Welcome to the web page for Ancient 4D !

~~ FAQ ~~

What is Ancient 4D ?

• High quality 3D modelling (parametric and direct), animation and rendering tool designed for general use but with a lean towards the 20th Century / "90's CGI" aesthetic.
• Currently in development, solo, by me David / Hidden Asbestos as a long-term project amongst other ongoing projects - what I'm saying is this will take a while !
• Focus on industry standard key bindings, conventional UX where possible.
• Aiming for a stable feature set where new things are added on top or in parallel, rather than replacing and invalidating training / muscle memory.
• No AI used in development.

What is it NOT ?

• Blender - this isn't an everything tool, nor do I have a Foundation and huge sponsors
• Probably not likely to be very good for super high density / photogrammetry meshes.
• Animation will be initially limited to the object level, rather than rigging, skinning and IK type character things.
• A sculpting tool.
• Supportive of AI generation - here we push polys by hand.

Platforms?

• Windows only for now.
• Linux might work using Proton or Wine, but this is unknown atm. and will be unsupported.
• Mac, tablet and/or VR are truly never going to happen.

Pricing ? Open Source ?

• This is planned to be a commercial software with a 'generous' free demo version.
• I'm planning to sell this through Steam.
• Not subscription based, a one-time fee and you keep the software at that version.
• Pay for new versions, if and when they interest you.
• There will be an open SDK to create plug-ins to extend the software.

Why Not Use Blender ?

• Go for it ! - Batman has many tools in his belt, so should you!

~~ CONTACT ME ~~

I post on bluesky here: @ancient4d.bsky.social

I run a discord server. Click here for an invite: Ancient 4D Server