The shapes look stunning – very realistic and useful indeed. Will there be improvements on the book and magazine shapes as well? I read somebody asking you about hardback books – it makes sense to have a jacket around them, also magazines and reports that are stapled (or saddle stitched as we use in the industry). It makes sense as a lot of brochures, reports and company presentations still appear to be saddle stitched? All best! James

Just simply brilliant!

Can’t wait!

James, do you need a closed version of this shape? I’ll add it if I will have enough time at the end.

Dust jackets will appear on some books as well. But they will hide a very interesting effect that I’m about to show soon

Glenboid, thank you. I am doing my best to release it in September. Unfortunately it has only 30 days

Hi Vitaly
You mean the saddle stitched brochure/mag shape I suggested? Yep, a closed version would just do fine for the time being. It’s just that the 2 stipple wires need to be visible on the edge of the brochure – it is not a must? It’s only if it’s possible. I am sure you have a lot on your plate developing the new shapes and features. Good luck – we are eagerly awaiting the new release which, we all (MAC users) know, is going to be brilliant! Fantastic job! Truly genius!

Hi Vitali,
Have a look at this link for a book jacket. What do you think?

http://www.laurenceking.com/image/big-3d/jacket-71.png

James

Vitali, will you upload some more new shapes for us to see? Or must we now wait? I’m so eager to see this new release! Will the interior of the software box have a “side” in the “images” area that will allow us to apply content to the interior? I thought the box looked like an open cereal box and wondered if photos of such material could be used to realistically fill the box. Thanks, as always, for a great product!

James, yes you will see something like that in 2.13

Paul, right now I finish various parts of 2.13 and while I am doing that, I post the results here.

Yes, software boxes have “Inside” item on the “Images” page and you can change it’s color or even put some image, but it will appear on all sides of interior. I don’t think that it is a good idea to “fake” inside items by drawing them on the box.
It is much better to render inside items separately on the transparent background and then combine them in graphics editor.

as an old C4D chap I like this piece of software!
I’m absolutely curious about the coming release.

Very nice… Another thing… Is Boxshot3D SnowLeopard compatible?

mauko, I have two reports about Snow Leopard: one customer told that Box Shot 3D works fine, another one told that he has some problems with Box Shot 3D.

I’ll grab my copy of 10.6 in the next few weeks, so it will be nice if someone else confirms does it work or not.

Actually, it should work, because I use nothing Tiger/Leopard specific that will not work in Snow Leopard.

Thank you Vitaly, when I jump on SnowLeopard I wil report back to you.

SL works fine here, and speeds things up as well… I think we can say its slow, not very slow with some huge images in the best rendering mode with transparency …. Some images would take 1 hour plus…now in the best resolution and say 1000×1000, 20 minutes tops.. But normal size images doing the best rendering it fly’s to the finish line with Snow Leopard and I’m on a MACbook with only 2gigs ram.

No crashes here so far…

Hi Vitaly, I love it! Looking forward to 2.13.

Even if 5-, 6-, or 7-fold brochures (that we recently emailed about) aren’t in this release, I will be looking forward to the other nice additions.

Vitaly, do you think you can upload more teasers of the forthcoming shapes as we are checking this blog daily (if not hourly) Thanks!

With all these great changes, is this upgrade considered minor (no charge) or major? The reason I am asking is because I am considering making the purchase, but may have to wait until this is completed since it’s happening so soon.

bjorn, it is not a big problem to add more folds, a bigger problem is to fit so many sliders there

James, I’ll try to post news every week. I am still a bit far from the release point, so you have to wait to. I am sorry…

Ivette, this is a minor upgrade and it is free.

