlock the full professional power of Design 3D CX with our 15-day free trial – available for both Mac & PC. Access all core tools for modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering, animation, and more. You’ll also get access to built-in tutorial videos & templates that make it easy to dive in – even if you’re new to 3D.
Why try Design 3D?
Strata Design 3D is the easiest way to get started in 3D. Perfect for illustrators, product/package designers, display designers, and other creatives ready to explore 3D. Design 3D is familiar to Adobe tools like Illustrator and Photoshop. Graphic design professionals can easily create & visualize their work in 3D with different lighting, angles, scenes, etc. This makes Design 3D an easy 3D modeling software.
Fundamentals Video: User Interface
Fundamentals Video: Windows & Views
Nico de Boer
Why try Design 3D?
Strata Design 3D is the easiest way to get started in 3D. Perfect for illustrators, product/package designers, display designers, and other creatives ready to explore 3D. Design 3D is familiar to Adobe tools like Illustrator and Photoshop. Graphic design professionals can easily create & visualize their work in 3D with different lighting, angles, scenes, etc. This makes Design 3D an easy 3D modeling software.
Fundamentals Video: User Interface
Fundamentals Video: Windows & Views
Kip Kubisz
How to Get Started
Fill out the short form for your 15-day free trial then you’ll receive your download link & license key via email. Next, you’ll install on your computer (Mac or PC) and begin with the Getting Started tutorial and you’ll see how fast you can start bringing your ideas to 3D.
How to Get Started
Fill out the short form for your 15-day free trial then you’ll receive your download link & license key via email. Next, you’ll install on your computer (Mac or PC) and begin with the Getting Started tutorial and you’ll see how fast you can start bringing your ideas to 3D.
Apply Surface Textures with Precision
In the world of 3D, texturing may just be the most important component in creating convincing final renderings. Once you have designed your 3D model, Strata Design 3D CX gives you powerful tools to create, apply and manipulate surface textures with beautifully accurate results.
Chris Tyler
Apply Surface Textures with Precision
In the world of 3D, texturing may just be the most important component in creating convincing final renderings. Once you have designed your 3D model, Strata Design 3D CX gives you powerful tools to create, apply and manipulate surface textures with beautifully accurate results.
Sophisticated Lighting, Backgrounds & Cameras
Scene composition is a critical step in producing stunning images. Design 3D CX makes it easier to control the environment than any photography studio you could imagine. Position your 3D objects and then place lights, reflection panels, cameras, backgrounds, environments, reflection elements and more to produce a superior final render or animation for your design project.
Sophisticated Lighting, Backgrounds & Cameras
Scene composition is a critical step in producing stunning images. Design 3D CX makes it easier to control the environment than any photography studio you could imagine. Position your 3D objects and then place lights, reflection panels, cameras, backgrounds, environments, reflection elements and more to produce a superior final render or animation for your design project.
Photo-Real Images & Animations at Blazing Speeds
Strata is well known for its extraordinary rendering technology. Whether you’re after photo-realistic results or some other style for your static or motion graphics, you will find the rendering options to suit your needs and output the results using one of the fastest rendering engines in the industry. After all, it’s all about the final results and Design 3D delivers.
Photo-Real Images & Animations at Blazing Speeds
Strata is well known for its extraordinary rendering technology. Whether you’re after photo-realistic results or some other style for your static or motion graphics, you will find the rendering options to suit your needs and output the results using one of the fastest rendering engines in the industry. After all, it’s all about the final results and Design 3D delivers.
Intel® Embree Powers Rendering
Design 3D CX includes the Embree raycasting technology by Intel to improve rendering speed up to 800%. Added to the Stage Model feature, Design 3D CX makes it easy to create professional quality images. Speed and efficiency rolled into one.
Strata is a proud Intel Software Partner. Working directly with Intel engineers, and utilizing Intel technology like Embree, Strata is committed to maximizing your experience in 3D, VR and AR
Case Study: A Market Bull’s Eye For Kraft
When Kraft’s® Bull’s-Eye® BBQ Sauce marketing team undertook an extensive review of the BBQ category – and the BBQ consumer – they saw an opportunity that resulted in a killer new sauce. With superior taste and more authentic BBQ flavor, the team at Kraft went on to develop a new brand position to go with the new recipe. This required new packaging to bring all these elements together – this included the bottle, label and the shipping box that doubles as a point-of-purchase pallet display.
