#Install art of illusion linux how to
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The main window is always used for scene and object editing when needed, complex but secondary tasks like procedural texture editing come up in their own windows, thus keeping the main interface uncluttered. Since it is a Java app, AOI may not natively look as slick, but its object manipulation, texture, and materials tools demonstrate that features and usability are not mutually exclusive.įor example, all commands are accessible from the menus, which helps immensely when you don’t remember a shortcut. Despite improvements in recent versions, Blender still has a long way to go here. Both are a few features behind heavy-hitting (and expensive) proprietary packages like 3ds Max and Houdini, but they hold their own.ĪOI beats Blender hands-down on the interface front. Take a look at CGSocietycomparison of 3-D modelers and you’ll see that the two open source programs rank about the same in most categories. But don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s a one-sided battle. In most cases, the only differences are the addition of more options or parameters in features like texture and material creation.īlender has several editing features that AOI does not, such as 3-D and vertex painting, softbody and fluid simulation, and NURBS. Some of the basic tutorials are several years old, but the app’s interface has not changed enough to make them outdated. The tutorials will also prove useful to first-time AOI users.

#Install art of illusion linux manual

The AOI manual not only introduces both, it demonstrates them and shows the effects of the various parameters tunable within the app. But ample illustrations do help when explaining the difference between ambient occlusion and photon mapping.

Few people will need the distinction between cylinders and cubes explained.

#Install art of illusion linux how to

The AOI manual strikes a good balance between explaining the nomenclature and exposing how to make use of it in the app. Such documentation is a high-priority feature for work and “production” apps considerably more so than for media players and Internet tools. Fortunately, the AOI Web site features a complete manual and an impressive set of tutorials to help you get up to speed. Finally, it can render with multiple cameras, using raster or raytracing, and apply filter effects, depth-of-field, antialiasing, caustics, subsurface scattering, and multiple global illumination algorithms.Īdmittedly, the less experience you have with 3-D editing, the less that list will mean to you. It can animate with keyframing, forward and inverse kinematics, skeletons, and animated textures. It can use image-mapped, procedural, and UV coordinate textures, procedural materials, and point, directional, and spot lighting. It can model objects with geometric, spline-based, and triangular-mesh-based definitions, and manipulate them with scripted behavior, boolean operations, skins, extrusion, and lathe turning. So what exactly can AOI do? Here’s a quick rundown (caution: list may be heavy on terminology). The line are blurry in AOI’s context, though, as some scripts implement entirely new tools and object types.

Generally speaking, plugins bring new functionality to the app, while scripts automate functions already present.

#Install art of illusion linux install

Launch AOI and you will find another nicety under the Tools -> Scripts and Plugins Manager menu item: a GUI front end through which you can check for and install updates to AOI, and search for and install plugins and user-created scripts. It also creates an uninstaller in an appropriately-named subdirectory of the installation location. desktop files, and places a launcher shortcut on your desktop. The installer creates KDE and GNOME menu entries in the form of. You can install AOI anywhere on your system, including in your home directory - a nice option for when you are testing it out initially. The latest Linux package is version 2.4.1, and weighs in at 7.4MB.

#Install art of illusion linux mac os

The download page links to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows builds, plus a platform-neutral package that should run on other flavors of Unix. It can also use OpenGL rendering if your system supports it.

If you haven’t tried it, it’s time you took a look at this recent Product of the Month.ĪOI requires a Java 1.4 (or newer) runtime environment, and the project recommends that you install Sun’s Java Media Framework for optional support of additional animation formats. Art of Illusion (AOI) is a mature, GPL-licensed 3-D modeler with robust editing, animation, and rendering features, and it’s a lot easier to use than Blender.

#Install art of illusion linux free

Blender gets the lion’s share of press among free 3-D modeling applications, but it is not the only player in the field.