More on Alice

I wrote awhile ago about Alice a 3D animation program. I have been hunting for a program that will create 3D objects that can be imported into Alice. This would enable me to create my own figures and then animate them in Alice.

Alice needs .ASE files and I haven't found any free 3D software that will allow me to save into .ASE format. If anyone does know of any please let me know.

In the mean time I have found a bit of a work around. I have used a piece of software called Caligari Truespace. I've only just found this and haven't worked out how to use it yet other than to create a really basic sphere and colour it. I exported the 3D model from Truespace as a .asc file then opened that file in Biturn
and converted it in Biturn to a .ase file. Alice would then let me import that model and I could then Instruct the model to move. This is all a bit of a complicated work around and so far I haven't found Truespace to be very easy to use. I'm looking for something intuitive that children will find relatively easy to use. Alice is brilliant. I used it with some year 6's the other day and they just latched on to it so easily. I have found a very easy 3D modelling program called CB Model Pro which is very easy to use but so far I haven't been able to work out how to convert the models into .ase format so I can import into Alice.

If any readers know of a solution to all of this I'd love to hear from you.

I think the story telling potential for this sort of software is really cool and I'd love to see an international project along the lines of Rock our world.
I'm going to attempt this on a small scale with the schools in my cluster next term so I'll let you know how I get on.