Re: Simple modeller

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Jan Ekholm wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Oct 2002, Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> 
>>Jan Ekholm wrote:
>>
>>
>>>What suggestions for *simple* modellers do you guys and girls have?
>>
>>AC3D - very simple, easy to use. Not OpenSource, costs $40.
>>
>>Blender - 'quirky' user interfact, some people *love* it, others
>>          (me included) find it to be so horrible as to be quite
>>          literally unusable.  This has *just* become OpenSource
>>          freeware.  Quite complex.
> 
> 
> Yeah, Blender could be ok, if the UI designers hadn't been too high on
> caffeine or something. :) Once you spend a few weeks with it I think
> you'll appreciate Blender's interface, but during my first hours with it I
> didn't even find the "File" menu. 

I can't stand using it enough to stay with it for a few weeks - and I have
run through the tutorials and read the manuals.

> But if you do think an idiot like me could actually learn AC3D I'll give
> it a chance. The 40$ is no problem, good software is allowed to cost
> money.

There is a 'playable demo' too - it does everything (including saving
files) - the only problem is that none of the formats you can load models
from are available for saving them in.

I couldn't imagine a simpler interface for just putting polygons in - although
sometimes aligning textures just the way you want can be a bit ugly.  There
is a new beta version out that allegedly goes some way to addressing that - I
havn't played with that much yet.

If your alternative is to start writing something from scratch, then it's
certainly worth the $40 + a couple of hours effort to give AC3D a chance.

Writing even the simplest modeller from scratch would probably take a thousand
hours.  Pretty Poly came close - but it's a lot of work for an OpenSource
team - which is why there aren't any really good OpenSource modellers yet (IMHO).

----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
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