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 video game, flight simulator initially launched by Laminar Research in 1995. Commercial Desktop computer, desktop versions are sold for macOS, Windows, and Linux. A mobile version has been available for Android (o ...

. 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 produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

, 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 soft ...

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 originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

/ Motif. A

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

port was released onto the internet in 1994 (the GL graphics were replaced with

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

). A

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

port followed when the X11 interface was dropped in favor of the portable

Tcl/Tk Tk is a 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. It is free and open-source software released under a BSD-style software l ...

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, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

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 a multiplayer virtual world that allows people to create an Avatar (computing), avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online environment. Developed for person ...

sculpted prim 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 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 t ...

(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