previous suggestions

[Andy]

AC3D is used for a wide variety of purposes - what would you like to see added?

[RossageSausage]

First of all...wonderful product...best model maker I have used.

Some suggestions:

1. Animation: THIS WOULD BE THE ICING ON THE CAKE, due to the fact that ac3d is the easiest modeler to use, if you added animation support I would be the happiest person on the planet. Plus you guys obviously know how to make a user-friendly program so I bet you could make awesome, easy-to-use animation tools.

2. TextureCoordinator: When you zoom in you can only zoom in on the middle of the texture, when I zoom in I'd like to be able to zoom in on any portion of the texture

3. Lighting: As of now you can only add white lights to your object...multicolored would help quite a bit:)

Thats all I got for now.....I hope that you get this (LETS GET THIS FORUM GOING)!!!!!

Maybe to help you should make this forum available to the public........I have lots of people who inquire about the program who would benifit from open discussion

My Two Cents

RossageSausage

[dasteph]

Hi all,

I've been using AC3D for about 8 months and am well pleased with it, great work all round thanks for this great modeller. Now to the requests / suggestions ...

1) Cameras would be great: I'm using AC3D to make complex scenes and the ability to have a number of cameras would be an immense help.
2) Lights: If not extra types, at least the ability to change the values of point lights within AC3D.

[Mega Man]

I purchased AC3D a while ago. I'm one of those people who buy software and almost never use it. But I recently started using AC3D and I was shocked at how incredible it was. But the one problem I have is the flipping of objects. I'm making levels for games and it slows down the process when I have to make sure every normal is pointing in the right direction when I duplicate and flip objects. I was hoping you could include the option to automatically flip normals when flipping objects. Thanks for the software.

[Thaellin]

There are a few things I've started noticing recently that seem to be missing...

1. The ability to mirror an object across an arbitrary (or just axis-aligned) plane. I've been creating a fairly complex land rover ( > 40,000 triangles) which is perfectly symmetrical (at the moment at least). If I were able to create just half of it, then mirror it and weld the halves together, I could save some processing power. Andy, you mentioned you had used GMax for some 3ds testing - look into the mirror options for 'copy' and 'reference'.

2. Processing power brings up another point... Right now, in that model above, if I accidentally switch to vertex selection mode while I have the whole model selected... well... I might as well go get a bite to eat. This is a 1GHz Athlon with 256MB of memory and a Radeon9000 under Linux. The 3D itself can be manipulated at good speed, but many AC3D operations (particularly when it has to touch a lot of elements) perform slowly.

3. Multi-texturing. Ideally, this would allow an arbitrary number of textures to be applied to a model with user-defined application modes. I'd really like to apply a bump map in addition to my detail map from within the modeller.

4. In the AC3D file format, I think a 'user' object would be beneficial - this would be ignored by the core AC3D program, but would be preserved in all file operations. Any number of user objects might be present in a file, each with a name, location, arbitrary ascii lines, and kid count. This would be used to allow plug-ins to extend the file capabilities without breaking AC3D compatibility. The current User Data field is not quite flexible enough.

Out of the predefined options, I really do want 'animation' most. I've already voted up there...

I'll go do some work, now.
-- Jeff

[Balrog]

In an older version of Corel Draw they included a 3D modeler, but it was almost impossible to use and understand. Your program actually gives me hope of being able to create some 3D images, and maybe halfway know what I am doing :wink:

One thing that I would like to see is more light features, colored lighing, directional, etc..

[Bob Pieterson]

I keep forgetting the grid settings I was working with the last time I worked on a model. And the placement of the background pictures I use.

So my wish is:
A project settings file of some sort on top of the model file. The default settings when opening a new project is also a project settings file.

Am I going off the scale? Or did I overlook something that was always there.

Greetings

[Thaellin]

I never seem to be done suggesting changes to this program 8P

I think DDS texture file format support would be nice. The format is designed to provide precalulated mipmap support, bump and color textures, and (most importantly) compressed texture formats.

The data for each mip level can be compressed in a way that modern hardware understands - so you can upload a complete 1024x1024 texture and mip levels in a little over 1MB of data.

Information about the file format can be found on Microsoft's site (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/directx9_c/directx/graphics/reference/ddsfilereference/ddsfileformat.asp). Yes, OpenGL does support this through extensions (on every card I know of from Voodoo5 upwards... a fairly exhaustive support list can be found at http://www.delphi3d.net/hardware/extsupport.php?extension=GL_ARB_texture_compressio n).

