AutoShade was an early 3D rendering package for use with

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developed Autoshade in 1987. It became obsolete after the release of Autodesk's 3D Studio.

Description

AutoShade was a

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application. Autodesk developed it to produce realistic shaded renderings of 3D face objects made by their CAD program, AutoCAD. It simulated various types of lights—spot, point, and infinite directional. To create a rendering, a person: * Made an AutoCAD Drawing file containing 3D faces * Placed AutoShade light and camera blocks * Used an AutoShade-provided

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application to export 3D faces, camera blocks, and lighting blocks to a ''scene'' file * Opened the scene file in AutoShade and rendered the image

Files

AutoShade wrote the rendering to an .RND file. In the first version, the .RND file was a 2D

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file, importable into applications such as Adobe Illustrator version 4. Later, when Autodesk added

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, the .RND could also be a raster file. Autodesk developed an application called Flimaker for MS-DOS, which converted .RND files into a format usable in Autodesk Animator. This could be used, in conjunction with AutoFlix, to create rudimentary 3D animations from AutoCAD source material.

Demise

Though the final version of AutoShade supported

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extensions, Autodesk never developed it into a full rendering application. Even with AutoFlix, it did not support keyframing or hierarchical kinematics. When

released 3D Studio, the need for AutoShade ended, since 3D Studio was far superior in technology and in ease of use.

External links

Fourmilab Autofile
3D graphics software Computer-aided design software {{CAD-software-stub Autodesk discontinued products