Pentagrafic has delivered a new shapes library, for sale now in the Strata store.

The Home Volume 2 collection includes more than 98 fully textured models of lights, lamps and decorations. Floor lamps, table lamps, light-switches, paintings, sculptures, pillows, vases, clocks, and more. This collection is perfect for anyone that needs to furnish a virtual home.

We've recently revisted the design of the library page on the Strata site to give you a much better indication of what you're getting in these collections by utilizing the sharp and informative PDFs that Pentagrafic develops for every collection.

We've had bundles of pairs of the shapes collections on the store for some time, but the groupings became increasingly arbitrary as Pentagrafic adds collections. We've now created a new product type for these libraries that lets you combine any two shapes collections as you please.

All five collections can also be purchased in a single bundle for significantly less than full price.

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 hosted an online seminar on October 27th, covering what's new in Strata Design 3D CX 6.1. Chris shows you the power of the new copy and paste polygon elements option, the UV subdivision changes, the new ScriptFX shaders - and more.

Due to the variable nature of most internet connections, some of the animation demonstrations didn't play as smoothly as we would have liked. Since the new features are really meant to raise the bar on smooth and natural animation in Design 3D, Chris has posted a fully rendered version of the animation demonstrated in the seminar to the StrataCafe.

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.