Have fun,
-- Jeff

[SumGuy]

AC3D is a great program. I love it because its so easy to use. Im not really artistic, but I can do pretty nice things with AC3D. It would be my favorite 3d program, but THERE IS NO ANIMATION!!! It would be perfect if it had an easy-to-use animation system.

I would also like to be able to export MD2 files. Im learning how to program with OpenGL, and MD2 is the only kind of file I currently know how to use in my programs! Plus its a pretty popular format.

But, above all else, AC3D NEEDS AN ANIMATION SYSTEM!

[searlejr]

I use AC3D mostly for education in the basics of building low-poly models for real-time application use. So to that end what would be useful are:

1. More sophisticated model hierarchy manipulation tools (grouping, ungrouping, reordering, etc)

2. More sophisticated Texture Coordinate Editor (although adding the first version of the TCE in at all has been a HUGE boon for us... and our students).

3. Multiple textures per object (without needing to break geometry into separate sub-objects). Detail/Decal/Sub-face type textures would be particularly nice.

4. An OpenFlight importer and exporter would be the final icing on the cake, in our market area, but I appreciate that's probably a bit too niche/specialist.


For me, AC3D's great strength has always been as a specialist modeller and that's what I'd like to see further developed and enhanced, rather than putting effort into attempting to add-in animation capabilities.

Jonathan

[Rick Kimball]

Here is my short list:

o Selectable Ortho Views (Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Front and Back) 3 is fine
but i want to pick what is in each pane

o Select one or more surfaces and press a button that makes all normals
point Outside and a different button for facing them all Inside * ala blender3d

o More types of light * Direction, Spotlight, Pointlight

o Builtin texture shadow baking. Texture all objects, light the scene.
Have it create new a single texture with the shadows applied based
on the lights. It would also adjust the texture coordinates of each
face so they mapped properly on the new single texture.

o A feature like the triangulate .. but instead .. turn everything into quads

o Mulit-texture support for things like bump maps

o Once I have selected something, it would be nice to be able to move it
using a keypress. Pressing the arrow keys would move it some preference
based amount. left, right, up, down * ala blender

* many more .. but would be most happy with these

[jason379]

I have only been using AC3D for a day now and I love it. There are a couple of things that would make my life a lot easier.

I could really use a background image in the 3D view, one that works just like the background image in all of the ortho views. I do a lot of work from photographs and sometimes you just can't get an ortho-friendly shot.

I also model a lot of symmetrical objects, cars and such, so if the previous poster is correct and there is no "mirror" function I'd like to see it added.

Additional ortho views would be nice. It is sometimes useful to work with front, top, back or similar combinations. Three windows at a time is fine (IMHO) but it would be nice to be able to choose what view goes in what window.

Down the road I would really love to see CgFX (http://ww.cgshaders.org/) support so that I can apply a custom shader at modeling time. I haven't looked at the SDK yet but I'm hoping I can add this myself if necessary.

Great program, happy to pay for it.

[gohminghui88]

I like AC3D !! :lol: It's easy to use and system requirements was not high . Furthermore , it's fast . :D
Well , to improve it , maybe a user friendly animator can be added and also the texture/material editor may be added and improved with more features like reflection , transparency etc. :?

[SchodMC]

AC3D is a realy easy to use Software! But the following things will be nice to have:

- Question to confirm before overwriting existing files :(

- Animation Support

- Maybe Lightmapping ?

- Image-Browser for preview of textures. It will be more easy to assign a texture to an object if I had a preview of the selected texture-file bevor loading it.

[Greg]

In conversations I've had with Andy, many moons ago (around the corner of 3.0-days), Andy stated that nurbs support was being planned. Where are they?

I would love to see animation support!!! You might be interested in looking at what blender is doing here. Plus, there is a blender subproject to create an exporter to crystal space. I know animation is part of the information they are targeting now. Would be awesome to be able to use ac3d as a level designer, animation tool, and general modeler for crystal space. Right now, I think a lot of people are looking at blender to help fill the role, but let's face it, blender's interface is horrible! If you're serious about animation support, please consider looking at the cal3d (http://cal3d.sourceforge.net) library.

Would be great if a status line was added to prevent pesky pop-up dialogs! Like the optimize stuff. Do we really need a dialog to pop up? Wouldn't it be better to have a status line which communicate the status of various operations?

Would also be nice to be able to contrain movement to specifc axis. For example, when extruding an object, being able to press, say shift, while moving the moving to contrain it would be really nice.

