New version of Viewer3ds and Ab3d.Reader3ds available

Finally my firstly published application, Viewer3ds, got a major update. The Ab3d.Reader3ds library was also updated.

The previous version of Viewer3ds was really old. More than 2 years old! The main problem with Viewer3ds was that it was using an embedded Ab3d.Reader3ds library for importing 3ds file. This meant that the updates of Ab3d.Reader3ds and many new features that were introduced did not have any effect on the Viewer3ds.

The new version of Viewer3ds does not have an embedded Reader3ds, so the currently available version is used.

The application now also supports many new features. For example:

• The objects hierarchy is displayed in a tree view. It displays names of the objects that were defined in a 3D modeling applications. So when the exported xaml is used in your application, you can know which names to use to access the objects.
• All the 3D objects can be renamed (or given a name if a name was not specified).
• If the 3ds file contains an animation, it can be played with Viewer3ds. A selected frame can be exported to xaml.
• It is possible to export only selected objects (besides exporting all objects).
• Camera can be freely rotated around the read objects (select Free Camera in Cameras Panel).
• Lights can be turned on and off. A camera light that shines in the direction of the camera can be added to the scene (in case the scene does not contain any light).
• There are many options on how to load the 3ds file. For example it is possible to disable transparencies, control the shading of objects, etc.

As you have probably noticed from the screenshot above, the user interface is completely changed. It is now similar to ViewerSvg and Paste2Xaml. The process of user interface unification will eventually lead to a single application that could be used for all the supported file types. I also plan to include some great new features (but will not let you reveal my plans :)

Some of you will probably miss the 3D buttons that were used in the old Viewer3ds. No need to worry. I am going to prepare a sample with the same 3D buttons. It will be available with full source code so you could add the same functionality to your applications.

The Ab3d.Reader3ds library also had some improvements and bug fixes:

• Fixed bug when reading spot lights.
• Fixed Null reference exception when setting Default Material.
• When applying smoothing groups or smooth shading, the texture coordinates are also remapped (before textures were not applied correctly).
• Using new licensing model with improved evaluation. The new version has no fixed expiration date - instead library can be installed for a 60 days evaluation.

The new version is available from https://www.ab4d.com/Viewer3ds.aspx.