What's new since Shade 8? That's the question many are asking, and that's the Shade team is answering. If you started Shade with Shade 8, or brand new to Shade, you'll find out exactly what you can do with this powerful 3D tool set. For the following 30 days, we will focus on one new feature each day.

30 Days of Shade: Day By Day

01Photo Modeling. Shade 12 introduces the ability to turn objects in your photographs into 3D models. Take snapshots of objects from different angles, then using the Photo Modeling feature available in Shade Basic, Shade Standard and Shade Professional, build up faces. Textures are generated from the photos.

Step through Photo Modeling Basics 1

02Import SketchUp Models. Shade now supports the ability to import models in the native Google Sketchup! file format (.skp), giving you access to the thousands of free models in the Google SketchUp Warehouse. Feature available in Shade Basic, Shade Standard and Shade Professional.

03Volumetric Lights. Like the name suggests - treats the light projection itself as a kind of object that has volume. Any object or material that intersects the light modifies its appearance, such as the effects of colored glass or dust motes.

Introducing VolumeLights

04MultiPass Rendering. Now with Shade Standard or Professional, you can render discreet features of your render into layers, that you can then import into your favorite compositing or image editor for post production.

Learn MultiPass Rendering

05High Dynamic Range Images. You can import and export HDRI images, and use HDRI images for Light Probes and background maps, such as Sphere, Vertical Cross, Cubic and more.

Learn HDRI in Shade

06Preview Before Rendering.You can preview your scenes with specular, surface materials, backgrounds, environment mapping, stereoscopic perspective and supporting GLSL Phong Rendering with OpenGL 2.0 compatible video cards. A new method called Draft Raytracing makes for fast, more accurate preview renders.

07Sketch Modeling. Use the special editor to turn 2D illustrations into 3D models, but usin the image as a template to build up, step by step, a detailed, 3D model.

Learn Sketch Modeling in Shade

08Share with Designers Using Adobe Applications.Both import and export native Adobe Illustrator files (AI), Adobe Photoshop (PSD) and export animations as native Flash (SWF) files.

09Universal 3D Manipulator. Now manipulate any object within any Figure Window using the real time Universal 3D Manipulator; set the constraints of this tool to universal, translate, scale, rotate, hide.

10Hair Salon. Add dynamic hair with masking to any Shade model to create incredible characters. Add hair to surfaces, then use real world tools to trim, blow and shape hair to create realistic looking hair. Pro fessional adds dynamic gravity effects.

Learn 3D Hair Modeling in Shade

11Auto-Save Projects. You can set Shade to automatically create backups of the open project based on multiple frequencies. Reduces the risk of losing your work.

12Direct Creation of All Primitive Types.Previously, you created primitives, then converted them to surface or mesh object; now you can create all types as primitive, surface or mesh types within any other steps.

13Workspace Bar. You can save arrangements of the Shade user experience into preset configurations and then automatically switch between them.

Learn Workspace Basics in Shade

14Master Surfaces.Surface materials are usually associated with a single object; master surfaces are saved separately from objects, making them readily available for use with other objects. You can also associate an external texture map with a master surface.

15External Texture References.Previously, you had to save texture image files into your .shd project. Now you can make use of external file references for texture files.

16Particle Physics. With Shade Standard you can create particle effects such as smoke and liquid effects with Shade Professional.

Learn Particle Physics Basics in Shade

17Customizable Viewports.Previously, each of the four Viewports were locked to always display the same views: Perspective, Top, Front and Side. Now you can individually set what each View contains.

18Multiple Custom Cameras.You can now assign the view of a custom camera to any of the four View windows.

19Cage Modeling. Use a cage framework to bend, transform and animate models with it - in Shade Basic, Standard and Professional.

Learn Cage Modeling Basics in Shade

20Modeling Light.You can switch on an additional, artificial light within a Viewport in order to make more surface areas of your model visible.

21Parallax Bump Mapping.Parallax bump mapping includes camera position and angle in bump map calculation when rendering, in addition to grayscale values - resulting in more realistic appearance of surfaces.

22Wind Effects. Creating environment influencing events with wind effects in Standard and Professional. Learn how to make cross winds, turbulent winds, tornadoes and gravitational pull effects.

Learn Wind Effects in Shade

23Quicktime Cubic Pano Export.Used in conjunction with supporting versions of Quicktime, it is possible to export a Cubic panorama with all versions of Shade.

24Export Movie with 3D Sound.While Shade 8.x introduced importing 3D sound files, it is possible to export both the movie and sound track of a rendered movie with 3D sound.

25Collision Detection. Particle Physics doesn't end with simple particle effects - it also governs environmental physics and how objects react to gravity and collision with other objects in Shade Standard and Shade Professional.

Learn Collision Detection in Shade

26MultiCore Rendering Increase.While Shade 8.x introduced multicore rendering, improvements to Shade multicore rendering extend to tests with over 8 cores rendering a Shade scene.

27Normal Maps.Shade Pro supports using normal maps - a mapping technique used to generate a map based on a high resolution model and then applying that to a lower resolution version of the same model.

28Work Planes and Local Axis Creation. Now it is easy to constrain your modeling and mapping to individual planes, both in global coordinates and also in creation of custom local coordinate axis for individual models.

Learn 3D Work Planes

29Displacement Maps.Shade Standard and Shade Professional incorporate support for displacement maps; in addition, you can have Shade apply the actual transformation to the geometry and save the new geometry as a separate model.

303D Stereo Rendering. Now you can render scenes for use with 3D glasses or more modern 3D visual platforms.

Learn 3D Stereo Rendering

History of Shade

With its original release in 1986, Shade is one of the oldest, most consistently used 3D products available today on Windows and Mac OS X. Comparatively speaking - Newtek Lightwave began life in 1988 as Modeler to accompany VideoScape on the Newtek Toaster on the Amiga, 3D Studio (later MAX) shipped in 1990 on DOS and Maya Sketch from Alias Research appeared in 1998 after Silicon Graphics merged the efforts of three different companies. Shade remained in relative obscurity as the most pervasively used 3D software package in Japan, later published by E Frontier America (Shade 7 and Shade 8), Smith Micro (Shade 8.5) and Mirye Software (Shade 9, 10 and 12). Mirye Software began publishing Shade with Shade 9 - and shipped Shade 12, a massive update of the Shade user experience and renderer, in March 2011.