[spiderbarker]

My work has been exclusively aircraft and instrumentation for Flight Gear. So that might color my opinions.

ANIMATION-
Animation isn't a big desire here. The ac3d interface is easy to use and I would hate to see it get complicated with an animation feature. There are other options for folks interested in that. A well written blender export might be useful in that regard.

Listed in order of importance...

MIRROR-
Mirror duplication would be a big plus for my work. I already do it manually with a text editor. All you need to do is dup the object, reverse the sign on the vertice values that corrispond to the axis you want to mirror along. Then flip the surface normals.

SELECT BY MATERIAL-
It would be useful to be able to select surfaces by material from the material popup menu.

SELECT BY TEXTURE-
A single texture per object isn't a problem as far as I'm concerned. Doing otherwise would require some radical changes to the ac3d format. It would be useful to be able to do an object selection by texture. A edit/select popup that would let you choose the texture you are concerned about and having all objects referencing that texture get selected.

SCALING IN THE TCE-
At times it would be useful to be able to scale texture mapping uniformly. A function that performs scaling of the text map coordinates in a way similar to the geometry edit.

ROTATING IN THE TCE-
For some reason I can't seem to figure out the rotate function in the TCE. Something that rotated the mapping around a given center point would be useful at times.

[Mizkreant]

I'm sure I'll think of more later, but this is just off the top of my head.

Turn Edge - This is a critical function, especially for low poly modeling.

Divide Edge - Ditto.

Ability to use relative coordinates instead of absolute.

Ability to enter the coordinates/size of just one or two axes in the move/size box.

Ability to paste the coordinates of the current cursor position into the move boxes.

Backface culling - Auto hide vertices/edges/faces behind the current view (ex. if looking from the front view, hide things that overlap on the x/y axes but are so many Z units behind)

I don't think adding animation should be a priority until the modeling tools are improved.

[JimB]

Andy
Would it be possible in a future version to have
a Knife tool and maybe a lasso for selection, I
have gotten used to these through using Metasequoia3dLE
they make modeling a lot easier.

Thanks

JimB

[Andy]

Hi Jim,

what does a the knife tool do?

Andy

[JimB]

The knife tool inserts vertices where dragged across
an object,for instance if I make a cylinder then decide
I want to add more sections to it I would use the knife tool.
I hope this makes sense.

JimB

[rjmeza]

AC3D is used for a wide variety of purposes - what would you like to see added?

I know this is a far off request, but I would like to see AC3D exporter
export to (VRML) have the ability to link objects with MSAccess
Database (*.mdb).

There is a tremendous demand for this application for networking, GIS and DOD Ship modeling. Apparently they have been successful in using VRML with (Oracle and Cold Fusion), but this would Require a server and additional resources +$$$.


Rick Meza

[Andy]

Hi Rick,

I'm not sure how this works but the vrml exporter could be changed so that the object data string was inserted into the output. You could then enter your database commands etc and see them in the vrml output.

?

Andy

[goff]

I would like to see better grouping to form hierarchical models. (Which you will need if you are going to animate the model).

AND new group types:
LOD (select child on distance, hide others)
switch (select 1 or more child for other reason, hide others)
matrix transform (part of animation anyway) - for translate, rotate, scale, skew.
static matrix transform (which can be flattened out of real time)
instance (of a group/object eg)
include (an external file)

And option to use a trackball view rotator in addition to the current 'azimuth/altitude' rotator (see http://www.quakeforge.net/doxygen/trackball_8c-source.html for source code that works from SGI).

Goff

[Andy]

thanks for those suggestions.

Adding support for the trackball should be quite easy from a plugin

You have these functions to play with:

Prototype Person *get_person(); /** returns ptr to Person structure **/
Prototype Boolean ac_person_is_walk_vehicle();
Prototype void person_set_walk();
Prototype void person_set_spin();
Prototype void ac_person_scale_mult(float zoommult);
Prototype void ac_person_scale_div(float zoomdiv);
Prototype void ac_person_set_rotation(Point3 *rotdegs);
Prototype void ac_person_add_rotation(Point3 *rotdegs);
Prototype void person_reset();
Prototype void person_turn_left(float angle); /** angle in degrees **/
Prototype void person_turn_right(float angle);
Prototype void person_turn_down(float angle);
Prototype void person_turn_up(float angle);
Prototype void person_move_left(float dist);
Prototype void person_move_right(float dist);
Prototype void person_move_forward(float dist);
Prototype void person_move_back(float dist);
Prototype void person_move_up(float dist);
Prototype void person_move_down(float dist);
Prototype void person_set_location(Point3 *p);
Prototype void person_set_offset(Point3 *offset); /** for spin mode **/
Prototype void person_zero_offset(); /** spin mode origin **/
Prototype void person_get_spin_rotation(float *x, float *y);
Prototype void person_set_spin_rotation(float x, float y);
Prototype void person_add_spin_rotation(float x, float y);

