Wings 3D

From Encoresoup - The Ultimate Guide to Free/Open Source Software

This article or section invokes the Wikipedia review template POV-check. This is not relevant to Encoresoup. This template invocation should be removed.

Wings 3D is a free and open source polygon mesh subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware, all using the winged edge data structure.

Wings 3D is available for most platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, using the Erlang environment.

Wings 3D is ideally suited for modeling and texturing low to medium density polygon meshes. It has a wide range of very effective tools optimised for these tasks hidden behind its 'minimalistic' interface.

Designed as a stand-alone modeler, without animation or 'proper' rendering facilities it should not be confused with software that does include such features - although its modeling capabilities stand extremely favourable comparison with equivalent sections of such applications - whether free or commercial.

The use of 'context-sensitive' menus is the reason for its sparse look, whereby tool menus relevant to the current selection mode are only displayed when needed - so no 'greyed out' options.

Wings' toolset often provides the user with many different workflow options for modeling and thus allows considerable flexibility of technique within its 'box-modeling' / 'winged edge' paradigm. (one example being the provision of a 'hole' material, thus allowing wings models to be exported to a wide range of other apps.)

The intuitive nature of Wings 3D means it has a fairly short learning curve, but offers many pleasant surprises to people prepared to investigate it a little deeper.

Whilst it lacks its own powerful internal renderer, Wings can be combined with raytracing programs such as POV-Ray, YafRay, or Art of Illusion etc. to produce high-quality images.

Many other (industry standard) import / export facilities are also present.

[edit] External links

• The Wings 3D website
• The Wings forum at CGTalk
• The Wings forum at Renderosity
• The Wings 3D Brazilian users forum
• Wings3d.de | The Wings 3D German community
• 60 minute feature "God's Companion", an animation featuring models made with Wings3D
• Wings 3D on freshmeat
• Wings 3D on SourceForge
• Wings 3D on the BeyondUnreal.com Wiki
• Wings 3d Videos on YouTube