Featured Artist: Blair Buttke, Graphic Designer / Art Director
Blair Buttke is a senior graphic designer/art director from Arizona who has focused on package/product design for over 30 years. Blair has created retail packaging and brand identities for global, national and regional consumer products. He has designed and developed packaging and point of purchase for such companies as; Dial/Henkel, Dole, Conagra, Armour Star, H.E.B. and Inventure foods. “The magical twenty-four inches between the shopping cart and the shelf.”
Case Study: Finding Just the Right Fit for Gatorade
Gatorade was looking for something more. Through extensive market & formulation research, they realized that there was an opportunity for a product and brand targeting women with an active lifestyle.
Norberto Calderon and his team at design firm Five Seconds were tasked with the challenge to develop a creative concept fitting for the product name – Fitline.
Detailed Feature List
- 2D/3D Text
- 2D Drawing Tools (rectangles, ellipsis, etc.)
- 3D Primitives (cubes, spheres, etc.)
- Spline Curves (Bezier lines/regions)
- Polyspline SDS (subdivision surfaces)
- Meld MetaSurfaces
- Bezier Surfaces
- Extrude
- Lathe
- Boolean
- Skin
- Polygonal Modeling
- Path Extrude
- Construction Objects
- Shy Objects
- Shape Instancing
- Replicate / Duplicate
- Object Manipulation
- Drop a Curve
- Hide Objects
- Fillet
- Thickness
- Mirror
- Hull Surface
- Deformation Lattice
- Grids – World, Custom & View
- Guides – Custom and Default
- Smooth Mesh
- Decimation
- Segment Edge Command
- Show Face Normals
- Point Snap
- Familiar Interface
- Split Views
- Camera View
- Multi-Views
- Depth Cueing
- Image/Movie Backdrop
- Spotlight Views
- OpenGL
- LiveRay
- Ground Plane
- Air Refraction
- Visible Backgrounds
- Reflective Backgrounds
- Atmosphere
- Gravity
- Wind
- Point Lights
- Spot Lights
- Global Lights
- Glowing Surfaces
- Lightdome HDRI
- Intensity
- Host Object
- Soft Edges
- Ambient Light
- Gels
- Animatable Lights
- Overflow Handling
- Spotlight Window View
- Effects Applied to Light
- Direct Manipulation Interface
- HDR Light Studio Integration (optional)
- Lens Flares
- Particle Collision Detection
- Script FX
- Auras
- Caustics
- Fountain Effects
- Global Gravity Control
- Global Wind Force Control
- Global Air Control
- Fire & Smoke
- Hair
- Hotspots
- Pixie Dust
- U3D (in)
- Collada (in/out)
- Illustrator/EPS (in)
- Photoshop PSD (in/out)
- STL (in/out)
- XMM (out)
- Quicktime (in/out)
- PICT (in/out)
- Quicktime VR (out)
- TGA (in/out)
- TIFF (in/out)
- BMP (in/out)
- JPEG (in/out)
- 3DS (in)
- PDF (in)
- DXF (in/out)
- AVI (in/out)
- MiniCAD (in)
- Amapi (in/out)
- OBJ (in/out)
- VRML 1 & 2 (in/out)
- Flash SWF (out)
- True Type Fonts (in)
- Postscript Type Fonts (in)
- OpenGL
- Toon
- LiveRay
- Photons
- Raytracing
- Raydiosity
- Render to Layers
- Flat Shaded
- Hidden Line
- Outline
- Pointcloud
- Smooth Shaded
- Wireframe
- Scanline
- Transparency
- Alpha Channel
- Anti-Aliasing
- Oversampling
- Glow
- Reflectivity
- Blurry Transparency and Reflectivity
- Instance Rendering
- Anti-Matter Effect
- Field Rendering
- Atmospheric Effects
- Shadows
- MIP Mapping
- Soft Shadows
- Stereoscopic
- Custom Environments
- Specular Highlights
- Suspend Rendering
- Marquee Select Rendering
- Scripting
- Hierarchial
- Visible Paths
- Everything Time Variable
- Animation Preview
- Shatter
- Explode
- Jiggle
- Convert to Path Event-Based
- Cycle Back & Forth
- Key Frames
- Velocity Graphs
- Life Checkbox
- Align to Path
- IK (Inverse Kinematics)
- FK (Forward Kinematics)
- TCB, Spline & Natural Paths
- Proportional Event Scaling
- Native UV Mapping
- Scripting
- Hierarchical
- Visible Paths
- Photoshop Linking
