AC3D started life (circa 1994) on the Amiga as a home project. It was then taken into university research and used for many virtual reality and 3D graphics projects (primarily within Europe). In 2002, the complete rights to AC3D were purchased by Inivis Limited. 2006 celebrates 10 years of AC3D being available to download and buy online. AC3D has a large and eclectic user-base; from education to medical research and scientific visualisation, through to home hobbyists and flight-simulation enthusiasts. Currently, AC3D has a small development team, mainly based in the UK and with key workers in Europe and the US.

To do this review was a little daunting. To be honest I didn't know how to tackle the review. I did a bit of preview of the tool and a look around at it's uses and while predominantly being novice based there are a few people out there doing some stellar work. When you're in the market with some big hitters like XSI, LW or modo it can be hard to get out from under their shadow.

So, after some experimentation and playing I can say that AC3D is a neat tool to use. Really. There is something to be said for being simple. At version 6  AC3D ushers in the capability of being a fully subdivision surface modeling kit with the ability of dealing with n-gons.

Looking at the above you can see (ignore my crappy head) the iterface isn't cluttered. There are a few more commands hidden in menus that you can easily access. Now, back to my crappy head model, to atest to the ease of use the model I did above was only after a few minutes using the program. No practice necessary. For those coming from an old school Lightwave background can recall the days of no edge modeling. Here's where AC3D is somewhat true, it has no real edge support yet when you select points it has a 'edge extrude' command.

AC3D has all the basic elements of modeling from extruding faces, to polyline sketching and snapping tools. For your workflow you can edit groups, objects, polygons (aka surfaces) and points. The tool does support uv mapping and textures however it isn't the powerhouse that you'd be used too using other  tools. AC3D really shines as a tight no-nonsense modeler. You name it and most everything you expect is there, bevel, extrude along curve, inset, make hole. Now a few issues you will have is with tools like indent and bevel because they are not real-time tool. In fact you will find a few of those, like extrude, where you have to use a numerical editor to create the amount of transformation. Not a big deal, but not current workflow either.

While I'm on the topic of grievances, I do have a few but they are minor. With the maturity of modeling products now there is almost an expected toolset these days and there are a few areas I'd like to see addressed in AC3D. True edge support is the first update. The days of selecting individual points to 'create an edge' selection is long gone, the good news is ... read further down. A native bridge tool would be a good addition. To AC3D's defense there is make quad and create ordered surface but the immediate bridge command would improve workflow a alot. A native edge loop cut with variable distance while being interactive. This last one is addressed by one of AC3D's more affluent users in the way of a plugin, however a more native tool with interactive variability would be a great asset. Lastly would be a spin edge tool and a edge cut tool which both can be done but not in a fast workflow sense.

AC3D has good selection tools allowing you to marquee, paint, and loop select. Grouping and visibility controls are there  as well.

I did save the best for last. First off, the responsiveness with this program is great. I did load some meshes that had hundreds of thousands of polygons and the program responded. The SDS portion can get slow but I was impressed. AC3D also has a 'real-time mirror' tool that will mirror proxy geometry across the axis of your choosing. I found the RTM functionality very cool, however one thing to be aware of is you cannot lock the axis points so you need to manual set those to zero. The last thing I have to mention to give AC3D it's greatest credit is the 'editing box'. As you see in the screenshot above is a green box with hotspots ("handles") which allow you to do a great deal of tweaking in one or all directions simultaneously. If you've used 2D programs like illustrator or AutoCAD you are familiar with these and they add a tremendous ability to your tweaking performance. Anytime you select something or somethings you get the edit box. Truly a great idea to bring to 3D tools.

So I mentioned previously about edge support. I received some information of things to come with AC3D and while they are in development builds, I cannot say when they will be available. Edge selection and more edge functions. Interactive tools - i.e. at the moment, most are one-shot menu selects. Internally they have new tools working such as, geometry paint, vertex-displacement etc. The new system makes it easy to add extra tools and we intend to add tools like tweak, cutting etc. A knife (press, drag a line, release) is a priority. The group is looking into making mouse actions and keys configurable too.

So bottom line is AC3D is a good, simple to use and fun modeling program to use. With the coming changes, hopefully sooner than later, this modeler is in a sweet spot being between wings (free) and SILO ($109) and yet the soon-to-come feature set would be comparable to SILO now. Underrated for sure and a shame. AC3D is a definite recommend try and buy if you're looking for a new tool that doesn't break the bank.

-jason