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e frontier's Manga Studio 3.0 EX Review
Jacquelin Vanderwood
August, 2007
Manga Studio 3.0 EX, the ultimate Japanese comic book program in a box. Everyone knows how popular Manga animation has become. Where else can you find everthing you need to create comics at such an affordable price? This vector based package is incredible and packed full of every variety of tools and tones needed to create top of the line professional comic book animation. The clarity with which you can draw with such precise movement, and it's just like if you were holding the pen or pencil right in your own hand. It has custom tools, regular tools, layers, a variety of tool options, layer properties, history, tones, a navigator, actions, materials, patterns, masks, transforms and effects, and so much more. It's really quite incredible how accurate comic production can be accomplished in this software. You can choose to create a page or a book, whatever your choice. It's very easy to navigate through the different menus and any seasoned Adobe user will find out how easy it is to locate what they need. The only drawback that I see, and I'm sure that will be changed in future editions, is that the menus are scattered and take up a lot of real estate on the screen. But I say, let's give them a break as they have not been around as long as their competition has and I only see good things coming in the future for this program. And the last drawback, but it's OK, is that it is a black and white program only and converts all color on import. Otherwise I am very impressed with the large variety of tools and effects at my disposal. I'm still discovering what all it can do and I'm amazed again and again.
Windows
- Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows ME, 2000 (SP2 or higher), Windows XP Home/Professional/Tablet PC Edition
- 500 MHz Intel Pentium or equivalent processor minimum (1 GHz or above recommended)
- 256 MB RAM minimum (512 MB or above recommended)
- 2.1 GB free hard disk space minimum (2.6 GB or above recommended). Installation of application requires 80 MB. Installation of data requires 1.5 GB. Working space requires 500 MB or more
- 16 bit color (65,536 colors) display or above 1024x768 resolution
- WACOM Graphire/Intuos/Intuos2/Cintiq/PL series Pen Tablet recommended
- Printer (optional): 600 or 1200 dpi laser printer recommended
- Scanner (optional): TWAIN 32 compatible Macintosh
Macintosh
- Mac OS X v10.2+
- PowerPC G5/G4/G3 Processor 500MHz or above (1.0GHz or above recommended)
- 512 MB RAM minimum (1.0GB or above recommended)
- 2.6 GB free hard disk space minimum (3.1 GB or above recommended). Installation of application requires 80 MB. Installation of data requires 1.5 GB. Working space requires 500 MB or more
- 16 bit color (65,536 colors) display or above, XGA 1024x768.
- WACOM Graphire/Intuos/Cintiq/PL series Pen Tablet recommended
- Printer (optional): 600 or 1200 dpi laser printer recommended
- Scanner (optional): TWAIN 32 compatible flatbed scanner
Import
- Line: BMP, JPEG, TGA, PNG
- BG Tone: JPEG
- Text Box: TXT
- 3DLT:
- LWO
- LWOB (LW4.0-5.6)
- Texture (.BMP/JPG/TGA)
- Planar mapping
- Cubic mapping
- LWO2 (LW4.0-5.6) /Texture
- Texture (.BMP/JPG/TGA)
- Planar mapping
- Cubic mapping
- UV mapping
- OBJ
- MTL (texture definition file)
- Texture (.BMP/JPG/TGA)
- UV mapping
- DXF
- 3DFACE Texture not supported
- STC
- STC (Shade 7 and 8)
- Texture (.BMP)
- Planar mapping
- Cubic mapping
- UV mapping
- ComicStudio 1.0 and 2.0
Export
- Image: BMP, JPEG, TGA, PNG, PSD’s with layers
- Word Balloons: TXT
- ComicStudio 1.0 and 2.0
www.e-frontier.com
Copyright (c) 2007, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved
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