Whatever Happened to Cool 3D?

[Me At Work]

Whatever became of Ulead's COOL 3D series? It seems to have dropped off the map... Corel/Ulead seem to have no official word on it, with the latest version from 2001 I'm wondering why it hasn't been updated in so long. If it has been discontinued why is it still listed as if it was a current product on Corel's site?

I'm very happy to see it still seems to work great with Windows 7, which should give this version another couple years of life. But I'm concerned that if it has been discontinued, it will no longer work with Windows 8. What exactly IS its status? If discontinued, what is Corel's recommended migration path for existing customers? Is there a modern program out there that can read COOL 3D's c3d files, OR is there a way to export those files to another program? I have many COOL files so I'm worried if there's no migration strategy that I will have to run COOL in a virtual machine into future years.

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums,

Ulead's Cool 3D, and Cool 3D Production Studio have been dropped by Corel quite some time ago. I think you're finding it on the old Ulead Online Store site. However if you look at Corel's Website, you will no longer find it anywhere, even in the store or catalog pages, where they last had it listed.

Ulead's Cool 3D programs are not the only former Ulead brands that have been discontinued. Programs such as MediaStudio Pro, DVD Workshop, PhotoImpact, have also been discontinued. I don't believe there is a recommended migration plan. They just no longer produce those products, which means that you will need to explore other brands. For 3D you have a variety of others available, like the freeware Blender, or some that are not costly like Xara 3D, or Carrara7. The project files used by Cool 3D are proprietary, meaning they can only be used in Cool 3D.

[Me At Work]

Hi Ron, thank you for the tips. Sorry to hear the bad news about COOL. I will have a look at the packages you mentioned though, at least I can switch to something modern for future projects. But regarding my old projects... is there really no hope? I'm hoping to find some way to preserve my old project files so that they will still be readable in the future. Like I mentioned for the time being the only solution I can think of is to hold onto my install CD and run it in Virtual PC in the future, is that the best I'll be able to do?

I guess this is the danger of saving in proprietary formats...

[Ron P.]

I would suggest holding on to your install CD AND try rendering your projects to a usable format, like avi or SWF (flash) if they are meant to be animated. If they are images then choose one of the image file formats provided. By rendering any animations to avi or SWF (flash) they can be dropped into a video editor, if that is how you use them, or SWF files can be incorporated into web pages.

One other suggestion would be setting up a dual-boot system, and installing WinXP as one of the operating systems.

[Ken Berry]

This is hardly a practical suggestion for most, but I offer it anyway. If, like me, you have some old computers hanging around (I have eight here at home and two at my beach house), I maintain two of them with XP. They will always be able to run my Cool 3D Production Studio. I too happen to love the program -- it's just that I hate that it takes 40 minutes to render a ten second title more often than not. So while I still occasionally use it when I am after a particular effect, these days I use either Bluff Titler or Xara 3D... They too give some pretty good effects, though not as classy, IMHO, as some of those of which Cood 3D is capable... Just a personal opinion, though...

[sjj1805]

I haven't tried with Windows 7 - my Beta Testing Version is soon due to expire anyway.
Windows 7 is largely based upon Vista, you could try the "Fix" published here:
How to get Ulead Cool 3D to work in Vista