AC3D 6.1 review

AC3D project is a drawing software for anything in 3D. AC3D can draw: · games · virtual reality and flight simulation · scienti

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Inivis Limited

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AC3D project is a drawing software for anything in 3D.

AC3D can draw:
games
virtual reality and flight simulation
scientific, medical and general data visualisation
rapid prototypes of 3D designs
high resolution 3D renderings

Here are some key features of "AC3D":
Simple, intuitive 'click and drag' user interface
Truetype font 2D and 3D text generator
Integrated graphical texture coordinate editor
Subdivision surface modeling
Boolean operations
Fast real-time OpenGL graphics views (2D and 3D)
Multipoint polygon and line editing down to vertex level
No polygon limits
Extrusion and surface revolution
Software development kit and plugin interface.
Fast and memory efficient, compact program binary.
Built-in fast OpenGL 3D renderer with adjustable field-of-view - instantly see results of your actions in 3D. Spin the model or switch into 'walk mode' for Quake-style control.
Edit at different granularity - groups, objects, surfaces, vertices
Full polygon editing. e.g create a sphere and easily move the points (vertices) to deform the shape.
Create and edit multi-point polygons and lines - not just triangles.
Manipulate individual surfaces
insert/remove vertices
make holes
spike
spline
bevel
triangulate
flip
subdivide
Texture mapping support with real-time rendering.
Texture/background image file formats supported:
GIF
JPG
PNG
BMP
DDS
PPM
TGA (Targa)
TIF
Graphical Texture Coordinate Editor (UV Mapper)
Assemble surfaces into new objects
4 views - 3 orthographic and one 3D. All at once or individually.
Named objects can be searched for within a scene
Navigate/Zoom around the 2d views with cursor keys and other single key presses
Hierarchical view window
Hide/unhide objects for easier/faster editing of complicated scenes
Headlight and up to 7 other positionable lights
24-bit colour palette with adjustable diffuse; ambient; emissive; specular; shininess and transparency
Adjustable 2D and 3D grid guide lines with grid-snap function
Create new surfaces/objects around any selection (Convex hull)
Configurable to use external renderers such as Povray and BMRT - just select Tools->Render to start.
Multi platform program - AC3D file format compatible across platformsAttach URLs to objects for use in VRML files
Attach string data to objects to be used as scripting in Dive or special directives for POV or renderman
Supports many output/input formats including
3D-studio 3DS
Lightwave
Alias triangle
DXF
VRML1 and 2 and Inventor
Povray
Renderman RIB
Triangles
Direct X
Milkshape
Quake 3 bsp
MD2
Wavefront OBJ
OFF
stl (ascii)
sof (airfoil)
SMF
T3D
LDRAW .ldr (Lego)
Extrude and revolve 2D lines to make 3D shapes.
scale a selection to a specific size
flip a selection (mirror) about X, Y or Z axis
Remove duplicate vertices and surfaces ('optimize')
Simple documented file formats allow easy conversion from other forms of data - ideal for visualizing your own data in 3D.
Developer SDK.

What's New in This Release:
Six new Boolean functions were added: subtract, intersect, union, cut-away, knife, and knife+cut-away.
A Terragen .ter terrain importer was added.
A Surface-Flatten function was added.
Hierarchy drag and drop was added.