 Review: Live Interior 3D
September, 2008
By: Lee Rickwood
Home and Office Design really a virtual treat
Not many people can accurately predict the future.
But, if you want to know what your living room or work space will look like before
you start wrestling with the furniture, check out a new interior design program for Mac users.
Live Interior 3D from Belight Software lets you refurnish or remodel almost any interior
space, in both two- and three-dimensional views, on your computer screen. See what your bedroom would
look like with a new coat of paint. Check out a possible layout for the cottage rec room, once a new
sofa and chair have been added.
Using Live Interior 3D
Once you create the basic room, you can add furniture and other accessories to the space.
Using simple mouse, keyboard or drag-and-drop commands, you can arrange and re-arrange to
your heart's content: move things around, change the colours, adjust their dimensions, until your room is
the way you want it to be. Almost literally, it is a 'snap' to adjust walls and ceilings to specific dimensions.
A series of templates are available to help you get started. All walls, ceilings, slabs and
floors can be coloured or textured as desired.
While Live Interior 3D does come with large libraries of preset objects, the program is also compatible with
third-party programs, such as Google's 3D warehouse of objects, models and materials. It's a free library of
models, which is great, but some models may give Live Interior a real headache (just like real-world designers!),
causing crashes or computer hang-ups on occasion.
Adjusting your creation
The Inspector Panel in Live Interior 3D lets you easily control and adjust the properties of selected
objects or 3-D parameters. The 3-D Properties Tab also lets you control how generated light and shadow interact
with objects in the 3-D space.
The program also comes with extensive (more than a thousand right now) object and material
libraries, so you can easily add a door or window to the basic configuration. There's a tool to add baseboards,
trims and other fixed objects. Built into the program is the familiar Mac Search tool, so you can find and
preview any supplied object.
Don't just look at it, walk through it!
What's more, you can create realistic 'virtual walkthroughs', like movies, made inside the space
you create. You can show your friends, family or co-workers what a new space will be like, and what it needs
to be better.
In 3-D mode, you can travel using your mouse, and either a Look Around (this can change the view
up to 360 degree, using the program's compatibility with QuickTime VR) or Walk command (actually move through
the space 'on foot' using a cute little icon of footprints) lets you interact with your creation in any direction.
There's even a 'Collision Detection' function so you don't stub your virtual toe — or place
a virtual sofa on top of a lamp!
You can also record high resolution (yes, HD quality) movies of your creation, so people can
appreciate your interior design skills away from the computer! Your creations can also be printed, or exported
as 2-D files in PDF, TIFF, JPEG or PNG formats.
See it by daylight, moonlight, anytime
One of the coolest features of Live Interior 3D is the ability to control the time of day or night,
through specific lighting controls and adjustments.
You can manipulate daylight and moonlight as it splashes through your virtual windows. You can adjust
the intensity of interior lamps and light sources, as well, so creating moods is as easy as creating rooms.
The Live Interior interface
Live Interior 3D does let you see your space in 2-D and 3-D modes at the same time, but the views
come up in the same window, so things can get a little crowded on -screen. Unless you have a big, wide display,
you'll probably end up switching back and forth between views. A separate 3-D window in the UI would be a nice
enhancement, or formal support for a second monitor.
Live Interior 3D is a somewhat new program, and users do report some glitches in these early versions.
For example, a 'Snap' tool, intended to help place objects with accuracy and precision against grid lines, seems
to snap itself in and out of order sometimes. As the Snap tool can be used for measurement, its unpredictability
can be a hassle.
Bottom Line
Live Interior 3D is fairly easy to use out of the box and the interface is clean, with familiar
looking drop-down menus, toolbars and slider tools. There is a good online forum and support centre, and the
company says regular updates and library expansions are planned.
There's a view of future for you!
Tech Specs
• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. Leopard compatible.
• QuickTime VR requires Apple QuickTime 7 installed.
• Minimal screen resolution 1024x768.
Download file size is 215 MB (full version)
Price: $79.95 USD
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