One feature that would be a massive help to me is the simple re-introduction of the “Whole Cover” option in images when wrapping a DVD Box. I have to produce 100s of packshots and using the crop system takes much too long and is not cost effective. Thus I am stuck using V2.8 and can’t upgrade. It would be great to have it back. Thanks

Shaun
You can always drag-and-drop the image and then crop the same image for front and back. I may make sense for you, but for non-standard covers (books, boxes, etc) it makes absolutely no sense as it distorts the view. I find the present function very useful. What I think it will be of great help is to make it possible to import tiffs and PDFs as well. James

Shaun, all DVD boxes have the same proportions, so you don’t need to play with crop. Just put the same “full cover” image to front, left and back sides. And that’s all.

More, if you have to create many shots, why don’t you use batch processing? It is easy! (Mac version will be able to do the same in 2.13)

Btw, in 2.13 it will be a bit easier to put the same image to several sides. I’m yet to write about it.

James, starting from 2.12 Box Shot 3D allows to load TIFF files. PDF files have lots of tricks and don’t work out of the box under Windows. I don’t think that I will add them in the near future.

No problem Vitaly – it was just a thought. I did assume that there must have been some good technical reasons why PDF files cannot be used. Tiffs and Jpegs are fine. Do you think you will be able to release a few more screenshots this week? Is it fair to think that the update is most likely going to happen early in October? James

Hi,

Is it possible to place 2 images in 1 render. Then the light and schadows are correct.

Hi Vitaly, we assume you’re quite busy. Any news on the release of 2.13?

David, you can’t do that easy way in the current version. You may render two images separately with transparent background and then combine them in Photoshop. You may try to play with 3-folded booklet shape and image with transparent middle part, maybe you will be able to get what you want. This will be able in the third version of Box Shot 3D that I will release some day

James, yep. I’m quite busy with making new features and this is a big whirlpool of changes and fixes… I promise to inform about progress here, but I am not sure about September anymore, sorry…

Works in Snow Leopard, I’ve had no problems at all.

Love the new shapes, BTW.

Hello:

Will your new version have a brochure shape that allows custom-sized panels? Basically, I have a trifold with a smaller tuck panel, but I can’t simulate it with your current version.

Also, if I import a custom 3ds file that has the panel sizes I need, will BS3d recognize the folds and allow me to transform the angles independently?

Thank you!

William, thank you. I already grab a copy of 10.6 and tested Box Shot 3D there. Yep, it works fine.

Terry, I don’t think that I will add this. Too much things are yet to add for 2.13, so this will be added later. You may try to make part of the booklet image transparent, save it as PNG file and check “Use transparency” button. You should do the same for the back side for shadows. This may give you what you want.

No problem Vitaly, keep up the good work – we’re sure you are busy creating something awesome. You have the support of everyone here. I assume importing 3DS files will still be possible in 2.13? James

Hi:

I’m not sure but I think this is a new suggestion: how about a very full (inflated) box?

I’m dying to know more about 2.13.

Thanks

Sergio

Hi Vitaly

Is is possible for me to make a box this shape http://www.odeonent.co.uk/content/zoom/22053761.jpg using the existing shapes or would that be a new template?

Thank you

2 words: BRA-VO ; I try your software and I love it…

But I’m going to launch a software service (SaaS) at the end of the year and I want to give more the impression of package, a box more like that:
http://tweetadder.com/wp-content/uploads/tweetaddermedium-271×300.png

Do you know where I can find 3DS compatible files like that or do you have one ?
Thks

For 3DS models check out http://www.turbosquid.com or even better http://www.doschdesign.com There are other websites as well. James

Shaun, there is a book of that kind. It has a flat spine, but you can give it a try. Select “Soft Cover Book” shape and then select “Rounded Corners” type.

EdMA, thanks. James already posted some links, Google may give you more. Just try to search for “free 3ds models”. There are lots of such sites on the web.

Hello all together,

James, importing PDFs as cover would be a nice option but with using the Acrobat PDF batch process you can easily convert dozens of covers in seconds.

Vitaly, I’m impressed by your persistance develloping BoxShot and your endurance concerning all our whishes and suggestions. Keep up your brilliant work!
Because there are so many detailed change request concerning shape details, I would suggest to post new shapes as early as possible so that we can discuss and improve them before they get released.

