..."You can create a transparent background, just don't create a background color, and don't render it out. Drop the swf file right on the vEgas timeline."

-Hmmmm, interesting................I'll try that!

Before you decide, let me throw three other programs in the mix for you to look at:





All are good programs, each with their strong points. I use Cool 3D for AVIs with alpha backgrounds. Lots of folks on here like the Cayman Graphics Power CG for titles and such. It works as a Vegas plug in which is nice.

Good luck.

Spot - I opened the .swf into Vegas and it says it's an unsupported file and does not open it - I'm using V4?

Need V5 to open swf.

Thanks Liam - I'll be upgrading to V5 over the weekend - just wasn't going to be in a hurry
to upgrade until most of the bugs were worked out. Now sounds like a great time to
do this.

just wasn't going to be in a hurry to upgrade until most of the bugs were worked out

Haha.... very amusing... seeing as V6 is practically around the corner (no sarcasm here... just very impressed really)

Not a problem - I only do editing for fun so being behind a version or two is not something that I stress out over.

V6 is almost ready to debut? Wow - it seemed like only yesterday that V5 came out. Well, not yesterday...but not that long ago for sure. Thumbs up for Sony!

What new things can be expected with V6? Do they have a launch date yet?

Have a great weekend!

It really depends what you want, for rock solid production graphics Cayman is the leader of the pack. If you want text that looks like a bad acid trip then give Cayman a miss. Just bear in mind that to get good looking text into video is a pretty dark art, I've spent days on just one simple bit of text trying to get it to look right and I'm just talking white ariel.
For something dramatic why not try TrueSpace, I think they have / had one of the older versions available for free which should be more than adequate for most thing. I bought the latest but one version for around USD100 and apart from the UI which takes some serious getting used to you can do some might neat text with it, think letters that extrude along a curved path while the camera track around / through them, complete with lighting etc.
And the version I got comes with a number of prebuilt talking heads, yip, you type a string of works and the 'head' speaks them, I tried one with a red light inside the head and once it was rendered out it was kinda freaky. Of course the only problem is you can waste days/weeks/months with all this 3D stuff and not get a frame of video edited, be warned, it's kind of addictive.

This seems like a really simple yet powerful 3D text generator.

I've one question, though - is the trial version set-up so that effects such as reflections on flat surfaces are ultra-low res and therefore blocky or is it actually a major failure on the part of what appears to be an otherwise superb application?

Use the font Impact, with the metallic texture set to reflection and you'll see exactly what I mean

Hey Spot - I decided to go with SwishMax upon your recommendation - thanks a bunch. I upgraded to V5 and was able to throw the .swf file right up on the timeline and it does an excellent job. You ARE the man!

Doesn't SwishMAX export uncompressed .avi's? with Alpha?

I researched it back when I purchased WildFX Pro, and, no, SwishMax does not preserve the alpha channel in AVI its AVI renders.

Hmm, I must be doing something wrong, I can NOT get Vegas to recognize the WildFX Pro Alpha channel, so I always chroma key my effects, would be nice and a REAL timesaver if I didn't have to make the background green in Wild FX pro and key it in vegas just for some great efffects.