Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: JGZinv on October 12, 2011, 03:02:05 pm
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and it was called Autodesk 123D.
http://www.123dapp.com/about
For all intents and purposes, I'd say this is the spiritual successor to Gmax, because it's totally free. It's also a nice simplification from Max.
Some positives:
Max has tons of buttons all over so it immediately looks daunting, where as we have 2 main tool bars and some sub menus here.
It carries over the View Cube and several of the viewing options from Max 2009 and simplifies them. They also seem to have ripped the file menu from MS Office.
The sub menu tree when you right click or pick from a tool bar menu item, gives you a octagonal menu from there so you don't have to go far.
It operates much like Sketchup, in that you draw 2D shapes then can modify them in many ways to create 3D part meshes.
The snap to system seems more streamlined than Sketchup though, so you can create a bit quicker...
A nice touch for newbies, is that if you hover over anything long enough, in some cases it'll give you an example video with the explanation
of what it does.
Some negatives:
This was designed not for gamers or the 3D world at large I think, as much as the CnC and 3D printing crowd for rapid production... as
such it's import and export options are limited. Less so than when Sketchup came out, (this accepts skp's too) but your main import is probably
going to be OBJ, and exporting to STL... depending if you've got something that can accept what else it produces. I imagine that newer versions
of Max already do or will support the 123D format soon.
The program starts up a lot faster than Max, but whatever code system it has under the hood seems to lag when you want to select a whole series of
objects at once. This is a beta release, so there's room for improvement.
I've hardly done anything with it, but the materials system seems very stripped down. You get a lot of presets, but with the file formats as they are, most of that
will be lost. I've not located a UV mapper either yet. So really this is more of a strict modeler, then you go into something else for finishing.
Again the exporting ability is the real drawback, I imagine if there were enough people yelling for .Max, .3ds, or .dae support, they'd probably add it in.
Right now some of the exported formats won't open in Max 2009 due to file type version differences, in some of the ones that do, it doesn't export shapes (though
it warns you of this) so you really need to remember to make "meshes" not shapes, or you might end up exporting a file missing lots of pieces.
Overall I feel this is a good starting point for someone wanting to get into Max, without torrenting it. It feels a lot easier to approach and has a lot of the updated
Max features for getting around. Essentially it's a bridge, Sketchup's ease of drawing and mostly Max's guts. Hey it's free, it's in beta so it's bound to improve... so
can't hurt to give it a shot.
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this is going to confuse me for a while if it takes off in the community because of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk)
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How does Autodesk make this confusing?
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They work at it. :)
Played around a little with it, but runs sluggish on my machine. Ironically I'm finding Blender 2.5 easier to use. Perhaps after it gets optimized it will work better.
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I don't know I've worked out most of what needs to be done with sketchup models to get them to port to blender for clean up work. Everything I've ever made started in sketchup so I'll be reluctant to make the change unless switching entirely over to blender (Not likely but possible). The program may have possibilities as sketchup screams once you hit a certain level of polygons but I don't know if I could make the switch at this point. Might be better for newer modelers though as sketchup requires a good level of discipline and willingness to go over the model with a fine tooth comb to get it ready for export. Wish it would force you into modeling practices that would make it easier to export but that doesn't seem to be likely anytime soon.
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I've learned to use Max, and I'll probably stick to it.
The interface no longer intimidates me at any rate, in fact I use a good portion of the buttons, actually, and I wouldn't know what to do without them XD
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I've learned to use Max, and I'll probably stick to it.
The interface no longer intimidates me at any rate, in fact I use a good portion of the buttons, actually, and I wouldn't know what to do without them XD
Agreed. <3 Max!
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Thanks very much for this JGZinv; shall give it a look when i have the chance. Been wanting to get into modelling but unfortunately my training is in Maya and i just can't get my head around Blender for some reason. Maybe this one will better suit me (i recall Max is a lot like Maya in many ways).
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Given the choice, I would probably do all my work in MAX. But I can't afford it, nor do I like the idea of dealing with a hacked version. I'm finding I like Blender 2.5 better than Gmax and the more I learn about it, I'm surprised at it's power. It's modeler is almost identical to Silo 3d, in fact I don't know why anyone would pay $160 for Silo when the work flow is almost identical in Blender 2.5.
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I'm limited on hard drive space, so I'd like some questions answered if possible. I really quite enjoyed using Inventor, and if this is a simplified version (of sorts) of that program, I might like to give it a go. The only thing is...
...I need a decent set of import and export options for models. If everything goes in wavefront object format, I can do that. BUT, does someone have a more fleshed out spec sheet for the software's capabilities? Or, if you've tried it, what can it do?
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123D can reads solid models in via DWG, SAT and STEP format, as well as polygon/mesh models in OBJ, SKP and 123D formats.
123D can read DWG file created by Autodesk Inventor Fusion 2012 but only 3D solid content.
123D can export *.SAT, *.STL, *STEP, *.DWG in addition to its native file format,
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I think AC3D can do .stl and .dwg, though those are hit-and-miss if I recall properly. I'll wait and see what comes of things with this for the time being, however. I've got enough to do as-is.
:p
In any sense, thank you.