- Illustrator Linking
- Displacement
- Box Wrapper
- Normal Maps
- Mist
- Image Textures
- Corrosion
- Starfield
- Rainbow Reflection
- Mock Tile
- Shadow Catcher
- Ripples
- Solid Brick
- Silk
- Solid Candy
- Solid Concrete
- Solid Marble
- Solid Moonscape
- Solid Rock
- Solid Stone
- Solid Terrain
- Solid Wood
- Wildlife
- Mock Plank
- Surface, Solid & Volume
- Layer & Mix
- Fog
- Haze
- Clouds
- Burn UV
- New Conform to Mesh option; using Least Squares Conformal Maps technology
- LSCM unwrap (Conform, Conform Connected) Unwrap entire objects, single UV island or just selected polygons
- Pin UVs (Toggle pinned vertices on or off)
- Fit (to UV, U or V)
- Fit Each (to UV, U or V)
- Rotate Connected (to Grid, U or V)
- Move (to U, V; Center to U, V)
- Select Perimeter
- Select Pinned UVs
- UV Edge Seam Assignment
- Select UV Seam Edge
- LiveRay Texture Preview: see all texture effects with interactive rendering directly in the modeling view
- Scripting
- Hierarchial
- Visible Paths
- Motion Blur
- Depth of Field
- Boom
- Pan
- Dolly
- Arc
- Pitch
- Yaw
- Roll
- Host Object
- Target Object
- Focal Distance
- View Angle
- Stereoscopic Camera
- Panorama Camera
- Cubic Camera
- Fisheye Camera
- Spherical Camera
- VR 360 Stereo Camera
- Shutter Speed
- Live Window Updates
- LiveRay Scene Preview
With Lua you can script shaders and textures to: access the rendering pipeline; lens scripting for the creation of custom lenses, effects and warps; Filter FX which allows you to write custom Lua scripts to apply filters based on an object’s surface normal, direction, lighting, volume, and by pixel color, depth, transparency, layer within the psd file – and much, much more. In fact, Design 3D comes with a whole series of special effect shaders created using Lua. These “Script FX” let you do things like bounce, vibrate, alter acceleration and more. Each Script FX gives access to the full Lua source code, so you can edit them if you like.
Additional features are implemented directly in Lua throughout Design 3D such as Match Motion and Instance Node Control. If you’re somebody who’s interested in scripting, Lua gives you the opportunity to extend Design 3D in a variety of important ways.
Mac System Requirements
- OS: Mac OS X 10.10 through Mojave (10.14). (macOS Catalina not yet supported)
- Memory: 8 GB of RAM (more is highly recommended)
- Hard Disk Space: 5 GB of available hard-disk space for install (additional 2 GB for HDRLS if bundled)
- Display: 1024 × 768 capable display
Windows System Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
- 64-bit (x64) processor
- Memory: 8 GB of RAM (more is highly recommended)
- Hard Disk Space: 5 GB of available hard-disk space for install
- Display: 1152 × 864 capable display (more recommended)
- 3D graphics card with latest driver updates (cards with more VRAM typically work better)
Free Trial Options:
Design 3D CX 8 – Purchase Options:
All purchases include a 30-day money-back guarantee. Coupon codes can be applied prior to checkout.
Subscriptions include Strata 3D University, Premium Support and continuous upgrades.
Learn Design 3D CX Online at Strata 3D University
Learning 3D doesn’t have to be difficult. Especially with Strata’s online training library at your fingertips, covering every aspect of Strata Design 3D CX and the entire 3D design workflow. Strata 3D University makes it simple to find your subject of interest and quickly get up to speed with short, informative videos created by professional 3D designers. Hundreds of hours of available video tutorials. You’ll find that Design 3D is intuitive and easy to learn for beginners.
Free with subscription purchases, available to all other users on separate purchase.
