Alternatives to AIR
Compare AIR alternatives for your business or organization using the curated list below. SourceForge ranks the best alternatives to AIR in 2025. Compare features, ratings, user reviews, pricing, and more from AIR competitors and alternatives in order to make an informed decision for your business.
-
1
CentiLeo
CentiLeo
Fast and easy to use GPU path tracer. CentiLeo is a fast GPU renderer integrated with 3ds Max and Cinema 4D supporting GPU VRAM software extension and with high efficiency for scenes with complex lighting. For 3ds Max and Cinema 4DCentiLeo is an offline GPU renderer with very fast unbiased path tracing for complex lighting. It supports huge scene assets with GPU-accelerated out-of-core technology that effectively renders the polygon counts, particles and textures that may not fit entirely to GPU memory. This feature extends GPU memory limits for geometry/particles by 4x and for texture memory limits by 100x. CentiLeo supports Interactive Preview Render, node-based material & shader editing, displacement mapping, motion blur, subsurface scattering, fast noise reduction for multi-materials, glass objects and mesh lights. CentiLeo is supported by Skolkovo Foundation, some of software R&D results were supported by Skolkovo grants. -
2
Rhino 8
Robert McNeel & Associates
Rhino can create, edit, analyze, document, render, animate, and translate NURBS curves, surfaces and solids, subdivision geometry (SubD), point clouds, and polygon meshes. There are no limits on complexity, degree, or size beyond those of your hardware. Uninhibited free-form 3D modeling tools like those found only in products costing 20 to 50 times more. Model any shape you can imagine. Accuracy needed to design, prototype, engineer, analyze, and manufacture anything from an airplane to jewelry. Compatibility with all your other design, drafting, CAM, engineering, analysis, rendering, animation, and illustration software. Read and repair meshes and extremely challenging IGES files. Accessible. So easy to learn and use that you can focus on design and visualization without being distracted by the software. Fast, even on an ordinary laptop computer. No special hardware is needed. Development platform for hundreds of specialty 3D products.Starting Price: $995.00/user -
3
Redshift
Maxon
Redshift is a powerful GPU-accelerated renderer, built to meet the specific demands of contemporary high-end production rendering. Tailored to support creative individuals and studios of every size, Redshift offers a suite of powerful features and integrates with industry standard CG applications. Redshift has the features and uncompromising quality of a CPU renderer, but at GPU rendering speeds. Unlike other GPU renderers out there, Redshift is a biased renderer that allows the user to adjust the quality of individual techniques in order to get the best performance/quality balance for their production. Redshift supports complex, advanced shading networks and texturing capabilities as required for production-quality rendering. Flexible, production-ready shader, compatible with PBR workflows of Allegorithmic Substance and Unreal Engine. Control how materials behave for certain ray types. Useful for customizing GI or double-sided polygon shading.Starting Price: $500 -
4
Art of Illusion
Art of Illusion
Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. Many of its capabilities rival those found in commercial programs. Highlights include subdivision surface based modelling tools, skeleton based animation, and a graphical language for designing procedural textures and materials. The current version is 3.2.0, released January 13, 2021. This version is both stable and powerful enough to be used for serious, high end animation work. We now have an extensive documentation section. This includes the user manual, as well as a number of tutorials covering different aspects of the program. The interface is designed to be clean, easy to learn, and simple to use. Art of Illusion provides subdivision surface based modelling tools for creating smooth surfaces from control meshes of arbitrary shape and structure. A powerful set of deformation tools allow you to "sculpt" objects in a natural, intuitive way. -
5
Fujiyama
Fujiyama
Fujiyama is free and open source, distribution oriented ray-tracing renderer designed to handle production image rendering. Multi-threaded rendering - dynamic assignement of tile rendering per theread. Rendering preview - fbview shows rendering progress. Region rendering - accelerates distribution rendering pipeline. Tile based rendering. Volume Filling Procedure - Pyroclastic clouds procedure provided. Volume Filling Procedure - Spline wisps procedure provided. Volume Filling Procedure - Surface wisps procedure provided. On demand reading of mipmap - unlimited number of texture images. Pluggable shader DSO - shaders can be written in C/C++. Subsurface scattering - implemented in shader. Bump mapping - perturb normals based on mipmap images. Primitive groups - multiple shader assignment on triangle mesh. Gaussian and Box pixel filters - supports filter width bigger than 1 pixel. Adaptive grid pixel sampling - subdivides pixels based on color threshold. -
6
Direct3D
Microsoft
Direct3D is a low-level API for drawing primitives with the rendering pipeline, or for performing parallel operations with the compute shader. See the content below for more information. Direct3D 12 provides an API and platform that allows your application to take advantage of the graphics and computing capabilities of PCs equipped with one or more Direct3D 12-compatible GPUs. You can use Microsoft Direct3D 11 graphics to create 3-D graphics for games and scientific and desktop applications. DXGI handles enumerating graphics adapters, enumerating display modes, selecting buffer formats, sharing resources between processes, and presenting rendered frames to a window or monitor for display. HLSL is the high-level shader language for DirectX. Using HLSL, you can create C-like programmable shaders for the Direct3D pipeline. The DirectDraw surface file format (DDS) supports uncompressed and compressed (DXTn) textures, mipmaps, cube maps, and volume maps. -
