Electric Rain (ERain) recently released Swift 3D version 5 for Windows. Swift3D v5 for Mac is coming out this year and it is going to be a big hit. Swift3D is the only 3D program that can be directly integrated with Adobe Flash and provides fast high quality vector rendering.

“When it comes to creating 3D vector animations, Swift3D doesn’t have any competition. For its ease-of-use and rapid development of 3D Flash, it really can’t be beat.” says MacReview.

Of course, you don’t have to export 3D animations as vector, you can also export as video which gives you all the capabilities of motion graphic design.

For more information, go to the Swift 3D page.

Microsoft released yesterday Silverlight, its plug-in for delivering rich interactive multimedia over the web. The Silverlight environment directly competes with Adobe’s Flash for deploying video and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for consumption across various browsers and platforms. The first edition of Silverlight will not serve any interactive content and will be mainly used for the delivery of high definition video for which it has partnered with several major websites to the exclusively deliver their videos through it.

It is also interesting to note that Electric Rain has also announced the support of Silverlight in its most recent release of Swift3D, the acclaimed 3D solution for producing web friendly 3d models and animations widely used by Flash developers. Swift3D will now come with built-in support for authoring Silverlight content which users could use to show their created content using the Silverlight plug-in over the Internet.

The race between Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight has now officially started. Adobe already has a head start with its domination of the web as the standard for delivering video, but it has already responded to the Silverlight threat by announcing a new update for the Flash Player to support high-definition video in hope to remain the primary format for the delivery of online video.

Silverlight is available for download for the Windows and Mac platforms for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Linux support will soon follow through the Moonlight project carried in cooperation with Novell. Visit Silverlight’s official website to learn more about it.