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XChange International, the source for extended technology worldwide, is pleased to announce the upcoming release of the Strata Foto 3D for Macintosh. Strata Foto 3D is a powerful tool for creating professional quality 3D content from still images. A wide range of objects can be modelled including those with holes and Œdifficult¹ organic shapes. Using a conventional camera, photos of your object on a printed mat are taken from a number of viewpoints in front of a plain backdrop. The shape of the object and its surface colour are automatically extracted from each photo and this information is used to build a high quality 3D object.

Strata Foto 3D is an efficient photo-based system for modeling real world objects. Powered by patented model generation and sophisticated texturing technology, Foto 3D allows a 3D model to be created quickly and inexpensively while requiring no technical skill or expensive hardware. Foto 3D creates models that can be displayed and used in a variety of applications. The model can be imported into a 3D editing and rendering software such as Strata 3D CX for further enhancement and for it to be used in scenes and rendered. Finally, the model can be imported into Strata Live 3D for interactive 3D display within a website, Flash file, or an Adobe Acrobat PDF document without any plug-ins.

Features include the following:

Automated Masking—With the proper backdrop, Foto 3D does an excellent job of identifying your background and masking out your object automatically.
Surface Optimization—Using the profile of your shape in each photo, Foto 3D automatically generates an accurate surface mesh. The more photos you have, the more accurate the mesh.
Auto Texture Creation—Using the same images, Foto 3D generates a photo-realistic UV map for your object.
Interactive Decimation—When it comes to the web, size matters. Foto 3D allows you to interactively control the number of polygons used to represent your object
Lens Calibration—Foto 3D can correct for distorted, skewed, and images suffering from Fish-Eye distortion for the best possible interpretation of your images.

System Requirements:
Macintosh: Power Macintosh with Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later (10.4.x Recommended), Intel Mac with Mac OS X 10.4 or later, 512 MB RAM, 75 MB free disk space, Monitor resolution of 1024x768
Windows: Windows XP, Windows 2000 with SP 4 or later, Pentium Compatible or better,, 256 MB RAM, 330 MB free disk space, VGA colour display with 800x600 resolution