7
Element 3D
Video Copilot
High-performance After Effects™ plug-in for creating motion design and visual FX! Cast shadows using special matte shadow material. Supports shadows and ambient occlusion shading. Options for shadow color tint and opacity. Multiple distortion noise modes. Advanced fractal settings. Combine with transfer modes! For best performance use dynamic reflections on essential objects to preserve GPU memory. Control wireframe settings per material. Great for UI design or HUD graphics. Element requires a hardware license to be generated. We have built this into the plugin so it can be done faster! Video Copilot is a collaborative resource for training, design tools, and artists. Our goal is to show you what is possible and how effects can be created so that you can apply these techniques to your own creative adventures. We strive to develop distinctive and innovative tools that improve the quality and speed of your production while offering freedom and flexibility.Starting Price: $199.95 one-time payment -
8
Shade 3D
Shade 3D
Shade 3D has been sold to more than 500,000 active users around the world and is used in many different sectors of the 3D industry. A new method of Subdivision is now supported. As a extended version of the famous Catmull- Clark subdivision system, OpenSubdiv allows you to control your edges sharpness and apply subdivision exactly on the targeted spots. This tool will reduce the polygon number of any objects and at the same time will preserve the original shape. Perfect for games and models acquired from 3D scanners. The Wrapping Mesh tool will create a single watertight shape out of several complicated objects. It is perfect for 3D printing. A brand new 3D Printing Assistant will help you to check and repair your model and get it ready for 3D Printing ( STL and OBJ formats). -
9
RenderMan
Pixar
Advanced technology from Pixar Animation Studios for rendering VFX and animation. With a new state-of-the-art framework optimized for physically-based rendering, RenderMan can deliver unmatched flexibility for any production pipeline. Not only is RenderMan used for our own feature films at Pixar, it is also used throughout the industry for rendering Visual Effects and animation, making scalability and versatility one of its core strengths. Now you can get out-of-box production tools straight from Pixar Animation Studios, including materials and light transport, no development required. Physically based shading allows RenderMan to deliver highly realistic lighting with minimal setup, including full support for multi-bounce ray traced global illumination and ray traced subsurface scattering. Much research and development has gone into making these traditionally expensive effects a production reality. Materials come fully loaded with all of the creative options.Starting Price: $5 per lincense -
10
DGArt
nitrio
DGArt is a 3D modeling and rendering tool designed for artists and game designers, and developers to create 3D assets and content from start to finish. It is affordable, complete, and easy to learn. With DGArt on your iPad, you can effortlessly construct 3D models/digital art. DGArt supports a variety of geometric primitives, including built-in geometry types such as spheres, boxes, planes, and text. It also features editable polygons that can be accessed through an edit mode, supporting extrusion, inset, loop cuts, and more. DGArt creates a .scn file. This is the data format used to store the geometry, nodes, lights, and camera. This format can be used in the Playgrounds App for your apps or games. Please refer to SceneKit for more details. For artists, game designers, and developers who frequently travel, work as freelancers, or prefer to work on a tablet rather than a desktop, this mobile 3D app is a wonderful alternative. -
11
3Delight
Illumination Research
Introducing 3Delight refreshingly simple and fast. High performance production rendering software & tools with unmatched support services. Illumination Research, headquartered in Singapore, specialises in rendering solutions for the demanding environment of the VFX and animation production pipeline. 3Delight was first introduced in 2002 and has since been used in countless feature films and commercials. Our product line include 3DelightNSI, 3Delight for Maya and 3Delight for Katana. We are also in the testing phase for a rendering service through 3Delight Cloud. 3Delight for Maya is our proprietary rendering plug-in for Autodesk® Maya®. It is easy to use by the artists, while providing all the flexibility to support the most demanding rendering pipelines. The free 3Delight comes with one full license with all the features but with a restriction to use a maximum of 12 cores for rendering on your computer.Starting Price: $30 per week -
12
X-Particles
INSYDIUM
Create outstanding ParticleFX from Solar Systems, FUI, Holograms and medical visualizations to abstract artwork. Multiple options to combine Emitters and Modifiers, gives you a range of possibilities. Realistic smoke, fire and explosive simulations. You can export ExplosiaFX as a VDB volume, and any render engine that can read the VDB data can then render the volume data. Our Liquid and Grain Solvers enable you to create stunning large and small-scale fluid simulations. From gorgeous beaches, with waves and ocean spray, to beautiful product shot splashes. Drive Cloth simulations with any Modifier, then rip it apart with the advanced tearing options. ClothFX adds a whole new dimension to motion design effects and destruction VFX shots. -
13
Cheetah3D
Cheetah3D
