3D CAD Program

Does anyone know of a 3D cad program that is similar to the 3D design in secondlife? Where you can rez prims and edit them in a similar way.
Thanks

SL always reminded me of Bryce. You may want to look into that.

There's not a 3D modeling programin existence that can't crate primitives and edit them in a manner similar to the way SL does (and much, much more). Everything from freebies like Blender to full production packages like Maya all have that functionality as their most basic foundation. Note however that in each program the set of tools for manimpuating the objects will be slightly different. You won't find one that workes EXACTLY the way SL does.

Now, you mentioned CAD specifically. Are you looking for a drafting program then? There are many to choose from, but they are all far more complicated than waht you're used to in SL. CAD programs deal with blueprints, solids modeling, architectural & mechanical drawings, things that are way outside the scope of SL. I'm not aware of any that is simple to operate the way SL's modeling tools are.

Unless there's some reason you need an actual drafting program, I'd recommend going with a surface modeling program. Blender is free, Bryice is around $100 US, Lightwave goes for $1000-2000, 3DS Max is around $3500, Maya is around $6000. Just about everything else falls somewhere inbetween.

Is ther ethen a way to upload objects created with a third party program into SL? In the same way textures and animations are uploaded?

No.

/waves at Chosen

Yea and AutoCAD is way expensive too (that's what I use at work) and theres all different flavors of it available.

I personally can't wait for the day that CAD functionality stitches in directly with SL! I can certainly build MUCH MUCH better with solids than I can in SL hands down.

For example:

/waves back at Artillo.

I know what you mean. I can build in minutes with Maya what takes weeks with SL, not to mention the difference in appearance quality between a mesh model and a prim model. I'm sure the day for direct import & export will come, but I'm equally sure it's a long, long way off. The problem is not getting models into SL; that's easy. The challenge is displaying them on client machines once they're there. The internet has to get several hundred times faster than it is right now for that to be able to happen in real time.

Nice rendering btw. Here's an old one of mine if you're interested, one of my first actually. Not architectural, but it was a fun one:

Same shit, different day. Far off as a real "feature," but I'm working on a Blender tool. Work will pick up once the Game Dev contest is over.

In the meantime, the closest you'll get is the 3D model "importer" I created.

Unfortunately, direct UV mapping in this manner is virtually impossible. I tried. Prim texturing did not agree.

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To address the original question of this post, I plan to write emulated prims in Blender. I just have not had (and will not have) time until after the Game Dev contest. I also have my classes and part time job to address.

Here's what importing real models looks like, as of this writing. It's obvious which is done in SL:

prims remind me of swept blends (profile + path + variability in both). not all CAD/3D programs can do this, but it's becoming more common.

You could write a plugin for Max that would exactly mimic the SL prims and their attributes, so that you could build offline and import into SL using a scripted rezzer. I mean emulating the SL editor with Max, not working with arbitrary meshes. For instance, a hollowed cut sphere in SL could be modeled as a sliced sphere with the Shell modifier in Max. I've thought about doing it but have always had something else I'd rather do. Let's have the Lindens do it!

Famous last words.

Actually I do remember one from my olden days playing There.com. Lemme see if I can find a link to the program.

*shuffles around the internet*

Ahh, here it is! Gmax was it. Granted, I only played around with it for a bit, but I remember the editing being very similar to SL's ingame building.

Hope this helps.

yea I have Gmax, from what I remember it's just a polygon (surface) modeler, but I could be wrong!

Moved to Technical Issues for further discussion.

I use a wide variety of 3D programs and the one most similiar to SL (that I"m familiar with) is SketchUp 3D...available for both Mac and PC.. . it's a great concept package for architecture

I never found SketchUp to be even *remotely* like SL, personally...

My vote goes with trueSpace as being the most SL-like.

just noticed this: "Maya is around $6000".

Might want to recheck the pricing. I don't recall Maya going for that much in over three years when I bought the lower-end Complete for $7000 (now going for $2000 I believe).

Interesting. I hadn't realized the price for Maya Complete had gone down, but you're right. You can get it for $2000 now, which is nice. Thanks for the heads up.

Maya Unlimited, however has stayed the same, and for some has actually gone up. It's now between $6000 and $8400, depending on licensing. So, for cloth, fur, fluids, and live, you still gotta pay the big bucks.

The biggest emerging competition for Maya at this point is Blender, in my opinion. Blender is managed open-source and does quite a lot of what Maya does.

It's also worth noting that the Maya PLE (Personal Learning Edition) is free software... but not for commercial purposes. And I don't believe it includes much of the advanced stuff.

Incorrect again, sorry to say. Maya Unlimited was $12,000 when Complete was $7000. I bought Complete 3-4 years ago or so and the price dropped soon enough after that I was given the option to upgrade to Unlimited which dropped to a standard price of $7000. Since I actually only paid about $5000 for Complete (standard end of quarter discounting), the upgrade was worthwhile. The maintenance however is killer.

I believe Maya's PLE is the Complete version and is plenty capable. But the watermark was hideous last I saw.

I partially agree that Blender is a potential threat. But the bigger current threat imo is SoftImage. If you guys haven't been watching that one drop like a rock over the past year, you might want to check out their latest offerings.