E-frontier Shade
Shade is a general 3D modeling and animation product from Japan. It has an ancient history as far as software goes, beginning life in 1986 and quickly dominating the Japanese 3D market. At the time, the Japanese desktop computer industry was dominated by the NEC-98 series, not exactly an IBM/AT clone but close enough; yet not close enough that it wasnt a problem developing for it. The NEC-98 series ruled Japan’s computer industry, and not a lot of foreign software ran on it without serious adaptation. No real foreign competition in the very early 3D market ever made it on the NEC-98.
Keep in perspective the state of the computer industry in 1986:
-The leading operating system was MS DOS 3.2
-The MacOS was slightly over 2 years old
-Windows was at 1.0.3
But Shade not only dominated the NEC-98 but, once the IBM/AT clone market picked up, they quickly jumped on the boat and continued to dominate the 3D industry in Japan. Today, although under heavy assault now by 3D heavyweights like the (fairly recently localized) 3D Studio MAX and Alias Maya, Shade still has a strong foothold in the market.
Surprisingly enough, Shade has long supported Apple’s MacOS, so it made the work of companies like Strata and Ray Dream (whose product eventually was purchased by MetaCreations and now much transformed into Eovia’s Cararra) extremely hard for penetrating the Japanese market.
Until recently, Shade was owned by a company called Expression Tools. There was an early attempt to bring Shade to the US and made some impact, especially on the Macintosh, however some significant business shifts lost them their foothold and their US presence abruptly disappeared. Some efforts were in progress to bring Shade back into the US market when finally, Expression Tools collapsed under financial burdens. Shade was picked up by E-frontier, an up and coming software publisher.
So why talk about Shade? It is one of very few Japanese titles other than console games, to have any measure of success in North America. Most that have tried have utterly failed, usually because the market was so full of technologically superior and mature products (kind of like trying to sell an American car in Japan!). Shade is here for a second time and this time and E-frontier is here to stay.
Although our Meshbox Design business directly relates to the 3D graphics and animation industry and licenses content through E-frontier owned Content Paradise I dont get to spend as much time with 3D graphics programs as I would like. Shade has three features that I particularly like so, it’s one that I use. The first feature is stability. Shade is rock solid; I dont think Ive ever experienced a crash with Shade. Unstable apps are just not welcome in Japan, and Shade delivers. The second feature is a clean interface. I know people who do not like Shade for this very reason — the UI is incredibly spartan. However, the design is such that they only put out what you are likely to need, and, its actually quite accessible once you figure out which panel you need. The third is, its really easy to get modeling with their bezier oriented tools without getting lost in really a really complex scene. More recently and with E-frontier’s acquisition of Poser, its possible to incorporate Poser characters easily into Shade and, to create Poser props with Shade.