Cheetah3D is a powerful and easy to learn 3D modeling, rendering and animation software which was developed from the ground up for Mac. So jump right into the world of computer generated imaging, create 3D artwork for your next iPhone game or make your first animated character. With a full set of polygon, subdivision surface and spline modeling tools the artists can focus on creating, safe in the knowledge that Cheetah3D has a breadth of features for the task. Cheetah3D makes modeling in 3D a breeze for new and experienced users alike. Character rigging is part of the seamless animation system of Cheetah3D where just about every property of an object can be animated. Breathe life into a character for your next iPhone game or animate an architectural fly-through by the powerful animation system built into Cheetah3D. Cheetah3D smoothly integrates the industrial strength Bullet physics engine to simulate rigid body and soft body dynamics.Starting Price: $99 -
14
Twinmotion
Unreal Engine
Easily produce high-quality images, panoramas, standard or 360° VR videos, and complete client presentations in seconds! For architecture, construction, urban planning, and landscaping professionals, Twinmotion combines an intuitive icon-driven interface with the power of unreal engine. View and edit your scene in real time at the same high quality as the final rendering. Twinmotion features realistic physically based lighting and shadowing with built-in global illumination, includes over 600 PBR materials that react to your environment, and offers effects like depth of field, lens flare, and vignetting, making it easy to get the look you need. Regardless of your project’s complexity or your previous CG experience, Twinmotion's simple and intuitive interface makes it a breeze to learn and use. Drag and drop lights, materials, and props; change the season, the weather, or the time of day by simply dragging a slider. -
15
Kray
Kray
Kray is a state of the art global illumination renderer that allows very fast and accurate rendering of scenes where indirect light plays important role. It includes the most advanced modern algorithms and optimizations to allow it to render full global illumination, reflections, refractions and caustics quickly on standard computers. Fast global illumination: light/photon mapping – biased, but very fast and not much dependent on number of ray recursions, path tracing – unbiased with serval sampling optimizations, irradiance caching – for fast, view independent, reusable GI solution storage, caustics. Light models: point/directional, line lights, area lights, background light, HDR image based lighting, lights pre sampling. Instancing: allows repeated re-use of the same geometry in multiply locations in the rendered scene with very low memory consumption, instanced geometry can be also instances, even self cloning is possible with user defined number of recursions.Starting Price: €70 per unit -
16
Guerilla Render
Guerilla Render
Composed of Guerilla Station and Guerilla Render, Guerilla is a Production-Proven Look Development, Assembly, Lighting and Rendering Solution designed for the Animation and VFX industries. Used on a wide range of Productions, from Full CG to Hybrid and VFX, from Feature Films to TV Series, from low budget to medium and high budget, Guerilla is the State of the Art Software, easy to use and to deploy in your pipeline and will give you all the flexibility you need for your productions with no compromise on performances. Give more power to creativity with the new procedural system which now counts 4 depth levels of instantiation. OCIO management is fully supported with looks and input LUTs, color picker and color boxes. Reduce the memory footprint of your instances composed of several objects with the Group Instance Prims options of the instances procedural. New Asynchronous OpenGL View to prevent UI freezes and to load geometries as you work.Starting Price: €280 -
17
MeshLab
MeshLab
The open source system for processing and editing 3D triangular meshes. It provides a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, texturing and converting meshes. It offers features for processing raw data produced by 3D digitization tools/devices and for preparing models for 3D printing. In this version we introduce support to several file formats (.gltf, .glb, .nxs, .nxz, .e57) and a brand new plugin for exact mesh booleans. The 3D data alignment phase (also known as registration) is a fundamental step in the pipeline for processing 3D scanned data. MeshLab provides a powerful tool for moving the different meshes into a common reference system, able to manage large set of range-maps. MeshLab implements a fine tuned ICP one-to-one alignment step, followed by a global bundle adjustment error-distribution step. The alignment can be performed on meshes and point clouds coming from several sources, including active (both short- and long-range) scanners. -
18
Render[in]
Render[in]
Render[in] is a fully integrated, real-time radiosity engine developed for SketchUp (Free and Pro) users. Powered by Artlantis 6.5’s rendering engine, Render[in] 3 gives SketchUp users the high-definition, photorealistic renderings they’ve been looking for, in a robust, easy-to-use application. Just as in photography, the respect of color is essential in rendering. Render[in]’s new global illumination engine improves images for a better perception of colors, textures, and materials. Thanks to both the ISO and Shutter parameters, it is easier than ever to fine-tune a scene’s lighting.Starting Price: €190 per license -
19
AMD Radeon™ ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images. Built on AMD’s high-performance Radeon™ Rays technology, Radeon™ ProRender’s complete, scalable ray tracing engine uses open industry standards to harness GPU and CPU performance for swift, impressive results. Features an extensive native physically-based material and camera system to enable true design decisions with global illumination. A powerful combination of cross-platform compatibility, rendering capabilities, and efficiency helps reduce the time required to deliver true-to-life images. Harness the power of machine learning to produce high-quality final and interactive renders in a fraction of the time traditional denoising takes. Free Radeon™ ProRender plug-ins are currently available for many popular 3D content-creation applications to create stunning, physically accurate renders.
