Strata and founders Ken and Gary Bringhurst are marking their 20 year milestone by giving away over $20,000 in software to twenty deserving design students with Strata's "20/20" program.

In a challenging job market Strata is looking to help students who are about to graduate or who have recently graduated. "We remember how difficult it was to get started right out of school", said Gary Bringhurst, Strata co-founder. "It seems fitting to celebrate by helping others get off the ground."

Applicants will need to explain what challenges they are facing, their design discipline focus, where they went to school and when they graduated or when they'll be graduating. Winners will be judged based on these answers and portfolio samples.

Noted author and 3D pro Chris Tyler will be hosting an online seminar on October 27th. Chris will cover what's new in Strata Design 3D CX 6.1.

Chris will show you the power of the new copy and paste polygon elements option, the UV subdivision changes, the new ScriptFX shaders - and more. Chris is ready to go into great detail so be ready to take notes =)

There's no charge for the seminar (or the upgrade from 6.0 to 6.1 for that matter). Tell your friends, tell your family - this is going to be a great opportunity to learn some cool new tips and tricks.

Design 3D CX 6.1 is almost here. We're in the last stages of beta testing. This upgrade adds powerful scripting based effects along with enhanced modeling features - all at no cost to users of version 6.0.

New Script FX

Using Design 3D's built-in scripting language, the engineers at Strata have added several new drag-and-drop ScriptFX. These effects make it easy to give your objects the shakes, a heartbeat, a bit of bounce and spin.

New Modeling Power

With version 6.1 you will be able to copy and paste individual points, edges and faces in your subdivision surface models. This allows you to build models from the components of other models. The modeler also offers enhanced UV subdivision control.

Two new DVDs are available from expert user Chris Tyler. Over 38 hours of detailed tutorials show you how to model, texture, render and animate in Strata Design 3D CX 6.

In this 16 minute video Chris dissects the texture and rendering settings to walk you through the subtleties of replicating realistic paint and metallic surfaces. He takes the time to make sure you can absorb all of the finer points of creating realistic scenes. Chris even includes the model download so you can follow along.

Swedish museum Murberget has an extensive collection of artifacts - so many in fact that it can't display all of them in the confines of its walls. What they needed was a way to make the museum "virtual" - after all, there's no limit to the room available on the web.

Strata Foto 3D came to the rescue, making it easy to capture artifacts as fully textured 3D objects. Finished models are then displayed on the museum's website using a 3D web viewer.