Ray Dream Studio was a low-end 3D modelingsoftware application. Initially developed by Ray Dream, Inc. in 1989-1991 for the Macintosh, it was acquired and upgraded over the course of mergers with Fractal Design and MetaCreations. Ray Dream was less expensive than most other offerings, renowned for its ease of use, and boasted an impressive feature set including a sophisticated shader editor. Other software programs from the same developers, such as Fractal Design Painter 3D, were often introduced in basic form to the suite. A moderately limited version lacking animation capability was sold for $99 as Ray Dream Designer (later Ray Dream 3D), and quickly became a mass-market favorite.
The first three major revisions were very buggy. By the time of release of version 4, in late 1995, this had improved. In 1996, Ray Dream was acquired by Fractal Design, and in early 1997, Fractal Design merged with MetaTools to form MetaCreations. Versions 5.0 and 5.5 were released by MetaCreations. The software was then merged with its higher-end stepsister, Infini-D, to form Carrara, lending many user interface elements and gaining a better rendering engine. Today, Carrara is maintained by Daz 3D.
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.
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has offices worldwide. Its U.S. offices are located in the states of California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Michigan, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Its Canada offices are located in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta.
Poser is a 3D computer graphics program distributed by Bondware. Poser is optimized for the 3D modeling of human figures. By enabling beginners to produce basic animations and digital images, along with the extensive availability of third-party digital 3D models, it has attained much popularity.
Corel Painter is a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking. It is intended to be used in real-time by professional digital artists as a functional creative tool.
Kai Krause is a German software and graphical user interface designer, best known for founding MetaCreations Corp., his Kai's Power Tools series of products, and for his contributions to graphical user interface design.
Infini-D was a 3D computer graphics program developed by Specular International. It was continued by MetaCreations when Specular merged with them, developing up to version 4.5, then combined with Ray Dream Studio to create Carrara. Soon after, Metacreations divested itself of all products other than MetaStream, including Carrara, which was sold to Eovia, who then sold it to the current developer, DAZ, upon Eovia's breaking up.
Bryce, also often referred to colloquially as Bryce3D, is a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program specializing in fractal landscapes. The name is taken from Bryce Canyon—a rugged region with many of the same landscapes that were first simulated with the software.
Delrina was an electronic form company in Canada that was acquired by the American software firm Symantec in 1995. The company was best known for WinFax, a software package which enabled computers equipped with fax modems to transmit copies of documents to standalone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers. It also sold PerForm and FormFlow.
Daz Studio is a free media design software developed by Daz 3D. Daz Studio is a 3D scene creation and rendering application used to produce images as well as video. Renders can be done by leveraging either the 3Delight render engine, or the Iray render engine, both of which ship for free along with Daz Studio, or with a variety of purchasable add-on render engine plugins for Daz Studio from various vendors and companies.
Creature House Expression was an award-winning vector graphics editor developed by Creature House in Hong Kong, founded by Alex S.C. Hsu and Irene H. H. Lee. It was initially marketed through a developer/publisher agreement with Ray Dream Inc. subsequently Fractal Design Corporation and later MetaCreations under the trade name Fractal Design Expression. The software was positioned as a companion to then-Fractal Design/MetaCreations Painter. Creature House regained full marketing rights from MetaCreations Corp. in late 2000 and published version 2 of the software under its own name as Creature House Expression. The latest version of Creature House Expression published by Creature House Ltd is version 3.3.
The Eovia Corporation was founded in November 2000, with offices in both the US and France. The company's 3D computer graphics software products were aimed towards professional and amateur artists, with a focus on remaining accessible in price and usability.
MetaCreations was a computer software company that was best known for its graphics applications, notably Ray Dream Studio/Infini D, Fractal Design Painter, Bryce, and Kai's Power Tools.
Algorithmic art or algorithm art is art, mostly visual art, in which the design is generated by an algorithm. Algorithmic artists are sometimes called algorists.
Carrara is a full-featured 3D computer graphics application featuring figure posing and editing, as well as nature modeling, in addition to traditional modeling, animation, texturing and rendering. The software is also capable of dynamic hair and fur simulations, particle effects, soft body and rigid body dynamics. Carrara is now owned and developed by Daz 3D. Carrara is compatible with Poser and Daz Studio formats of 3D figures and props. It is further supported by a number of 3rd party plug-ins and add-ons.
Daz Productions, Inc. is a 3D-content and software company specializing in providing rigged 3D human models, associated accessory content, and software to the hobbyist as well as the prosumer market.
Softimage|3D was a 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.
Dabbler is natural media drawing software aimed at beginners. It was initially developed by Fractal Design Corporation. It is a simplified version of Fractal Design Painter, and included multimedia tutorials and a fullscreen interface. Dabbler was released as "Art Dabbler" after the MetaCreations merger, and rights were eventually transferred to Corel. Dabbler operating system is Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows.
Fractal-generating software is any type of graphics software that generates images of fractals. There are many fractal generating programs available, both free and commercial. Mobile apps are available to play or tinker with fractals. Some programmers create fractal software for themselves because of the novelty and because of the challenge in understanding the related mathematics. The generation of fractals has led to some very large problems for pure mathematics.
SpaceClaim is a solid modeling CAD software that runs on Microsoft Windows and developed by SpaceClaim Corporation. The company is headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts.
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