-
20
Horde3D
The Horde3D Team
Horde3D is a small open source 3D rendering engine. It is written in an effort to create a graphics engine that offers the stunning visual effects expected in next-generation games while at the same time being as lightweight and conceptually clean as possible. Horde3D has a simple and intuitive interface accessible from virtually any programming language and is particularly suitable for rendering large crowds of animated characters in next-generation quality. The complete scene graph and animation systems are designed with this requirement in mind. For example, Horde3D tries to keep node hierarchies small to reduce call overhead and to use cached data for faster animations. The geometry is optimized for efficient cache usage and you can use several levels of detail for a model. Furthermore, it is possible to use vertex skinning and apply deferred shading to reduce the number of draw calls for scenes with many lights. -
21
AWS Thinkbox Stoke
Amazon
Create particle simulations faster for Autodesk 3ds Max compared to competing fluid dynamics plugins. Allow artists without programming or scripting experience to easily use an extensible procedural geometry modifier. Give users access to artist-friendly channel-editing workflows similar to node-based image-compositing applications. Access-optimized geometry and particle lookup operations are not available in the Autodesk 3ds Max SDK. AWS Thinkbox Stoke simplifies and accelerates the creation of high-volume particle clouds. Enable formats, such as PRT and RealFlow BIN, and simulations from FumeFX, Particle Flow, cebas thinkingParticles, and 3ds Max Force Space Warps. Create and simulate new fields, including velocity fields, and the loading and saving of field data using industry-standard formats. Combine field data with 3ds Max subsystems, such as Particle Flow, MassFX, Hair and Fur, Materials, most renderers, and other systems. -
22
Miarmy
Basefount
Miarmy (read My Army) is a human logic engine-based Maya plugin for crowd simulation, AI & behavioral animation, creature physical simulation, and rendering. Miarmy simulator is free forever. You can download the full software package, along with tons of tutorials, samples, demo files, and documents. We also provide some official samples and ready-to-run presets. And the most amazing part is, they are totally free. Create stunning crowd VFX using Maya particles, field, fluid, and transform. Support standard production pipeline, reference, and motion builder. Build a human fuzzy logic network without any programming or node connecting.Starting Price: $1,350 per year -
23
Autodesk Arnold
Autodesk
Global illumination rendering software. Render high-quality 3D images faster with Arnold–so you can focus on the art. Arnold software is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing renderer that helps you work more efficiently. Interactivity produces immediate results, leaving more time for iterations. The controls and UI are simple and intuitive. Switch seamlessly between CPU and GPU rendering to suit your production needs. Arnold thrives on heavy datasets and complex scene files. Production-ready tools reliably manage complex characters, scenery, and lighting challenges. Compute performance is optimized when creating elements such as hair, fur, skin. Easily integrate with all of the top 3D digital content creation (DCC) tools. Get the scalability of an open and extensible architecture. Arnold GPU allows users to switch seamlessly between CPU and GPU rendering. High-performance ray traced subsurface scattering eliminates the need to tune point clouds.Starting Price: $27 per month -
24
Modo
Foundry
3D modeling and rendering platform designed to help businesses create 3D drawings and configure UV mapping and texturing workflows. Modo’s powerful and flexible 3D modeling, animation, texturing and rendering toolset empowers artists to explore and develop ideas without jumping through technical hoops. Modo® is your starting point for creative exploration. With fast direct modeling, flexible procedural modeling, the award-winning MeshFusion Boolean toolset and built-in sculpting tools all working together, Modo’s modeling moxie is unmatched. Free yourself from creativity-killing constraints, with Modo’s intuitive, artist-friendly toolset. From roughing out volumes to creating highly detailed forms, Modo lets you focus on creation, not construction. Build your own kit of specialized tools by combining different operations, with Modo’s flexible tool assembly system. With Modo, every job you do becomes easier, as you continually develop new efficiencies.Starting Price: $65 per month -
25
3ds Max
Autodesk
3ds Max offers a rich and flexible toolset to create premium designs with full artistic control. Create massive worlds in games. Visualize high-quality architectural renderings. Model finely detailed interiors and objects. Bring characters and features to life with animation and VFX. The built-in Arnold renderer provides a rich experience and can handle your more complex characters, scenes, and effects. Save time with centralized creative tools for interactive light mixing, color correction, and lens effects on the rendered image. Work faster with an artist-friendly user experience and intuitive controls. Iterate and produce high quality renders and variations faster. 3ds Max lets you scale your workflow with automation, allowing you to spend more time on creativity. Use 3ds Max as a compute engine to scale content production. Extend built-in workflows with accessible APIs.Starting Price: $215 per month -
26
Clarisse iFX
Isotropix
