Jim Wilson writes: > Thanks. I'm doing some major re-work with it now...basicly after > figuring out how to get around some of ac3d limitations. AC3D > works well for this stuff, but it's texturing options are limited > (but in the end sufficient). Blender is looking more attractive > but every time I open it up I just get overwhelmed. It's got a lot > more in it than we need for modeling aircraft. AC3D is easy to > learn and it isn't bad once you figure out how to get around it's > limitations and bugs.
Yes, AC3D's lack of useful texturing support pushed me to Blender. Blender is a scary brute, but it took me only a couple of hours playing with online tutorials (start with the castle) before I could make my first DC-3 model. Now the program seems natural and intuitive to me, though I limit myself to mesh work. You can import your current 747 into Blender with only a little loss, then start fine-tuning the textures with the UV editor. You'll need Willian Germano's AC3D import/export scripts. > In any case it'd be awful nice to have a gpl'd modler. Right now > we've got a choice between two closed source binaries. One from a > guy that may or may not ever get around to fixing the bugs, let > alone improve it. And another from a larger company that is now as > good as gone. In addition to PPE (ppe.sourceforge.net), there's K3D (k3d.sourceforge.net) and Innovation3D (innovation3d.sourceforge.net). I played with innovation 3D a bit, and while it's OK, it's no Blender. For now, I'm willing to take my chances with a non-free, unsupported app, as long as I can export into formats that other tools support. Innovation3D is in Debian, so just type apt-get install innovation3d to try it out (assuming you use Debian). Here's a page with a list of 3D modellers and thumbnail reviews: http://www.worldforge.org/dev/eng/3d_compare_html All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
