Thursday, October 19th, 2017 Posted by Jim Thacker

Adobe ships Dimension CC


Adobe has released Dimension CC, a new V-Ray powered application for rendering and compositing 3D assets into 2D images, aimed at “graphic designers, not 3D experts”.

The app, which was released at Adobe MAX 2017 alongside updates to After Effects CC and Photoshop CC, and new 2D puppet animation tool Character Animator CC, was originally known as Project Felix.

A simple rendering and compositing tool for graphic designers and illustrators
First released in beta last year, Dimension CC is intended to enable graphic designers with little to no experience with conventional 3D software to incorporate 3D elements into their work.

On its new product webpage, Adobe namechecks market sectors including product design and visualistion, concept mock-ups, storyboard work, and illustration and editoral design.

Suggested use cases range from applying a logo to a 3D model – also the territory of Maxon’s new Cineware for Illustrator plugin – to visualising a photo shoot by staging the scene from different angles.



Workflow in Dimension CC: a live demonstration of product visualisation from Adobe MAX.


Create composite images through an intuitive drag-and-drop and slider-based workflow
Users can import 3D models in OBJ format, then assign materials and textures via a drag-and-drop workflow. Materials are stored internally in Nvidia’s MDL format, also supported in an increasing number of DCC tools.

The software is also designed to work with Capture CC, Adobe’s mobile application for – among other things – generating physically based materials from images captured on a phone or other mobile device.

Lighting is image-based, with the option to import HDRIs in HDR, EXR or IBL format, then adjust the results in the interactive real-time preview – which uses the same core tech as V-Ray – using slider-based controls.

The HDRI can also be used as a background image for the scene, with Dimension CC automatically setting the lighting, camera properties and perspective of the scene to match the source image.

Reflections and shadows can be adjusted by editing the properties of the ground plane.

When the scene is complete, renders and composites can be exported as multi-layer PSD files for adjustment in Photoshop, or any other image-editing application that supports the file format.

The software comes with a free starter library of models, materials and lights, and is integrated with Adobe Stock, Adobe’s online library of commercial stock assets.

Pricing and availability
Dimension CC is available for Windows 10 and Mac OS X 10.10+. You need a reasonably powerful workstation: Adobe recommends 16GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 970 GPU or equivalent non-Nvidia card.

Like all of Adobe’s Creative Cloud tools, it is available rental-only, with an annual subscription costing $19.99/month for single applications or $49.99/month for all of Adobe’s creative software.


Read more about Dimension CC on Adobe’s blog

Read a full list of features in Dimension CC