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Old 7th August 2010, 11:00 AM   #1
James
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Boston
Posts: 16
Default Some questions about plugins, new functions, and upgrading.

Hello,

I am still using the 2005 version as I cannot afford an upgrade right now. There are a few functions which I am told can work on my version but I simply cannot figure out how to work them. There are also one big concern question about the upgrade concerns that I have asked the help forum again and again but remain unaddressed.
Would someone who still remembers how to use the older version please help me finally answer a few questions?
*
Firstly, the File>import which used to allow me to download background images into the first window (xy) was somehow remotely disabled by Inivis at some point a couple of years ago, (heaven knows how, as I only use the program while Photoshop is running and never use it while the internet is open due to low RAM memory. It's creepy) being that I cannot save these PS/jpeg bitmap pics as any on the list of currently acceptable (*bsp/obj/smf/3ds, etc...) [is there a way on PS that I don't know of, thereby solving my problem?]. My background images are not created as vector pictures and so cannot be saved as such.

I've been told there is a bitmap -to-3D file converter plugin that already comes with the old version but I cannot seem to figure out how that is unlocked or activated or whatever.

Does the upgrade to current AC3d allow this old bitmap background image download again?
*
I have also been told that background images are set from the menus above each view, but I have responded again and again that there are no such menus on the little top bars along each Orthographic window on my version, only ones pertaining to shifting the image with keyboard controls which I do using mouse functions anyway. I am getting the same kindly solution suggestion again and again but of course it cannot work if there is no such little menu above each view. I assume this is a new feature of the new upgrade.
I would like to know if there is a jpeg-to-3D converter plugin available through your site (or anywhere) that would allow me to import jpeg files (or other common photoshop-compatible bitmap files)?
Could someone please direct or link me there? Please let me know if there is such a plugin in existence, on or off your site, and whether it's straightforward (download plugin-->open AC3D-->import jpeg as blueprint).
****

Secondly:
I would like some help in exporting Ac3d files to Blender3D and or 3D Modeler (and the reverse) in order to use the lattice-manipulation and Bezier-curve features they have. I have both licensed programs and both manuals. I was told this is commonly done but I still cannot seem to get it right, please forgive my difficulty with these intra-program skills.
I much prefer the menu-based AC3D interface but its subdivision morphing is not as smooth or sophisticated as the other programs (one of the only 2 features of these that I really think are better) for the squash and stretch modelling my work.
3D Modeler and Blender have one very very amazing function which formed a subdivided box around any model you were building, no matter how complicated, like putting it in a wireframe crate, which you could then push, tug and move the vertices of and they would correspondingly morph only those sections closest to the complex model inside in a smooth, completely integrated, organic way. It was amazing.
'Box Conform' is the only AC3d plugin I have and know of that approaches this function, but it is comparatively very limited compared to the section-specific 'frame-box' morph method of the others, as it only morphs the whole object at once.
*
The other programs also apparently had (I never actually used it) some crazy extrude generator that allowed you to make snaking curvilinear (or kinked and angled) tubes (which could be set to taper) in random, tangled directions like Borg-style plumbing, blood vessels, roots, roller coaster tracks or other dendritic shapes. It's pretty sophisticated, but I hated the odd (to me) interface of the rest of those programs.Does the newer upgrade of AC3D have stuff like this?
Does it have a Greeble-generator function?
****
Finally, I am still afraid that all my old models will not transfer (like different versions of MS Word documents) or work without problems (or at all) on the upgraded AC3D version. I have asked numerous times but no one has answered this simple question for me. This is of course a deal-breaker and the over-riding concern I have about upgrading.

Pending on your response, I may after all have to get the upgrade, but I am hoping you will answer my question about still being able to work with all these older models I use regularly.

Could anyone please email me their responses?: proteus19m@yahoo.com


Thank you very much for any help you can give.

James
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