ac3d 8.3

AC3D is intended for viewing, editing and creating 3D models. Luckily, the tool is highly compatible with many other similar objects and renderers, which facilitates sharing objects.

In this regard, the application supports both importing and exporting a long list of file types, including 3DS, TER, DAE, STL, DXF, MSF, MD2, PTS, BSP, RWX, OFF, TRI, R2V, OBJ, WRL, SOF, PF, LWO, LDR, DAT, Collada and MPD.

If you are familiar with other 3D editors, you will probably feel at ease with this application. However, it is quite convenient there is an excellent accompanying user guide to answer any question you may still have. Likewise, the installation package comes with a opportune sample library.

It has a neat interface which shows views of the object from four different perspectives. Still, this does not mean that you cannot change it to a layout you feel more comfortable with. Besides, there are collapsible panels on both sides, which are meant to switch selection and manipulation modes as well as drawing new objects and customizing their properties. Still, the toolbar is where you can access most functions.

AC3D supports drawing your own objects, including not only tridimensional ones, like spheres, boxes, disks and cylinders, but also flat ones and even lights. Next, it is possible to pick any of its various selection modes: by group, object, surface and vertex. Then, you can transform any object by moving, resizing, rotating and extruding. Moreover, the selected objects can be revolved, mirrored, fragmented, merged and exploded. In addition, you can make them look more realistic by adding texture to its various surfaces.

Once you are done with editing part, the scene or object can be rendered. In this respect, although there is a powerful built-in renderer engine to help you do it, you can also use many other third-party renderers that can be integrated. Unfortunately, it failed to properly generate one of the models that come as sample. Instead, I got an error message saying “can’t see draw mode.”

All in all, AC3D is definitely a good alternative for generally expensive products of its type. It may come in handy for designing 3D models for a variety of uses. But, do not take my word for it; instead, why don’t you give it a try? It is free to test for 14 days after its first use.