Helicon 3D Viewer

Helicon 3D Viewer is a straightforward piece of software that gives you the possibility to view Helicon 3D models. It contains several view customization preferences and it's quite easy to work with.

Installing this tool is a fast and easy job that shouldn't give you any trouble. You are greeted by a fullscreen window which loads a default model, where you can immediately start tinkering with view options.

It's possible to select the surface approximation quality, rotate the view to any angle, change the lighting mode, adjust the zoom level and rotation speed, invert the surface, tweak the relief amplifier and smoothing level, as well as disable texture, draw a bounding box, and customize the background color.

Modifications can be saved or discarded. The new model can be saved to file by specifying the output directory and file name, or exported to Wavefront OBJ format.

You can take an image snapshot, set the maximum size and save it as PNG, JPG or TIF, save only the stereo channel (e.g. parallel, crossover, red-blue anaglyph), or save a web animation by selecting the number of images to process.

Alternatively, you can create a QuickTime or other type of video (free XviD, DivX or WMV 8 codec), as well as set the maximum size and number of frames per second.

We haven't encountered any unpleasant surprises in our tests as far as stability is concerned, thanks to the fact that the software utility didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. It left a small footprint on system performance, using low CPU and RAM.

To sum it up, Helicon 3D Viewer offers a simple solution for viewing, adjusting and exporting Helicon 3D models to various formats, and it can be seamlessly handled by anyone with no previous experience in such apps. Too bad that it hasn't been recently updated.