Clarisse iFX is a powerful CG toolset trusted by internationally renowned creative studios. Built by artists for artists, it is designed to simplify today’s complex creative workflows, empowering users with interactivity, speed and power over datasets containing bazillions of polygons.Created in response to feedback from today’s front-line CG creatives, Clarisse iFX unifies powerful rendering, lighting and look development tools under a single, accessible package. Thanks to its integrated CPU based rendering engine, based on unidirectional path-tracing users can work interactively on rich, data-heavy environments, scenes and assets, with full visibility over their creative decision-making. Clarisse iFX fits seamlessly into the core of any modern production pipeline. It’s an intuitive, flexible and comprehensive toolset tailored to the needs of studios and production teams working in CG today – not ten years ago.Starting Price: $499 one-time payment -
27
Blender
Blender Foundation
Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline. Cycles is Blender’s built-in powerful unbiased path-tracer engine that offers stunning ultra-realistic rendering. Blender’s comprehensive array of modeling tools make creating, transforming and editing your models a breeze. VFX professionals say: “Probably the best tracker in the market”. Blender includes production ready camera and object tracking. Allowing you to import raw footage, track the footage, mask areas and see the camera movements live in your 3D scene. Eliminating the need to switch between programs. Thanks to the high quality rigging and animation tools, Blender is being used for numerous short films, advertisements, TV series and feature films now. -
28
Cinema 4D
Maxon
3D computer animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering software. Cinema 4D Subscription Release 24 (S24) includes functionality to easily browse and obtain models, materials and other assets, and to intuitively place them within the scene. The release also includes key workflow enhancements and a sneak peek at the continued progress on the Scene Nodes and Scene Manager interfaces to the new core. Cinema 4D is a professional 3D modeling, animation, simulation and rendering software solution. Its fast, powerful, flexible and stable toolset make 3D workflows more accessible and efficient for design, motion graphics, VFX, AR/MR/VR, game development and all types of visualization professionals. Cinema 4D produces stunning results, whether working on your own or in a team. Cinema 4D is widely recognized as one of the easiest and most accessible 3D packages to learn and use. To soften that learning curve Maxon offers thousands of tutorials on Cineversity and hundreds of Quick Tips.Starting Price: $16.58 per month -
29
NVIDIA EGX Platform
NVIDIA
From rendering and virtualization to engineering analysis and data science, accelerate multiple workloads on any device with the NVIDIA® EGX™ Platform for professional visualization. A highly flexible reference design that combines high-end NVIDIA GPUs with NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) software and high-performance networking, these systems deliver exceptional graphics and compute power, enabling artists and engineers to do their best work—from anywhere—at a fraction of the cost, space, and power of CPU-based solutions. The EGX Platform combined with NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation (vWS) software can simplify deployment of a high-performance, cost-effective infrastructure, providing a solution that is tested and certified with industry-leading partners and ISV applications on trusted OEM servers. It enables professionals to do their work from anywhere, while increasing productivity, improving data center utilization, and reducing IT and maintenance costs. -
30
Renderpeople
Renderpeople
Posed People are static scanned 3D People. Each of them portrays a specific natural pose that has been scanned in our state-of-the-art 3D scanner. The geometry and high-resolution textures of all Posed 3D People have been manually refined to match the vividness and authenticity of real humans. Posed People include pre-built materials and are ready to render. The free models match the same level of quality and functionality as the 3D Posed People in our online shop. Rigged People are movable and posable scanned 3D People. Each of them includes a skeleton that has already been bound to the geometry (also known as skinning). Our 3D Rigged People can be easily posed or animated in any way you like, making them versatile for use in many fields of application. Motion capturing data can also be applied to quickly create realistic movement. The free models match the same level of quality and functionality as the 3D Rigged People in our online shop. -
31
ArionFX
RandomControl
ArionFX is a versatile tool that offers a variety of key HDR image processing algorithms designed to function in floating-point 32-bit HDR data. Remarkably, ArionFX operates in Linear Workflow, not washing out your image, and respecting its full dynamic range at all times. ArionFX is a unique and unmatched set of tool for all your HDR photo, CGI and video needs. Although crafted with CGI post-processing in mind, it is also a great tone-mapper for photographers. High dyanmic range modulation. Easy hotpixels removal. Vignetting, fringe, bloom & glare. HDR sharpening. Vibrant color correction. RandomControl is a team of people who share a passion for computer graphics, 3D technology, and real-time applications. In fact, the core of the R&D team is made of engineers with a life-long relationship with the world of coding and visualization. As a result of this passion and experience, we are the creators of Maverick, our flagship rendering technology and ArionFX, a post-processing tool.Starting Price: €95 -
32
Shade/Shape
RE:Vision Effects
Shade/Shape automatically turns your 2D artwork into 3D rendered imagery! Automatically 3D shades your 2D text, logos and pictures by using the outline and features of the artwork to give it volume and depth. Animated 2D characters really stand out when Shade/Shape is applied! Develop cool effects and abstract transitions. Add natural 3D shading effect to your existing image sequences. Shade/Shape automatically generates 3D shading for your 2D graphical and picture elements using our shading-from-shape technology. Add depth, shading and metallic luster to your titles and logos! Create glassy objects by reflecting the background sequence through your object! Shade/Shape also comes with a plugin, that uses the shading techniques in Shade/Shape to shade the normals produced by a 3D system or even Shade/Shape itself. Add further detailing by applying reflection and bump maps. Stable and smooth-over-time shading produced for moving imagery. -
33
Vectary
Vectary
Vectary is the most accessible 3D and Augmented Reality design platform. No downloads, all in the browser. Build immersive experiences for the real world. Publish 3D and Augmented Reality content to any website, on all platforms with Vectary Web AR. Transform your imported model with high quality and free materials, environments and lightning setups in Vectary. Enhance your 3D content with access to hundreds of free high quality materials carefully selected to shine in AR. Let Vectary do the heavy lifting of reliability and performance optimization to ensure smooth experience on every device. Web AR automatically bakes physically accurate materials and shadows for extra realism and immersion. Vectary can import 3D files from all major tool-chains in the polygon, CAD modeling and 3D scanning field. Over 60 import formats are included in the free version, with additional CAD package available for specific files from Catia, Solidworks, Pro Engineer etc.Starting Price: $12 per user per month -
34
Nuke
Foundry
For over 20 years, Nuke has empowered teams to work together to get pixel-perfect results, fast—all without sacrificing creativity and quality. Whether your focus is on blockbusters, short-form or binge-worthy episodic content, Nuke’s power, flexibility and robust toolset empowers whole teams to create the best content, with the same tools used by leading studios. Watch what studios all around the world say about Nuke. The tools to get the job done, no matter how you're working. Advanced node-based compositing, 3D tracking and model building, conform and review... the Nuke range scales to suit your needs. The Nuke family offers unparalleled power and performance to meet the needs of modern production work. Nuke’s node graph and resolution-independent processing mean the scope of work you can handle is unmatched. Easily collaborate with others, whether you’re sitting side by side or across the globe. Work fast with Nuke’s cutting-edge toolkits, GPU acceleration and fluid workflows.Starting Price: $5,248 -
35
Avoyd
enkisoftware
Avoyd Voxel Editor and Renderer Create, import, export and render large voxel worlds. 3D art and rendering tool for voxel artists, map builders and game developers. Main Features: - Large scenes up to 256k voxels a side. - CPU and GPU path traced rendering. - Export to optimised mesh glTF and OBJ with physically-based materials parameters, and VOX. - Import MagicaVoxel VOX, Minecraft maps, heightmaps, palettes. - Orthographic projection with Isometric presets. - Up to 65k physically based materials. - Physically based light and atmosphereStarting Price: €15 one-time payment -
36
Chaos Corona
Chaos Czech
Chaos® Corona is the only renderer created specifically for architectural visualization. Be an artist, not a technician, and achieve photorealism with greater ease than other rendering software. Usability is Chaos Corona’s most powerful feature. Render setup is as simple as pressing “Render”. Most new users learn Corona in just one day — and fall in love with it in two. We aim to keep Chaos Corona affordable and accessible to as many people as possible, without compromising on its development and features. As a Corona user, you are backed by the award-winning Chaos family. Expand your capabilities with Chaos tools guaranteed to integrate smoothly with your favorite render engine. Easier workflow and greater creativity with control over channels affected by a Decal, cameras working inside volumes, improved DOF highlights, improved Caustics, fast and detailed Listers, and more.Starting Price: €24.99 per month -
37
RenderDotC
Dot C Software
Dot C Software's flagship product, RenderDotC, is a world class photorealistic renderer designed to meet the demands of special effects for film. The primary reason people give for choosing RenderDotC is its favorable price per performance ratio. Moreover, RenderDotC scores high marks on everything that matters for a production renderer. Images produced with RenderDotC possess that indescribable yet beautiful quality that some people refer to as "the RenderMan look". All phenomena that are prone to aliasing artifacts are effectively anti-aliased and noise is kept to a minimum. RenderDotC was designed in the 1990's to take advantage of the current hardware and software technologies. Its CPU and memory performance is unsurpassed by all renderers in its class. There are hundreds of details to get right when developing a renderer and that only comes with maturity. RenderDotC is priced competitively for both the film and broadcast markets.Starting Price: $500 -
38
finalRender
cebas Visual Technology
