BoxShot3D Virtual Cover Generator Update
As many of you already know, I am a fan of BoxShot 3d (read my review post to see why). It is really a virtual cover renderer although most people call this type of software a virtual cover generator. Okay, so what is it?
Well, let’s say you have written an ebook and made it available for people to download. Anyone who has sold anything online will tell you that people respond better (= buy more) if they can see an image of what it is that they are considering purchasing. Since there is no physical product with an ebook, how do you get an image that will make people want to buy it? This is where virtual cover generators like BoxShot 3D come in.
You create or find an image you would like to use for the front cover, the spine or side, and the back cover. In BoxShot3D you tell it what sort of book image you would like – hard cover, soft cover, report with various bindings etc. Then you tell it the images you wish to use for the front cover, spine etc and finally you tell it to render it.
BoxShot 3D uses raytracing to produce a very realistic-looking image complete with highlights, shadows and reflections. If you could take an ebook photo this is what it would look like. The icing on the cake is that you can apply texture to the cover images as well. For example, you might decide that you would like your cover to look like it is embossed leather. Well you can make it look just like that. I am not aware of any other ebook cover software that does that.
I have primarily used BoxShot 3D for ebook covers and real book covers, believe it or not. Why real book covers? Well, often I have a scanned image of the book cover. Rather than have to get the camera out, set up the book and take a photo, I find it quicker and easier to tell BoxShot3D the type of book, the image and get it to render it! Not only that, but I can get it to render a book on a pile of books – something I can’t do if I only have one copy of the physical book.
There are many other shapes that BoxShot 3D has that I haven’t used yet but as the number of my websites grows I find I will be using more of them. The next version of BoxShot3d will include even more shapes. In the meantime, if there is a shape that Boxshot3D doesn’t have you can import 3D Studio Max shapes. How good is that?
This is an extremely versatile piece of software and I have not seen anything else that provides so much functionality. And it is available for both Windows and Macs. Have a look at it and see what I mean. You can even download a demo of the product to see how well it works and how easy it is to use.