Best regards,
Benjamin

PS: BS3D became a workhorse in our cover process. As you suggested we manipulated the BS3D XML instead of using the Batch Renderer. And we wrote a little tool for it. Are you interested to see it?

Benjamin, OK I will try to add as much PDF as I can, but later. Mac OS X reads PDF files out of the box and it is possible to add PDF to the Mac version. For Windows version, I’ll try to use installed Acrobat software. I never tried that, but maybe it is possible.

And of course I will post any important news and shapes here. Currently one effect, that I am trying to add, had completely kicked my out from the schedule, so the new release is moved to a month or even more.

Btw, I am talking with guy from NVidia about speeding up rendering using CUDA and OpenCL, so maybe this will be added in the near future.

And yes, I am interested to see the tool you created, and maybe not only I am. If you want to spread it or sell it – just give me a link and I will put it somewhere on the site.

Vitaly, sorry, I think I was unclear on this point. Mass converting PDFs to JPG via Acrobat or a freeware tool is no problem (to me), so I didn’t see high priority to this for v2.13.
/
Speeding up rendering with the mentioned technique would be great!
/
I will talk to the developper how fast it is possible to translate the German-only version to an internationalized English one.

@All: A little off topic from the new software box shapes, but i would like to propose two minor ergonomic changes:
- Would it be possible to add CTRL+SHIFT+S as shortcut for “Save As”, as CTRL+S already works for “SAVE”?
- The open dialog box for loading cover pics is not resizable. With few files in a folder this is no problem, but with hundreds of previews in windows explorer’s thumbnail mode it is very confusing. Would it be time-consuming to change this?

Benjamin

And yet another little thing: Would it be possible to add a horizontal and vertical mirroring function to the crop dialogue? Making my book jackets I was often upset when recognizing that I needed an image mirrorerd and I had to go back to Photoshop to transform them.

Thanks a lot!
Benjamin

I’d love to see ‘Render to Disk’ option instead of ‘live rendering’.

Shapes look great, just as the program. Love it. Saves me heaps of time.

Benjamin, I will add flips later.

Rogier, what is the difference between these options? Do you want to see only a progress-bar? Is it really important?

No, no progresbar as well. You can’t minimize any of the windows when rendering, so a render to disk would be handy. Let it go in the background and i can continue working in Adobe CS (i hate all these windows open). Might even be faster when rendering to disk instead of ‘live rendering’. It’s just a luxury choice btw, so not THAT important . Can’t you make it just for me?

Still waiting for the best app! in the world.

I would like to make a request! Is it possible to develop a Ring Binder or a Lever Archive File?

Something like this:
http://www.ambar.pt/main.php?id=73&page=2

This would be a dream to me!!!

Best regards and congrats by this precious software.

Pedro, did you try “Angle-D Binder” shape?

I know I keep banging on about this “Whole Cover” feature reintroduction in the images section for DVD box shape. But I don’t think I’m getting my message across properly. I know that with the crop tool I only have to load the same image in. But it still means for each cover I have to assigns the file 3 times for front spine and back. The beauty of the old system was 1 click done. I save me a lot of time. All I would like to see is top of the list in images is “Cover All” that will wrap whatever file is selected to the full wrap, front, back and spine. I just seems so easy. Thanks for all your help. Shaun

Shaun, I understand what you want. In 2.13 it will be a bit easier to assign the same image to several sides. You will be able to choose from already assigned images.

I’ll probably make a post about it a bit later.

I’ll think about “meta-sides” that will cover groups of real sides, but this will not be added in 2.13 of course.

Dear reader,

Did buy this little gem some time ago and still think this is one of my best (little) investments for my upcomming science shop website. Great stuff ! Realy love it !

Greatings from Belgium !

Patrick Jaecques,
Chairman Astro Event Group vzw.

Hey, I hope you will add 3D Table Calendar on your next Version of Box Shot 3D!

That should be GREAT! ^^