Subscription Drop 5 stays true to its trueHybrid™ promise, even when massive volumetric datasets are used. finaRender is your next generation Visual FX powerhouse! In addition to the standalone rendering plugin for 3ds max, finalRender became a core part of every new single release of thinkingParticles. You can work with massive OpenVDB operations in 3ds Max - and thanks to thinkingParticles Subscription Drop 10 - those massive data sets can easily be handled and visualized with finalRender. If You are an architect, a general 3D vizualization artist or a visual effects pro, finalRender covers it all. Just pick the one rendering solution that does it all. finalRender Subscription Drop 5 is not only about direct rendering industry standard OpenVDB volumes. It is so much more! With its full OptiX™ RTX framework support, specifically optimized for Ray Tracing performances on the GPU, architects and general 3D vizualization artists benefit from an ever increasing power to visualize.Starting Price: $24.5 per month -
39
appleseed
appleseed
appleseed is an open source, physically-based global illumination rendering engine primarily designed for animation and visual effects. appleseed is actively developed by a small, international team of talented volunteers from the animation and VFX industry. Its core mission is to provide individuals and small studios with a complete, reliable, fully open rendering package. Over the years appleseed has been used on several projects including TV documentaries, ads, promotional videos and an animation short. appleseed implements a modern workflow based on path tracing that enables artifact-free, single pass rendering with very little technical tuning. It is simultaneously capable of strictly unbiased rendering when total accuracy matters, and biased rendering when artistic freedom and shorter rendering time are paramount. -
40
EQUINOX-3D
EQUINOX-3D
The 3D modeler with the fastest, fully integrated ray-tracer. Because "rasterization is so 20th century™" 3D modeling, animation, photorealistic rendering, photorealistic VR content creation, CAD/CAM, 3D printing, laser-cutting and much more! Why is EQUINOX-3D better? As our artist said: "all engineers should be forced to use the software they write". I use EQX many hours a day and there is no need to force me! Super-fast photorealistic renderer, the first fully integrated interactive ray-tracer in a modeler. You can do full editing/modeling on ray-traced windows! Powerful subdivision surface modeling. Powerful CAD/CAM features, 3D printing and laser-cutting support. Universal rendering API that allows full modeling on any renderer and fully integrated Cg renderer with a quality that closely matches the ray-tracer. HDR texture support and HDR rendering output. Super fast importance-sampled HDR environment light support. -
41
nXtRender
nXtRender
Create photorealistic, still, panorama, and animation image files from 3D models using raytracing and radiosity technologies. It’s fast and easy to generate high quality results – nXtRender is a great renderer at an affordable price, and works seamlessly within AutoCAD and Revit. Whether designing for work or fun, nXtRender’s seamless integration into AutoCAD makes it quick and easy to create photo-realistic renderings that show your designs at their best. nXtRender optimizes your design-time by saving your settings together with the 3D model and allowing post-render processing. Update your design and update your render, without starting over again. With the nXtRender Engine you can create great results. Save time with an efficient workflow that makes changes easy. Create stunning images that wow your client and help you win business.Starting Price: $349 per license -
42
Kerkythea
Kerkythea
Kerkythea is a freeware software that can produce high quality renders without spending a cent on software licensing. Kerkythea is using physically accurate materials and lights, aiming for the best quality rendering in the most efficient timeframe, with target to simplify the task of quality rendering by providing the necessary tools to automate scene setup, such as staging using the GL real-time viewer, material editor, general/render settings, editors, etc., under a common interface. Kerkythea is a full staging application for rendering your models. And now it’s available for all major platforms Windows, Linux and MacOSX! It accepts .3ds or .obj models, as well as having powerfully developed free exporter for SketchUp. -
43
FPrime
Worley Labs
FPrime is a rendering engine with a unique design focus. Unlike traditional renderers, FPrime is not just a final output step. Instead it is your companion during the entire process of creation from initial setup, through texturing and lighting, keyframing, and of course final rendering. It revolutionizes workflow by giving you constant feedback about your current scene and the effect of changes. You can always just see your render. Speed is the key feature that makes FPrime's feedback possible. That speed means you don't wait for LightWave. FPrime instead is using every moment to help you and prevent you wasting your time. FPrime's views are flexible. Multiple simultaneous renders are still fast and give you more feedback. With LightWave alone, radiosity effects are hard to anticipate during setup and take a long time to render. With FPrime, you have instant feedback. -
44
NVIDIA Iray
NVIDIA
NVIDIA® Iray® is an intuitive physically based rendering technology that generates photorealistic imagery for interactive and batch rendering workflows. Leveraging AI denoising, CUDA®, NVIDIA OptiX™, and Material Definition Language (MDL), Iray delivers world-class performance and impeccable visuals—in record time—when paired with the newest NVIDIA RTX™-based hardware. The latest version of Iray adds support for RTX, which includes dedicated ray-tracing-acceleration hardware support (RT Cores) and an advanced acceleration structure to enable real-time ray tracing in your graphics applications. In the 2019 release of the Iray SDK, all render modes utilize NVIDIA RTX technology. In combination with AI denoising, this enables you to create photorealistic rendering in seconds instead of minutes. Using Tensor Cores on the newest NVIDIA hardware brings the power of deep learning to both final-frame and interactive photorealistic renderings. -
