Slashdot Mirror
The State of Open Source 3D Modeling
gmueckl writes "Since Blender was released as open source in 2002, it has basically owned the open source 3D modeling scene. Its development has seen a massive push by both the community and supporting organizations. However, the program has been showing its age all along and efforts to improve on it have either been blocked or have failed in the past (note the dates). Authors of new modules are forced to jump through hoops to get their work glued onto the basic core, which still dates from the early 90s and has gone almost unchanged since. There are many other active projects out there like Art of illusion, K-3D, and Moonlight|3D. Each of them offers a modern, much saner, more coherent, and more powerful basic architecture and could match Blender in a couple of months' time with some extra manpower. So how come these projects don't get the level of support they deserve? How come developers are still willing to put up with such an arcane code base?"
www.fragmotion.com
Description
fragMOTION is a powerful 3D modeller specifically intended for the creation and animation of characters. fragMOTION is intuitive and easy to use and contains many features that are only found in top of the line modellers. And if that's not enough for you, the event driven scripting system makes it a breeze for you to add your own features.
Notable Features
* Load and edit multiple motions in the same workspace.
* Merge any supported model file and extract only the desired portions of that file.
* Paint textures directly on the surface of a model.
* No set limit to the number of faces contained in a model.
* Create sprite images from 3D content.
* Keyframe editor that allows you to copy, paste and delete keyframes with ease.
* Animate your character using Inverse Kinematics.
* Support for up to 4 weighting values per vertex.
* Selective subdivision of faces.
* Unwrap arbitrary geometry into a plane and save the image into a texture.
* View attached objects such as weapons and equipment.
* Create your own plugins using LUA script or C++.
* Customizable user interface allows you to edit the menus and toolbar. You can even create your own menu items or toolbuttons to run user-defined scripts.
* Convenient splitter window allows you to customize the layout of your workspace.
* Keyboard shortcuts that allow you to use tools without constantly switching modes.
* Set background images into the viewer as a frame of reference.
* Create user-defined classes with their own appearance, properties, methods and events.
* Modify existing classes by adding user-defined properties, methods or events.
* Create skeletons with up to 255 bones.
* Full undo/redo.
* And many more...