Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, and computer games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, rendering, motion graphics, video editing, and compositing.
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 AGPLv3.
Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capabilities and a flexible plugin architecture and must be used on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is frequently used by video game developers, many TV commercial studios, and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization. For its modeling and animation tools, the latest version of 3ds Max also features shaders, dynamic simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, a customizable user interface, new icons, and its own scripting language.
LightWave 3D is a 3D computer graphics program developed by NewTek. It has been used in films, television, motion graphics, digital matte painting, visual effects, video game development, product design, architectural visualizations, virtual production, music videos, pre-visualizations and advertising.
The Catmull–Clark algorithm is a technique used in 3D computer graphics to create curved surfaces by using subdivision surface modeling. It was devised by Edwin Catmull and Jim Clark in 1978 as a generalization of bi-cubic uniform B-spline surfaces to arbitrary topology.
Clipping, in the context of computer graphics, is a method to selectively enable or disable rendering operations within a defined region of interest. Mathematically, clipping can be described using the terminology of constructive geometry. A rendering algorithm only draws pixels in the intersection between the clip region and the scene model. Lines and surfaces outside the view volume are removed.
ZBrush is a digital sculpting tool that combines 3D/2.5D modeling, texturing and painting. It uses a proprietary "pixol" technology which stores lighting, color, material, orientation, and depth information for the points making up all objects on the screen. The main difference between ZBrush and more traditional modeling packages is that it is more akin to traditional sculpting.
Strata Design 3D CX is a commercial 3D modeling, rendering and animation program developed in St. George, Utah by Corastar, Inc. dba Strata Software. Strata is a pioneer and developer of 3D design software.
form·Z is a computer-aided design (CAD) design tool developed by AutoDesSys for all design fields that deal with the articulation of 3D spaces and forms and which is used for 3D modeling, drafting, animation and rendering.
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.
3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3DCG or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images. The resulting images may be stored for viewing later or displayed in real time. Unlike 3D film and similar techniques, the result is two-dimensional, without the illusion of being solid.
Hexagon is a subdivision-type 3D modeler owned by Daz 3D. It was originally developed and published by Eovia and was acquired shortly before the release of version 2.0 by Daz 3D in 2006. The software drew heavily on Eovia's other modeler, Amapi, though it omitted the NURBs and precision measuring tools. The focus is subdivision modeling, but it includes spline tools and surface tools. Because of the two omissions, it is not as well suited to product design as Amapi, but is aimed more at illustrative and character modeling, with an eye to making it accessible for those new to working in 3D.
Softimage|3D is a discontinued high-end 3D graphics application developed by Softimage, Co., which was used predominantly in the film, broadcasting, gaming, and advertising industries for the production of 3D animation. It was superseded by Softimage XSI in 2000.
Modo is a polygon and subdivision surface modeling, sculpting, 3D painting, animation and rendering package developed by Luxology, LLC, which is now merged with and known as Foundry. The program incorporates features such as n-gons and edge weighting, and runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux and macOS platforms.
In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of any surface of an object in three dimensions via specialized software. The product is called a 3D model. Someone who works with 3D models may be referred to as a 3D artist or a 3D modeler. A 3D Model can also be displayed as a two-dimensional image through a process called 3D rendering or used in a computer simulation of physical phenomena. The 3D model can be physically created using 3D printing devices that form 2D layers of the model with three-dimensional material, one layer at a time. In terms of game development, 3D modeling is merely a stage in the entire development process. Simply put, the source of the geometry for the shape of an object can be 1. A designer, industrial engineer or artist using a 3D-CAD system, 2. An existing object, reverse engineered or copied using a 3-D shape digitizer or scanner or 3. Mathematical data stored in memory based on an numerical description or calculation the object.
3D-Coat is a commercial digital sculpting program from Pilgway designed to create free-form organic and hard surfaced 3D models from scratch, with tools which enable users to sculpt, add polygonal topology, create UV maps, texture the resulting models with natural painting tools, and render static images or animated "turntable" movies.
In computer graphics, tessellation is used to manage datasets of polygons presenting objects in a scene and divide them into suitable structures for rendering. Especially for real-time rendering, data is tessellated into triangles, for example in OpenGL 4.0 and Direct3D 11.
Luminous Engine, originally called Luminous Studio, is a multi-platform game engine developed and used internally by Square Enix and later on by Luminous Productions. The engine was developed for and targeted at eighth-generation hardware and DirectX 11-compatible platforms, such as Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and versions of Microsoft Windows. It was conceived during the development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 to be compatible with next generation consoles that their existing platform, Crystal Tools, could not handle.
This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics.
