- Very friendly user interface
- Quick and easy to learn and use
- Outputs in many common and desired formats
- Creates surprisingly smooth, attractive visuals with little effort
- Great for the beginner or someone who needs quick logos for a low price
- Somewhat restricted in its animation options
- Limited in its functions as a 3D animation program
- Lighting system is simple--almost too simple
- Quickly and easily creates 3D text, graphics, and animations for websites, multimedia, or print.
- Animates TrueType Fonts.
- Style Picker can copy settings from previous work.
- Renders realtime shadows, bevels, textures, and extrusions.
- Version 6.0 features new design styles and overhaul of the user interface.
- Full interactive control.
- Full optimization of output graphics and animation.
The program comes loaded with plenty of demos, samples, presets, and textures to start with, as well as instructions on how to create your own. It will support most fonts on your system, and allows easy importing of vector shapes from external sources. File exports support a range of file types, from graphics formats to animated GIFs and movies.
The price is especially attractive; Xara.com offers the program for $29.99-54.99 USD, low in comparison to many other 3D programs. The software installs with little to no strain and runs smoothly in realtime, taking up few system resources.
Keep in mind, however, that this is not a program for advanced 3D animation. If you're looking for something that allows free-range detailed modeling, you may want to step up to programs like Maya and 3DSMax. Xara relies on borders, extrusions and bevels for its 3D effects, and most of its animation is done through presets that rotate, size, and swing graphics. Xara is great for making fast and attractive logos, headers, buttons, and web and presentation graphics, but beyond anything else you may want to look elsewhere.
