Informatix Piranesi 3

Named after Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the 18th century architectural draughtsman, Informatix Piranesi is unlike any other paint package. Why? Because it's designed to work hand-in-hand with 3D modellers to turn simple scenes into rich works of art.

Central to this mission is Piranesi's own Extended Pixel (EPix) file format, in which every pixel in the bitmap not only stores the RGB colour values but also contains information on material and depth. So you need to convert your model to EPix format before you can do anything in Piranesi. It's possible to do this directly in supporting applications such as SketchUp via the plug-ins Informatix provides for 3ds and LightWave 3D, or via the bundled Vedute utility, which can convert models in the popular 3DS and DXF formats.

Once your file is loaded, you're ready to get to grips with the Piranesi interface. This looks surprisingly underpowered at first, with just three main painting tools: Brush, Fill and the dab-based Painter. However, first impressions are misleading - double-clicking on the tools opens the tabbed Settings panel where you can set a whole host of parameters such as brush type, size and angle. But Piranesi's real power becomes evident when you turn to the Render options. In Piranesi's default Standard render mode, you can set a unique blend of colour, texture and grain and select from 18 different paint modes such as tint, overlay and soft light.

In fact, rather than being underpowered, there's the danger you could be overwhelmed by the sheer number of settings - it would be virtually impossible to recreate a brush you've used already. That's why Piranesi offers the ability to save your current tool settings as a named style to its Style Browser panel to reuse later. Plus, to help you hone in on exactly the effect you're looking for, Piranesi also lets you apply your brush stroke or fill, fine-tune your settings and then hit the Re-apply command to update the effect. It takes some time to get used to the Piranesi way of working but, once you do, it proves extremely powerful.

Piranesi's whole approach to painting is innovative, but what makes it stand out is the extra control and creativity that the material and depth information provides. The first signs of this are the four icons below the toolbox that allow you to lock your painting, based on colour, plane, orientation and/or material. It might not sound revolutionary but it makes re-colouring your models simpler.

The fact that Piranesi knows about depth and angle within the image really shows its worth when you paint with a texture rather than a solid colour. Choose Wrapped in the Settings panel and the texture is correctly sized and aligned to the object, so perspective is handled automatically. By loading a couple of different facade textures (Piranesi provides hundreds from the Style Browser and you can add your own), you can quickly turn a collection of simple 3D cubes into a city skyline of realistic skyscrapers. Even more impressive is the ability to capture textures from the image itself, so you can add reflections to produce photo-realistic water and glass effects.

Piranesi's knowledge of the 3D information in your image also comes into play with the Montage tool. This allows you to load any bitmap-based object and place copies anywhere on your image. Piranesi automatically sizes cutouts, orientates them to the underlying pixel that you click on and hides any areas that should be obscured by closer elements in the image. Best of all, you can set your cutouts to produce realistic shadows. With just a few clicks you can bring your technical drawings to life with realistic vegetation and people.