3D Photo Browser Light

3D Photo Browser Light is a software application made to help you view 3D images and scenes. It contains some powerful viewing options for advanced users.

Apart from 3D Browser, the full package includes a standalone Polygon Cruncher, Maya reading/writing support (2008 or newer), plugins for 3DS Max (R9.x or newer), and help files.

Any of these components can be excluded from setup. What's more, you can create Windows Explorer thumbnails, make file type associations, and enable the tool to minimize to the system tray.

The GUI consists of a large window with a pro-grade appearance. It has a built-in file manager and a pane for favorite folders, showing the thumbnails of all pictures from a selected folder, in addition to their properties (e.g. file type, size, date, total points and faces).

The program supports a wide range of 3D image formats, such as 3DS, C4D (Cinema 3D), COB (Truespace), DXF (AutoCAD), LWO and LWS (LightWave Objects and Scenes), MAX (3D Max) and MB (Maya).

Once an image file is opened, you can inspect an objects list and manage layers, rotate items, check out all materials and scenes, enter full screen mode, zoom in and out, modify the scene measurement unit and scale factor, change the perspective (including isometric), as well as update the thumbnail by removing a specific point of view and defining a new one (as global or specific).

It's possible to set the preferred rendering mode (wireframe, flat, smooth, flat and wireframe, smooth and wireframe), disable texturing, hide specified normals and vertex colors, increase/decrease the lighting or reset it to default, play the animation, navigate the images or keyframes, or play a slideshow.

You can make hidden objects semi-transparent, hide material transparencies, disable OpenGL extensions and the texture alpha channel as the transparency mask, set the patch subdivision level, use an alternative mode, indicate the Maya plugin path, customize colors and lighting, deactivate low resolution textures and perspective correction, as well as add directories for textures and LightWave.

From the file manager it's possible to change the catalogs location, include or exclude subdirectories, recompute thumbnails, delete their information (e.g. keywords, description), set the default view, as well as import file metadata and update 3D Browser details, export it and replace metadata or synchronize tags. You can export slideshows as .exe files, create favorite folders, and so on.

We haven't come across any difficulties in our tests, thanks to the fact that 3D Photo Browser Light didn't hang, crash or show error messages. It had a good response time to commands and used low CPU and low-to-moderate RAM. Hotkeys and help documentation are supported.

Taking into account its rich and approachable options, 3D Photo Browser Light offers a simple solution for all users who want to open 3D image files for viewing purposes only.

NOTE: For more features, you can check out 3D Photo Browser Image Edition or 3D Photo Browser for 3D Users.