45
Katana
Foundry
Fast and formidable, Katana is a look development and lighting powerhouse that tackles creative challenges with ferocity and ease. It arms artists with the creative freedom and scalability to exceed the needs of today’s most demanding CG-rendering projects. Light at the speed of thought thanks to cutting-edge Lighting Tools, empowering artists to light whole sequences of shots with Katana’s industry-leading, multi-shot workflows. Katana’s Foresight Rendering workflows, comprised of Multiple Simultaneous Renders and Networked Interactive Rendering, provide artists with scalable feedback for faster iterations. Katana is made to drive look development of hero or high volume assets while seamlessly collaborating with shot production. USD-optimised tech, combined with multiple APIs, five different commercial renderers and an open-sourced Shotgun TK integration, make Katana the Swiss Army knife of your pipeline. -
46
NOX
EVERMOTION
NOX is a free stand-alone, physically-accurate state-of-an-art renderer. Its engine is based on unbiased methods. Global illumination is evaluated using Path Tracing or Bidirectional Path Tracing. Light behavior is based on laws of physics, however some simplifications occur. Many post-production actions can be done in NOX internally, so no additional software is necessary. NOX works with scenes created and imported from 3ds Max, Blender and Cinema4D. NOX is one of the most comprehensive renderers on the market and it is still under development at beta stage. It evolves and constantly gains new features. To make the best renders with NOX you need to know its philosophy of rendering. To achieve the best results read User Guide. Currently it covers features from version 0.3.39. The software made a long leap since then so we currently work on updated version of User Guide and want to release it autumn 2013. -
47
Mitsuba
Mitsuba
Mitsuba 2 is a research-oriented retargetable rendering system, written in portable C++17 on top of the Enoki library. It is developed by the Realistic Graphics Lab at EPFL. It can be compiled into many variants which include color handling (RGB, spectral, monochrome), vectorization (scalar, SIMD, CUDA) and differentiable rendering. Mitsuba 2 consists of a small set of core libraries and a wide variety of plugins that implement functionality ranging from materials and light sources to complete rendering algorithms. It strives to retain scene compatibility with its predecessor Mitsuba 0.6. The renderer includes a large automated test suite written in Python, and its development relies on several continuous integration servers that compile and test new commits on different operating systems using various compilation settings (e.g. debug/release builds, single/double precision, etc). -
48
Vizcom
Vizcom
See your drawings come to life in seconds. Instantly visualize your ideas with AI-powered creative tools. Quick and effortless rendering. Create a high quality render in seconds with a quick sketch, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual rendering. Start a sketch using your favorite drawing tablet or iPad. Ideate quickly and accelerate your rate of innovation and creativity, efficiently. Supercharge your ideation process by creating unique renders without breaking your creative sprint. Never get the same image twice. Share projects and assets with your team. Share your ideas and see what your team can create together. Download the Vizcom desktop client app for Windows or Mac, and get started with your drawing tablet. -
49
Marmoset Toolbag
Marmoset
Toolbag provides everything needed to perfect the look, design, and presentation of your 3D assets. From previewing materials, baking texture sets ready for production, to assembling renders ready for showcasing to the world, Toolbag has a place in your workflow. Real-time physically-based rendering and image-based lighting are the core of Toolbag’s superior image quality. Realistic or stylized, your artwork will shine bright. Create more, click less. The simple things like drag-and-drop functionality and smart-loaders, to name a few, help provide a smooth and familiar 3D rendering experience in Toolbag. Capture stills of your latest character art, environment art, product designs, and more. Make use of Toolbag’s built-in Turntable tool, or set up your very own custom animation and camera sequence to proudly showcase your latest creation in motion.Starting Price: $189 per user -
50
form•Z
AutoDesSys
form•Z pro is a powerful 3D design application featuring a variety of modeling personalities and tools with an easy to use interface to express and communicate your imagination. It is based on advanced 3D solid and surface modeling methods that maintain accurate representations as you progress from design to visualization, layout, animation and fabrication. Object Symmetry creates a plane of symmtrey for an object. Subsequent operations to the object maintain symmetry by updaing the opposte sids of the model to match. The symmetry functionality has special consideration for NURBs curves, NURB surfaces and Sub-D objects. Reference Files are simply data from one project displayed inside another project. Reference files allow for complex static data to be mainteined in external files and supports coloboration where files can be shaered between team members as a design evolves. Python is a easy to use yet rich scripting language.Starting Price: $175