Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya, is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interactive 3D applications, animated films, TV series, and visual effects.
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides 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.
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. 3ds Max features shaders, dynamic simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, a customizable user interface, and its own scripting language.
Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon.
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.
Mental Ray is a production-quality ray tracing application for 3D rendering. Its Berlin-based developer Mental Images was acquired by Nvidia in 2007 and Mental Ray was discontinued in 2017.
OpenSceneGraph is an open-source 3D graphics application programming interface, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling.
Brazil Rendering System was a proprietary commercial plugin for 3D Studio Max, Autodesk VIZ and Rhinoceros 3D. Steve Blackmon and Scott Kirvan started developing Brazil R/S while working as the R&D team of Blur Studio, and formed the company SplutterFish to sell and market Brazil. It was capable of photorealistic rendering using fast ray tracing and global illumination.
SpeedTree is a group of vegetation programming and modeling software products developed and sold by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV) that generates virtual foliage for animations, architecture and in real time for video games and demanding real time simulations.
Autodesk Revit is a building information modelling software for architects, structural engineers, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) engineers, design for contractors. The original software was developed by Charles River Software, founded in 1997, renamed Revit Technology Corporation in 2000, and acquired by Autodesk in 2002. The software allows users to design a building and structure and its components in 3D, annotate the model with 2D drafting elements, and access building information from the building model's database. Revit is 4D building information modeling application capable with tools to plan and track various stages in the building's lifecycle, from concept to construction and later maintenance and/or demolition.
3Dconnexion is a German manufacturer of human interface devices for manipulating and navigating computer-generated 3D imagery. These devices are often referred to as 3D motion controllers, 3D navigation devices, 6DOF devices or a 3D mouse.
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.
3D computer graphics software refers to packages used to create 3D computer-generated imagery.
Cyber Studio CAD-3D is a 3D modeling and animation package developed by Tom Hudson for the Atari ST computer and published by Antic Software. The package is a precursor to 3D Studio Max.
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.
Chaos Corona is a computer-generated imagery 3D rendering software developed by Chaos Czech, a subsidiary of Chaos. It was created by Ondřej 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.
Lumion is a real-time 3D architectural visualization software developed by Act-3D B.V., a privately owned Dutch company, developer of the Quest3D engine, headquartered in Sassenheim, Netherlands. Primarily used in architecture, landscaping, urban planning and interior design, Lumion allows the creation of high-resolution renders and visualizations. It is available in 180 countries worldwide.
