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Free, Easy, Interactive 3D Graphics for the WWW
Alice is a 3D Interactive Graphics Programming Environment for Windows 95/98/NT built by the Stage 3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University. The Alice project is a public service to the wider computing and artistic communities; our hope is to make it easy for novices to develop interesting 3D environments and to explore the new medium of interactive 3D graphics. The current version of Alice authoring tool is free to everyone and runs on computers that are commonly available for reasonable prices. Worlds created in Alice can be viewed and interacted with inside of a standard web browser once the Alice plug-in has been installed.
Alice is primarily a scripting and prototyping environment for 3D object behavior, not a 3D modeler; this makes Alice much more like LOGO than AutoCAD. By writing simple scripts, Alice users can control object appearance and behavior, and while the scripts are executing, objects respond to user input via mouse and keyboard.
Alice is not a 3D modeling program, but it does read many common 3D file formats including .DXF and .OBJ formats. Objects can be converted to Alice format from .3DS format using a special 3D Studio Max plug-in. The Alice core distribution includes a large library of textured models. The Alice plug-in does not allow authoring, but does allow viewing of any Alice world.
To run Alice you must have:
- Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0
- a VGA graphics card capable of high (16 bit) color
- If installing on Windows 95/98 you need Microsoft's Direct-3D Library (Direct X).
- If installing on Windows NT 4.0 you need Microsoft's Service Pack 3.
In addition, you should have the following:
- A Pentium running at 90 Mhz or better
- Fast VGA graphics. WRAM is better than VRAM which is better than DRAM.
- 16 megs of RAM
- A Soundblaster-compatible sound card
We are very excited about moving ahead with a newer and much better version of Alice. Alice99 is no longer being supported or developed, and this download is only being provided as a courtesy to those people already teaching a class with Alice99, who can't easily switch over. Alice v2.0b has many improvements and the support of a full time staff.
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