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Developer(s) | Okan Arikan et Al. |
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Stable release | 2.2.6 / 15 June 2009 |
Operating system | Windows, Mac OS X, Linux |
Type | 3D computer graphics |
License | GPL and LGPL |
Website | sourceforge.net/projects/pixie |
Pixie is a free (open source), photorealistic raytracing renderer for generating photorealistic images, developed by Okan Arikan in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas At Austin. It is RenderMan-compliant (meaning it reads conformant RIB, and supports full SL shading language shaders) and is based on the Reyes rendering architecture, but also support raytracing for hidden surface determination.
Like the proprietary BMRT, Pixie is popular with students learning the RenderMan Interface, and is a suitable replacement for it. Contributions to Pixie are facilitated by SourceForge and the Internet where it can also be downloaded free of charge as source code or precompiled. It compiles for Windows (using Visual Studio 2005), Linux and on Mac OS X (using Xcode or Unix-style configure script).
Key features include:
Pixie is developed by Okan Arikan and George Harker.
The RenderMan Interface Specification, or RISpec in short, is an open API developed by Pixar Animation Studios to describe three-dimensional scenes and turn them into digital photorealistic images. It includes the RenderMan Shading Language.
X3D is a set of royalty-free ISO/IEC standards for declaratively representing 3D computer graphics. X3D includes multiple graphics file formats, programming-language API definitions, and run-time specifications for both delivery and integration of interactive network-capable 3D data. X3D version 4.0 has been approved by Web3D Consortium, and is under final review by ISO/IEC as a revised International Standard (IS).
Houdini is a 3D animation software application developed by Toronto-based SideFX, who adapted it from the PRISMS suite of procedural generation software tools.
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).
In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene—a process known as shading. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of specialized functions in computer graphics special effects and video post-processing, as well as general-purpose computing on graphics processing units.
Pixar RenderMan is proprietary photorealistic 3D rendering software produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar uses RenderMan to render their in-house 3D animated movie productions and it is also available as a commercial product licensed to third parties. In 2015, a free non-commercial version of RenderMan became available.
A shading language is a graphics programming language adapted to programming shader effects. Shading languages usually consist of special data types like "vector", "matrix", "color" and "normal".
Software rendering is the process of generating an image from a model by means of computer software. In the context of computer graphics rendering, software rendering refers to a rendering process that is not dependent upon graphics hardware ASICs, such as a graphics card. The rendering takes place entirely in the CPU. Rendering everything with the (general-purpose) CPU has the main advantage that it is not restricted to the (limited) capabilities of graphics hardware, but the disadvantage is that more transistors are needed to obtain the same speed.
The Blender Game Engine was a free and open-source 3D production suite used for making real-time interactive content. It was previously embedded within Blender, but support for it was dropped in 2019, with the release of Blender 2.8. The game engine was written from scratch in C++ as a mostly independent component, and includes support for features such as Python scripting and OpenAL 3D sound.
3D rendering is the 3D computer graphics process of converting 3D models into 2D images on a computer. 3D renders may include photorealistic effects or non-photorealistic styles.
3Delight, or as currently known as 3DelightNSI, is 3D computer graphics software that runs on Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Linux. It is developed by Illumination Research. It is both a photorealistic and NPR path tracing offline renderer based on its NSI API scene description and on OSL for shading. It has been used to render full CGI animation and VFX for numerous feature films. It comes with supported, open source plug-in integrations for several DCC applications, such as Maya, Houdini, Cinema4D, Katana, OpenUSD Hydra, and a democratic free license that allows for commercial use. It also provides a fully distributed cloud rendering service called 3Delight Cloud.
Form·Z is a general-purpose solid and surface modeling software. It offers 2D/3D form manipulating and sculpting capabilities. It can be used on Windows and Macintosh computers. It is available in English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Korean and Japanese languages.
The name RenderMan can cause confusion because it has been used to refer to different things developed by Pixar Animation Studios:
Kerkythea is a standalone rendering system that supports raytracing and Metropolis light transport, uses physically accurate materials and lighting, and is distributed as freeware. Currently, the program can be integrated with any software that can export files in obj and 3ds formats, including 3ds Max, Blender, LightWave 3D, SketchUp, Silo and Wings3D.
3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3-D-CGI 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 digital images, usually 2D images but sometimes 3D images. The resulting images may be stored for viewing later or displayed in real time.
Freestyle is a free, open source renderer for non-photorealistic line drawing from 3D scenes.
iClone is a real-time 3D animation and rendering software program. Real-time playback is enabled by using a 3D videogame engine for instant on-screen rendering.
Away3D is an open-source platform for developing interactive 3D graphics for video games and applications, in Adobe Flash or HTML5. The platform consists of a 3D world editor, a 3D graphics engine, a 3D physics engine and a compressed 3D model file format (AWD).
This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics.