1) The way to get rid of shading on an object in AC3D, is to right-click on the material of that object, and set all of its propertys to maximum value(except transperancy of course)
2) I have had experience with Terragen and AC3D.
basicly Terragen exports a Lightwave file, that AC3D can import, but it does a horrible and slow job, with little flexability.(at least last time i tried)
Terragen also exports a grayscale heightmap file(.bmp)
i have been working on a Heightmap importer for a while(see
http://ac3d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=428), but AC3D always seems to have memory issues when i open the bmp file.(dont ask me why)
i have made a seprate application that opens a bmp file and creates an AC3D file out of it.
if you want i could give you that, until if figure out that damn plugin. :lol:
just send me a PM.
3) When you use the Flip x/y/z buttons(at top of ac3d) it doesnot flip normals, resulting in oposite facing surfaces than you were probly wanting.
just goto Surface>Flip Normals(or Ctrl-Shift_N) after the flip, to fix that problem.
5)until AC3D itself supports animation, thats a real problem.
the only cheap($30) animation program, that supports alot of formats ac3d does, that ive found, is CharacterFX(
http://www.insanesoftware.de/).
althought ive not used it that much, i heard its not that great.
dowload the demo and see what you think.
--Philip