Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of new plug-ins and products starting to emerge. Some good, some not so good. But a few of them have really caught our eye, so we’ve decided to add them to our Techstore range. It means that there’ll be a lot of new additions for you to check out over the next few days.

One plug-in I particularly like is SimLab Composer, a handy tool for sharing 3D files without needing 3D software. It’s a very simple tool but has quite a lot of uses.

In a nutshell, SimLab Composer converts 3D files from Maya & 3ds Max into interactive 3D PDF files. Imagine being able to share 3D files with someone who doesn’t use 3D software… That’s the perfect sort of use for this little gem.

The 3D PDF files that it generates are actually pretty decent. They capture the full 3D dimensions of the designs, so you don’t lose any of the 3D detail you’ve spent lots of time working on. Another bonus to using PDF format is that anyone viewing it only needs PDF Acrobat reader to see the files. You can even rotate the model and zoom in. At this stage, you are no doubt wondering exactly what one of these files looks like… Well, here’s one we prepared earlier: it is of a villa and a boat.

SimLab Composer is available as a plug-in for Maya, 3ds Max and Sketch-up, which makes integrating it into a pipeline quite easy. You can find out more about SimLab Composer here, or get in touch.