Andy

[-WOODY-]

I'd like to check all those options, but since I can choose only one, I picked other. What would be neat is a set of sculpting tools.
Having a function that would be something like ball or wedge shape that you could adjust the size and intensity of. You could for instance use it to make folds in fabric that would be smooth and easily contoured with the model.
Also a wedge type of tool that would be perfect for shaping in detail for heads and faces like the wrinkles around the eyes. All of these tools having the option to push or pull. Being able to use this in the 3D window would be nice as well
Also ( don't know what you call it ) a function to where if you grab a vertice and want to pull it up or in some other direction, you could have a setting to where a given number of surrounding vertices would be affected as well. Sort of a smoothing option. Settings for that being how many surrounding vertices you want to effect and strength of effect.

[goff]

1 I would like to see the light objects extended:
i) to set colours of the spec,amb,diffuse... colours; (you could attach a material to the light, though this would waste some parameters such as shininess)
ii) make directional light properties, with all OpenGL dropoff parameters
iii) add optional geometry to represent the light 'bulb/candleflame/candelabra/wall light...' - this would of course automatically move with the light source.

2 I would like to see reflection coefficient added to materials (mainly useful for Povray, but could be useful in OpenSceneGraph and modern rendering engines for example). There are probably other parameters (jitter..) relevant to ray tracing too, but I am not expert in these.

GeoffM

[Razer]

a cutting tool would be great and maybe a different way to handle spherical mapping would be great. Right now the sperical mapping does map and object like one would think and it takes some work in the TCE to get it to look right.

[Cowboybebop]

First and foremost for me is .ASE Import/export

Animation bone animation with the option to save animation to a separate file like a .skl. Something to were you could use the same animation on different models

Extend lighting - Make the lighting adjustable, add more types light.

Multi Texturing

Modify existing models- To be able to do simply things like bend a pole, quickly.

I disagree with the use of CGfx including that in the base product would make me puke. If shader support is to be added then make it general hlsl First baked in and then add CG as a plug in down the road. If your going to add shaders

[kibble]

Could we have some sort of nurbs controller or something. I would love to edit nurbs by grabbing the control points and drag them about to create curved surfaces. A format to export them out as the control points and the such that I could manually import them into an OpenGL C program or any other manner in which to achieve the same goal.

Thanks... :arrow:

[kibble]

I just read what was said at: http://www.ac3d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=250&highlight=nurbs#925

By Andy Colebourne. So scrap my idea above .. dang hee hee

Althou I thought it was a good idea... :)

[-WOODY-]

So Andy, how far along are you to your next release? On a percentage scale, would you say that it's around 75 to 80% done?

[Andy]

There will be a bug-fix release very soon - likely 4.0f.

Andy

[modeler]

1. Ability to rotate around a specified point.
2. Ability to ratate around a specified line.

[-WOODY-]

Well after long thought I've narrowed my "would love to see" features down to 2 options.
One is a knife tool to divide normals along a user set path, and the second is the ability to move a vertice that is constrained along an edge. That would be helpful when adjusting vertices in one view along an edge without the worry of it getting all caddy-wompus.

[Cowboybebop]

r as animation being able to set up something like this would be incredible

http://www.threedy.com/showthread.php?s=6df6cefc76d8ea200974a2419e5f0ead&threadid=12400

If we all have to narrow it down to 2 things and since woody already mentioned knife tool and many of you mentioned lights I'm going to go with;

1. Layers being able to select part of your model in any mode vertex, surface, object and assign it to a layer which you can either hide or lock.

2. Animation- i know something is in the works what would like is saving skeletal information to a seperate file like a .skl. A catalog of animations defined already that can be in different models. Example you make a nimation of a guy walking save the animation load a different model say a overwieght guy load the same animation and then if you wanted you could change it up a bit and make it more realistic as the bigger guy would walk a little different.

That's it(as if that's easy) :lol:

[Laurifer]

I purchased AC3D and I am very happy with it. I use it for school projects and for my little games.

