AC3D is a 3D design program which has been available since 1994. The software is used by designers for modeling 3D graphics for games and simulations - most notably it is used by the scenery creators at
Laminar Research
Laminar Research is a small software company based in Columbia, South Carolina, and dedicated to providing software that accurately reflects the laws of physics. Laminar's flagship product is the flight simulator ''X-Plane''. The game works with ...
on the
X-Plane (simulator). The .ac format has also been used in
FlightGear for scenery objects and aircraft models.
History
Initially developed on the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
, the code was then ported to
Silicon Graphics workstations which used the GL graphics library. At that time, the user interface was implemented using
X11/
Motif
Motif may refer to:
General concepts
* Motif (chess composition), an element of a move in the consideration of its purpose
* Motif (folkloristics), a recurring element that creates recognizable patterns in folklore and folk-art traditions
* Moti ...
.
A
Linux port was released onto the internet in 1994 (the GL graphics were replaced with
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...
). A
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
port followed when the X11 interface was dropped in favor of the portable
Tcl/Tk scripting library.
In 2002, Inivis Limited purchased the full intellectual property rights to AC3D and continues to develop and market the software. They decided to keep the name AC3D for the software.
In 2005, a
Mac OS X version of AC3D was released.
Modeling
AC3D's modeling is polygon/subdivision-surface based. Unlike some other 3D software, AC3D refers to 'surfaces' rather than 'polygons'. An AC3D surface can be a polygon, polygon-outline or line. An AC3D object is a collection of surfaces.
3D files
AC3D can load and save a wide variety of 3D file formats but primarily uses its own .ac file format which is ascii.
Inivis is the first 3rd party vendor to offer officially sanctioned support for the
Second Life sculpted prim
''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...
format; exporters for other 3D software packages exist, but are solely user-supported.
Scripting and plugins
Extra functionality can be added to AC3D via Tcl/Tk scripts and/or
C/
C++ dynamic libraries (
plug-ins). A
software development kit (SDK) is available to licensed users.
References
External links
Inivis Limited
3D graphics software
Computer-aided design software for Linux
3D computer graphics software for Linux
Proprietary commercial software for Linux
Software that uses Tk (software)
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