Avid3D 2.1 Should Be Beta?

I’m afraid to say this, but after using Avid 3D seriously this past week, the impression I am left with is that this application should still be in Beta mode. (Official Avid 3D pages: Norway or US/international (Directory Listing Denied at the moment, are they perhaps ashamed of it?)

Avid 3D’s user interface is heavy, complicated and seems to be dominated by several half-finished solutions. Cameras, objects and lights all have programming-like names, instead of something explanatory like Camera 2, you are given programming parameters and libs.
The application will crash in odd circumstances. Some of its so-called friendly and drag’n’drop features do work some of the time, but just as quickly turn around and cause havoc.
Lastly there is little to none Avid 3D documentation and tutorials online. The odd forum post may mention Avid 3D problems, though you are pretty much left on your own after you have gone through the few tutorials that exist.

Since Avid 3D actually does have something good about it, I am not all negative towards it. It comes as a nice and cheap addition to the Avid Packages we have licensed here at school. Another nice advantage I do appreciate with Avid3D is the possibility for rendering your animations with Alpha-channels intact.
For people who are not interested in creating models from scratch, but want to be able to move models around in three dimensions, Avid3D has a number of nice finished models. Which all can easily be moved around in space, without much previous 3D knowledge other than watching the nice video tutorials which follow the Avid3D DVD.
An extra bonus is the particle effects that is built into Avid 3D.

If its any consolation Avid 3d is released in version 5.6, but we just can’t afford every single update here at school. I hope and expect some of these quirks are fixed now. Alex Alexzander has reviewed the whole Avid Toolkit, and has a section with a positive review of Avid 3D 5.6.