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 on the

X-Plane (simulator) ''X-Plane'' is a flight simulation engine series developed and published by Laminar Research in 1995. X-Plane is the only flight simulator suitable for both Windows and macOS with commercial desktop versions available sold for macOS, Windows, ...

. The .ac format has also been used in FlightGear for scenery objects and aircraft models.

History

Initially developed on the Amiga, the code was then ported to

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and sof ...

workstations which used the GL graphics library. At that time, the user interface was implemented using

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

/ Motif. A

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

port was released onto the internet in 1994 (the GL graphics were replaced with OpenGL). A Microsoft Windows port followed when the X11 interface was dropped in favor of the portable

Tcl/Tk Tk is a free and open-source, cross-platform widget toolkit that provides a library of basic elements of GUI widgets for building a graphical user interface (GUI) in many programming languages. Tk provides a number of widgets commonly needed to ...

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 macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

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 ''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 ...

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++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

dynamic libraries ( plug-ins). A

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

(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) {{CAD-software-stub