Right now, I think animation is the most needed element. Different colored lights are needed, too. Sometimes I need light, but not a lot of light. No matter how far away you move the light from the object, it casts the same strength beam. It would be good if you could specify how strong you wanted it.

Can't wait for the next verson to come out!

-Laurifer

[LiveWire]

-The Knife Tool would be great, being able to divide surfaces by a user set path, or being able to divide a surface from one edge to another manually.

-MultiTexturing!have int each object save more than one Texture Directory and UV cords!

-Animation!(would complete a perfect tool)

-More Lights!

[gogi]

Well, I would like to see more developing in the modeling tools direction. Cut polygons tool will be nice. Also moving selection with keypress. Maybe possibity to have reference pictures in 3D window, in xyz positions, three of them please . Some textures and shaders, maybe.

[Andy]

gogi - AC3D 4.0.8 has Vertex->slice-surface to cut a surface across two vertices. I know it's probbaly not exactly what you wanted but it should help.

To get a reference image in the 3D window, how about making a cube, removing 3 sides, texturing the surfaces and then hiding the object, but displaying it in the 3D window?

Andy

[gogi]

Great idea Andy I`ll try that right now.Thak you.

[r_kabouter]

Hello. This program is cool. Too bad it doesn't support animations like milkshape, but the geometry editing is easier (the realtime mirror owns milkshape). So, I vote for limb animations!

Anyway, i think it could also use directx .x import. That would be great. Oh, and just a suggestion, for aesthetics I think you could still make the sidebar much narrower. Nothing much, I just want to see a bit more. I mean, there is so much blank space that the options just don't use, so maybe the buttons can be oriented vertically instead.

[gizmo_thunder]

It would be great if AC3D had support for animation
im' sure this would make it the best one available :)
way to go AC3D!!

[bill]

It would be cool to have a terrain editor/creator based on a black & white depthmap like in ms3d & bryce.

[LiveWire]

i was trying to write a plugin that would do exactly that...but i had some errors, and then just kind of gave up, on lack of interest.
mabye ill try and figure it out....hmmmm

[Dennis]

I'd like to add another vote for layers in AC3D.

I've been using AC3D to do my modeling, and using Blender for animations, rendering, and a few advanced features. As quick as Blender is for modeling when you get the hang of it, I still prefer AC3D for modeling.

But I'm absolutely spoiled on layers. I'm building a house in AC3D (interior plus exterior), and am constantly hiding/unhiding areas - problem is, I'd like to be able to hide/unhide pieces of the interior only, and keep the exterior hidden at all times until I want to preview.

I've done tricks like fleshing out the interior and saving it to a different file and remerging once I'm reasonably satisfied, but nothing replaces being able to hide/unhide entire layers at once. Makes even slightly complex models much friendlier...

[Newbee]

A script for importing multiple objects and placing them at specific coordinates as listed in a text file.

[Flatline]

A Maya file importer/exporter would be great.
A sensible way to map my own keybord hotkeys--priceless.

[Andy]

>A Maya file importer/exporter would be great.

Do you mean for PLE or for the Maya Ascii format?

PLE is (deliberately) secret binary and the ascii format is essentially Maya specific script.

If you have full Maya, You should be able to export to one of the many formats AC3D supports.

You may be able to add your own hotkeys from tcl - what is it you want to add? (post a new thread)

Andy

[Stiglr]

Animation would truly rock my world....!!

But the thing that isn't on the list is...

Booleans that work correctly. Ours simply do NOT.

You can do a B-A subtraction, after setting up so that A fully intersects B and *not* get a nice hole in the B object, rather a tunnel through an otherwise hollow B object, with all the surfaces on the outside of B still remaining, and needing to be removed, along with all the "inside tunnel" surfaces that you didn't need or want anyway.

And Intersection doesn't seem to work either. You get everything BUT the result you want. Inward faces. Leftover materials from non-intersecting pieces, even though you've selected both items for deletion.

Frustrating.

[Andy]

Send me a model file that's causing problems and I'll have a look. The boolean is quite sensitive to normals and objects being closed.

Andy

[semar]

Hi AC3D crew,

best congratulations for such a nice, effective, user friendly and intuitive modelling software !!

I would really like to have a Blitz3D (B3D) exporter, or at least, the possibility to access to each single object from an exported .X or .3DS model.

Thanks for your attention, and please keep on with AC3D !

Sergio.