Global illumination (GI), or indirect illumination, is a group of algorithms used in 3D computer graphics that are meant to add more realistic lighting to 3D scenes. Such algorithms take into account not only the light that comes directly from a light source, but also subsequent cases in which light rays from the same source are reflected by other surfaces in the scene, whether reflective or not.
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, most commonly acronymed as POV-Ray, is a cross-platform ray-tracing program that generates images from a text-based scene description. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David Kirk Buck and Aaron A. Collins for Amiga computers. There are also influences from the earlier Polyray raytracer because of contributions from its author, Alexander Enzmann. POV-Ray is free and open-source software, with the source code available under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license.
Gmax is an application based on Autodesk's 3ds Max application used by professional computer graphics artists. 3ds Max is a comprehensive modeling, animation and rendering package with some secondary post-production and compositing features. Gmax is much more limited due to its singular intended use—game content creation. Infrequently used tools and features, or the ones completely unrelated to creating 3D game models, were removed, leaving the core modeling, texturing, and basic animation rigging and keyframing capabilities. In 2005, the promotional freeware software was discontinued after version 1.2.
TrueSpace was a commercial 3D computer graphics and animation software developed by Caligari Corporation, bought-out by Microsoft. As of May 2009, it was officially discontinued, but with some 'unofficial support' up to February 2010.
Wings 3D is a free and open-source subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware. Wings 3D is named after the winged-edge data structure it uses internally to store coordinate and adjacency data, and is commonly referred to by its users simply as Wings.
YafaRay is a free and open-source ray tracing program that uses an XML scene description language. There is a YafaRay addon for Blender 2.78. The ray tracer is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Subsurface scattering (SSS), also known as subsurface light transport (SSLT), is a mechanism of light transport in which light that penetrates the surface of a translucent object is scattered by interacting with the material and exits the surface potentially at a different point. Light generally penetrates the surface and gets scattered a number of times at irregular angles inside the material before passing back out of the material at a different angle than it would have had if it had been reflected directly off the surface.
Path tracing is a computer graphics Monte Carlo method of rendering images of three-dimensional scenes such that the global illumination is faithful to reality. Fundamentally, the algorithm is integrating over all the illuminance arriving to a single point on the surface of an object. This illuminance is then reduced by a surface reflectance function (BRDF) to determine how much of it will go towards the viewpoint camera. This integration procedure is repeated for every pixel in the output image. When combined with physically accurate models of surfaces, accurate models of real light sources, and optically correct cameras, path tracing can produce still images that are indistinguishable from photographs.
In computer graphics, per-pixel lighting refers to any technique for lighting an image or scene that calculates illumination for each pixel on a rendered image. This is in contrast to other popular methods of lighting such as vertex lighting, which calculates illumination at each vertex of a 3D model and then interpolates the resulting values over the model's faces to calculate the final per-pixel color values.
Vue is a software tool for world generation by e-on software with support for many visual effects, animations and various other features. The tool has been used in several feature-length movies.
Cheetah3D is a computer graphics program for 3D modelling, animation and rendering. It is written in Cocoa for macOS. The program is aimed at beginning and amateur 3D artists.
Computer graphics lighting is the collection of techniques used to simulate light in computer graphics scenes. While lighting techniques offer flexibility in the level of detail and functionality available, they also operate at different levels of computational demand and complexity. Graphics artists can choose from a variety of light sources, models, shading techniques, and effects to suit the needs of each application.
LuxCoreRender is a free and open-source physically based rendering software. It began as LuxRender in 2008 before changing its name to LuxCoreRender in 2017 as part of a project reboot. The LuxCoreRender software runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery.
3DS is one of the file formats used by the Autodesk 3ds Max 3D modeling, animation and rendering software.
Maxwell Render is an unbiased 3D render engine, developed by Next Limit Technologies in Madrid, Spain. This stand-alone software is used in the film, animation, and VFX industry, as well as in architectural and product design visualization. It offers various plug-ins for 3D/CAD and post production applications.
This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics.
Art of Illusion is a free software, and open source software package for making 3D graphics.
Chaos Corona is a computer-generated imagery 3D rendering software developed by Chaos Czech, a subsidiary of Chaos. It was created by Ondrej Karlík as a student project in 2009 and was developed by a Prague-based company Render Legion under the name Corona Renderer. In 2017, Chaos Group acquired Render Legion, later rebranding the company to Chaos Czech. In 2022, Corona Renderer was rebranded to Chaos Corona.
