I recently worked with a guy who’s brother is developing a 3D app. I checked it out and thought it worth passing along to the group. The app is java based and will run on multiple platforms. I have found the user interface fairly easy to learn and according to the documentation, it has a global illumination style renderer with depth of field.
It imports and exports obj files and has a procedural texturer editor.
Here is an image from the gallery by Julian MacDonald
I have used this for some time now, I think it is quite good. As far as rendering is concerned it has a lot of things you could wish for, very powerful procedural texture designer, real displacement mapping, global illumination (simple pathtracing) etc.
And it is not half slow either, quite fast in fact, not very much slower than my C++ pathtracer. Modelling wise it has some good tools too, CSG/boolean ops, also animation tools, IK, etc.
I’m quite happy with it.
What about importing blender models into it? What formats does it support and is there a script to export blender stuff to that format?
You can import both .obj and VRML files. I suppose you can export from blender using something like the OBJIO.py script, or using VRML, but you might as well model directly in AoL itself.
I’ve used it in the past. Actually I had posted here a similar thread about ArtOfIllusion. It’s a really good app. though it is still in it’s early baby steps… But it has all the odds to become a very good 3d program.
Just in case you want to use it on linux, you have to know that it’s performance depends on what JRE you have. I think ArtOfIllusion works best with IBM’s latest JRE!!!
bye…
Sorry to top this old post. Just wanted to say that I downloaded this and this is quite a nice little program. Very easy to use, too.
Without ever having used it, I made this little scene with it in about 10 minutes. It was modeled, textured, and rendered (with GI) in AoI.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/1071400
Also, the maker of AoI just released version 1.4 the other day. Unfortunately, the website is down at the moment.
What this program really need is a bigger user base, with people developing scripts (you can add completely new tools with simple scripts) and plugins (tools, render engines, and import/export can all be done through plugins).
I tried it out and must say its great, alot of cad related feature, a little slow but I would say its even powerfull then Blender
I try the textures but theres no template, just colors and I’m wondering about snap and moving camors, anyone can help me out with this ?
It exports to PovRay, kool. It actually does a good job on the export.
I’m not quite sure what you mean about the textures. Could you rephrase your problem? It has a very powerful texture editor.
By “snap” do you mean snapping vertices to a grid? To turn that on, go to Scene>Grids and enable Snap to Grids.
You can move the camera by changing the view in the lower righthand viewport, or you can delete “Camera 1” from the list at the right and create your own camera.
texture, like wood, tile, dots, cloud, fade, noise, you know, what blender has and more 