AutoShade

AutoShade was an early 3D rendering package for use with AutoCAD. Autodesk developed Autoshade in 1987.

Description

AutoShade was a DOS application. Autodesk developed it to produce realistic shaded renderings of 3D face objects made by their CAD program, AutoCAD. It simulated various types of lightsspot, point, and infinite directional. To create a rendering, a person:

Files

AutoShade wrote the rendering to an .RND file. In the first version, the .RND file was a 2D vector file, importable into applications such as Adobe Illustrator version 4. Later, when Autodesk added Gouraud shading, the .RND could also be a raster file.

Autodesk developed an application called Flimaker for MS-DOS, which converted .RND files into a format usable in Autodesk Animator. This could be used, in conjunction with AutoFlix, to create rudimentary 3D animations from AutoCAD source material.

Demise

Though the final version of AutoShade supported RenderMan extensions, Autodesk never developed it into a full rendering application. Even with AutoFlix, it did not support keyframing or hierarchical kinematics. When Autodesk released 3D Studio, the need for AutoShade ended, since 3D Studio was far superior in technology and in ease of use.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/2/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.