Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D

Ninja · 19th December 2007, 05:28 PM

Hi, i am quite new to AC3D, just wanted to learn more about it.

What exactly are the possabilities of AC3D, what can it do? I was thinking, it enables user to produce wonderful graphics, but what exactly can you do with these graphics that you create.

Can you actualy display them on a web page?

Can you create Games any how?

Well these are the two things that came to my mind, if so please do let me know.

Thanks in advance.

lisa · 19th December 2007, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ninja

Can you actualy display them on a web page?

Can you create Games any how?

Sure thing!

I don't know if you've looked at the AC3D user gallery yet, but there's lots of good examples of things people have done: http://www.inivis.com/gallery.html To make pictures for the web from AC3D, you can copy the view window, or use an external renderer to produce the image such as POVRay.

As far as games, AC3D is used by people making content for X-Plane, Second Life and several other games. My company makes coin-ops, and we use AC3D a lot. In fact, most of the 3D stuff in our gallery (http://www.tfpsoft.com/about/gallery/index.html) was made with AC3D.

speciesunknown · 4th May 2008, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisa

Sure thing!

I don't know if you've looked at the AC3D user gallery yet, but there's lots of good examples of things people have done: http://www.inivis.com/gallery.html To make pictures for the web from AC3D, you can copy the view window, or use an external renderer to produce the image such as POVRay.

As far as games, AC3D is used by people making content for X-Plane, Second Life and several other games. My company makes coin-ops, and we use AC3D a lot. In fact, most of the 3D stuff in our gallery (http://www.tfpsoft.com/about/gallery/index.html) was made with AC3D.

I'm currently using AC3D as the scenery modeller for my survival horror game. The way the file format and the application itself works makes it usable as an expedient level editor. The hierarchical structure makes it particularly suitable for this purpose.

conzar · 17th June 2008, 06:48 PM

So do did you create a plugin to export to your games map format or are you parsing the AC3D file?

How do you handle rotations on repeatable objects? Do you even handle repeatable objects?

Thanks

speciesunknown · 18th June 2008, 05:45 PM

Nothing that simple im afraid. My game involves a large city, so I am using ac3d to mark out the positions of brushes (brushes in the BSP sense). Mostly, they are just a box with the word "this is actually a shop lol". At load time, rather than using the geometry of the box, i use a mesh from a separate .ac file, where each child of the the "world" node is a separate model with some data in the data tag. The purpose of the box is to enable me to position where the shop would be. The 3x3 rotation matrix and the position vector are applied to the new object before it is spawned, and then added to the physics engine.

conzar · 19th June 2008, 08:27 AM

So how do you handle getting the rotation information for your "shops" from the layout ac3d file?

Did you create a rotation tool that when you apply rotations to the box it stores the rotation information in the data string of your object? Or did you do something easier?

Thanks

speciesunknown · 19th June 2008, 08:37 AM

What I do is to take the first polygon, and look at its bottom most edge. Because I am only rotating the buildings in the Y axis, this will present a vector that is rotated by a certain amount away from the Z direction. I use the dot product against (0,0,1) and some magic to create the 3x3 rotation matrix. Then, I combine this with the loc tag to create a 4x4 transformation matrix. This means I do not have to use any mods for ac3d.

For moving objects such as bottles, I am using an in-game editor to place them, letting the physics engine bring them to rest, and then storing their positions in an SQL database.

Klyde · 20th June 2008, 10:55 AM

I use AC3D to create the indexedFaceSets for my VRML worlds.

conzar · 20th June 2008, 04:32 PM

Quote:

I use AC3D to create the indexedFaceSets for my VRML worlds.

So what is the function of IndexedFaceSets in ur VRML world?

Klyde · 20th June 2008, 04:39 PM

IndexedFaceSets are one aspect of VRML ( Virtual Reality Modeling Language) they are used for complex geometries not accounted for in the Language.

19th December 2007, 05:28 PM	#1
Ninja Junior Member Junior member Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 1	Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D Hi, i am quite new to AC3D, just wanted to learn more about it. What exactly are the possabilities of AC3D, what can it do? I was thinking, it enables user to produce wonderful graphics, but what exactly can you do with these graphics that you create. Can you actualy display them on a web page? Can you create Games any how? Well these are the two things that came to my mind, if so please do let me know. Thanks in advance.

17th June 2008, 06:48 PM	#4
conzar Member Advanced member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 36	Re: Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D So do did you create a plugin to export to your games map format or are you parsing the AC3D file? How do you handle rotations on repeatable objects? Do you even handle repeatable objects? Thanks

18th June 2008, 05:45 PM	#5
speciesunknown Junior Member Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 12	Re: Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D Nothing that simple im afraid. My game involves a large city, so I am using ac3d to mark out the positions of brushes (brushes in the BSP sense). Mostly, they are just a box with the word "this is actually a shop lol". At load time, rather than using the geometry of the box, i use a mesh from a separate .ac file, where each child of the the "world" node is a separate model with some data in the data tag. The purpose of the box is to enable me to position where the shop would be. The 3x3 rotation matrix and the position vector are applied to the new object before it is spawned, and then added to the physics engine.

19th June 2008, 08:27 AM	#6
conzar Member Advanced member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 36	Re: Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D So how do you handle getting the rotation information for your "shops" from the layout ac3d file? Did you create a rotation tool that when you apply rotations to the box it stores the rotation information in the data string of your object? Or did you do something easier? Thanks

19th June 2008, 08:37 AM	#7
speciesunknown Junior Member Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 12	Re: Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D What I do is to take the first polygon, and look at its bottom most edge. Because I am only rotating the buildings in the Y axis, this will present a vector that is rotated by a certain amount away from the Z direction. I use the dot product against (0,0,1) and some magic to create the 3x3 rotation matrix. Then, I combine this with the loc tag to create a 4x4 transformation matrix. This means I do not have to use any mods for ac3d. For moving objects such as bottles, I am using an in-game editor to place them, letting the physics engine bring them to rest, and then storing their positions in an SQL database.

20th June 2008, 10:55 AM	#8
Klyde Senior Member Professional user Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: USA Posts: 227	Re: Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D I use AC3D to create the indexedFaceSets for my VRML worlds. __________________ VR is the future, The future is NOW!!.

20th June 2008, 04:39 PM	#10
Klyde Senior Member Professional user Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: USA Posts: 227	Re: Possabilities & Advantages of AC3D IndexedFaceSets are one aspect of VRML ( Virtual Reality Modeling Language) they are used for complex geometries not accounted for in the Language. __________________ VR is the future, The future is NOW!!.

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