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Old 8th October 2007, 09:10 AM   #1
Clear
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Default Why AC3D?

hi. for a while now ive wanted to get into 3d art but this stuff is hard as hell! ive learned a very small bit of techniques like extrude, bevel, subdivide you know really basic stuff. 3d software is ridiculously expensive too. ac3d is so affordable. i have a 14 day trial period.

ive tried everything from blender to anim8or and i cant get the hang of it. why does ac3d have such a cool desktop icon and such a fugly gui? does ac3d support gui skins? it looks so old fashioned compared to stuff like silo. im also looking at silo. why ac3d instead of silo? why ac3d?

Last edited by Andy; 8th October 2007 at 09:41 AM. Reason: bad language
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Old 8th October 2007, 02:02 PM   #2
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Default Re: Why AC3D?

hi. i was using ac3d today i was modeling the blender ginger bread man and after creating three copys of the ginger bread and subdvideing to the maximum level, ac3d started becoming very sluggish? hello anybody there?
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Old 8th October 2007, 02:49 PM   #3
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Default Re: Why AC3D?

Relax, no one's ignoring you. This is a small forum, and some of us were doing this strange thing called 'sleep'. (I usually try to avoid it, but every now and then my body betrays me! )

I've never tried to 'skin' the UI per se, but I have replaced several of the dialogs in my copy to add new features. Most of the dialogs are in TCL, so it's easy to go in and modify whatever you like. The plug-in interface is also good.

Customization, frankly, is one of the primary selling points of AC3D for me. I also like it because it is inexpensive, and very easy to use.

I know this isn't true for most people, but I also *heavily* make use of the TCP\IP interface. A lot of programs have slave renderers, but very, very few allow modeling by remote interface. A lot of times I get jobs that involve cleaning up and converting a few hundred models. Usually, the jobs involve things like unifying normals or fixing scale, so a simple file converter won't do. AC3D's TCP\IP interface will let you run any command--including custom commands added by plug-ins--which makes these kinds of conversion jobs achievable. I have a site license, so I can set up three or four computers with AC3D and control them all from a central "macro server" and complete the job in a very short time.

As for your gingerbread men... how many polys? What kind of video card do you have?
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Old 8th October 2007, 03:51 PM   #4
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Default Re: Why AC3D?

i have a intel 845g. i also have a pentium 4 2.8 gig pc. i have 768 ram. should i buy more ram a new videocard or both? priced within reason of course as im just doing this for fun
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Old 8th October 2007, 08:40 PM   #5
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Default Re: Why AC3D?

Well, either one never hurts, but with the card you have you'd probably get more bang out of better video card than RAM. I just checked the reviews, and BlueSmoke say that the GeForce2 MX400, which is only a $50 card, runs Quake III about twice as fast as your card. There's a lot of decent cards out there for under a $100 bucks these days, so I'd consider an upgrade.

If you don't have money for a new card though, you could always consider changing your workflow. Part of what makes subdivisions cool is that you can change the level of subdivision at will. You can work at a lower subdivision level, and only bump up the rez right before you're ready to render. I never keep my models at max subdivisions until I'm ready to export, which keeps things running snappy even when I have a lot of models in the scene.

Last edited by lisa; 8th October 2007 at 08:41 PM. Reason: can't spell
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Old 9th October 2007, 11:42 PM   #6
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Default Re: Why AC3D?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Clear View Post
ive tried everything from blender to anim8or and i cant get the hang of it. why does ac3d have such a cool desktop icon and such a fugly gui? does ac3d support gui skins? it looks so old fashioned compared to stuff like silo. im also looking at silo. why ac3d instead of silo? why ac3d?
When I started making 3D in 2005, I've tried several apps and found AC3D beeing the most user-friendly one. It's just that simple.
When you begin with AC3D you don' waist your time searching how to interact with your model in all the views, especially the perspective one. You just take your mouse, use its buttons and its wheel, and here you go.

Also the green handle is really helpfull and great to use.

Speaking of the GUI look, I've really no problem with it.
Especially since Dennis released his toolbar script.

So, after 2 years in the 3D field, as a hobbyist, AC3D is still my favourite modeler.
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Old 11th October 2007, 06:20 PM   #7
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Default Re: Why AC3D?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Clear View Post
i have a intel 845g. i also have a pentium 4 2.8 gig pc. i have 768 ram. should i buy more ram a new videocard or both? priced within reason of course as im just doing this for fun
768? As in, one 512 RAM card and one 256? Mixing RAM like that can cause system instabilities.

However, your problem with "Sluggishness" lies in a lack of RAM (Unless you have stuff actively textured, etc.), or just your RAM being eaten up by other programs. You can try to shut some RAM muchers off though the Task manager (CTRL-Alt-Del > Task Manager, or just CTRL-Shift-Esc). New RAM shouldn't run you up too much (I'd suggest Geeks.com)
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Old 15th October 2007, 06:17 PM   #8
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Default Re: Why AC3D?

Gooberz, sorry, I'm going to have to call you out on that post. Mixed RAM size is not an issue here. The 845g is a lowend consumer chipset with an integrated video design targeted at users that really don't do much more than word processing and e-mail.

The only place were matched RAM sticks is critical is when you have multi-processor systems that used banked memory slots. Or your system requires ECC or some other Parity based RAM. The critical component with this systems RAM is to be sure that each stick is of the same class/rating. If that's good then there should be no issues there.

The other problem with this chipset is it normally doesn't ship with it's own dedicated video RAM, it's utilizing video RAM from the system RAM, which in and of itself is a performance hit since system RAM does not run at the same clock/bus speed as dedicated RAM on a video card. I would have to vote that buying a cheep video card upgrade in this case is the optimal solution to the problem. The Nvidea card Lisa recommended should do the trick, but even then the 845g uses an older AGP bus (I think 1.1), so I would personally recommend that any video card you buy be PCI based with this board. It will save you the headache of having to research PCI compatibility, and you can find PCI based Nvidea 6200 (256MB) over on NewEgg right now for $45 (US) made by EVGA.
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