Alternatives to LightWave 3D
Compare LightWave 3D alternatives for your business or organization using the curated list below. SourceForge ranks the best alternatives to LightWave 3D in 2025. Compare features, ratings, user reviews, pricing, and more from LightWave 3D competitors and alternatives in order to make an informed decision for your business.
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Coohom
Coohom
Coohom is a leading global cloud-based, 3D design platform that provides all-in-one software and services to empower designers and businesses to design a professional project in minutes, and get photo-realistic 3D visualizations in seconds. With a presence spanning the United States, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, Coohom's innovative solutions have garnered the trust of over 10 million customers from 200 countries. With the aim of facilitating the digital transformation of customers in the interior design, furniture & home decor, and Kitchen & Bath industry, Coohom provides a comprehensive suit of software encompassing design, rendering, marketing, production, and construction, helping to streamline their workflows and achieve success.Starting Price: $0 per month -
2
Enscape
Enscape
Enscape™ is a real-time rendering and virtual reality plugin for Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Archicad, and Vectorworks. It plugs directly into your modeling software, giving you an integrated visualization and design workflow. As an intuitive design tool, it requires no prior specialized knowledge to use. You can design, document, and visualize simultaneously from one model. It is the easiest and fastest way to turn your building models into immersive 3D experiences. Bring your designs to life and give your clients a design experience like never before. Used by 85 of the top 100 architecture firms worldwide, Enscape empowers your design workflow.Starting Price: $39.90 per month -
3
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. -
4
Maya
Autodesk
Create expansive worlds, complex characters, and dazzling effects. Bring believable characters to life with engaging animation tools. Shape 3D objects and scenes with intuitive modeling tools in Maya® software. Create realistic effects—from explosions to cloth simulation. A new visual programming environment using dynamic solvers enables you to create blockbuster-worthy effects quickly. Build custom graphs using the Bifrost Graph Editor. Create stunning effects—from snow and sand to dust storms and explosions—with ready-to-use graphs. Render your most complex projects with Arnold. Arnold is built to manage complex characters, scenery, and lighting challenges. Arnold is integrated with Maya, so you can see high-quality previews and iterate changes quickly. Save time with Arnold’s artist-friendly UI and simple, intuitive controls. -
5
Clara.io
Clara.io
Clara.io is a full-featured cloud-based 3D modeling, animation and rendering software tool that runs in your web browser. With Clara.io you can make complex 3D models, create beautiful photorealistic renderings, and share them without installing any software programs. This is the perfect Three.JS or Babylon.JS editor for creating and tweaking your web game content. Huge photorealistic material library. Easy advanced materials. Flexible lighting setups. Blazing speed. Simultaneous multi-user editing. Always on versioning. Per-user permissions. Review tools. Familiar UI. Responsive workflows. Undo/redo. Drag/drop. Context menus everywhere. Clara.io is the latest innovation from the trusted and experienced team at Exocortex. Exocortex's suite of products are trusted by hundreds of creative teams at studios around the world.Starting Price: $10 per month -
6
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. -
7
Animation:Master
Hash
Whether you’re looking to create whole three dimensional worlds or have a two dimensional project in mind, Hash Animation:Master is the 3D software you need to design and render amazing imagery and animation from the comfort of your kitchen table! It has been proven to be one of the most easy to use, affordable and powerful 3D programs available. A:M is as advanced as it is easy to learn. Our provided text and video tutorials will guide you through the steps to not only become an A:M professional, but to jump-start your career in the 3D industry as an animator. A:M experts from around the world are always available to help beginners with tutorials and answers on the A:M Forums. Our community is one of the most helpful, knowledgeable and responsive anywhere. And if our users can’t help you, we surely can! -
8
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 -
9
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 -
10
iClone
Reallusion
iClone is the fastest real-time 3D animation software in the industry, helping you easily produce professional animations for films, previz, animation, video games, content development, education and art. Integrated with the latest real-time technologies, iClone simplifies the world of 3D Animation in a user-friendly production environment that blends character animation, scene design and cinematic storytelling; quickly turning your vision into a reality. Animate any character instantly with intuitive tools for face and body animation. Create facial animations with accurate lip-sync, puppet emotive expressions, muscle-based face key editing, and an unparalleled iPhone facial capture. Create realistic or stylized, animation-ready humanoid 3D characters in a short time. Powerful animation features get scenes moving thanks to ultimate creative control.Starting Price: $599 per license -
11
Unity
Unity Technologies
The leading platform for creating interactive, real-time content. Build 2D, 3D and VR games and apps at speed. From artist tools to live-ops, everything you need to bring your vision to life today. The complete solutions for professionals to create and operate. Create and operate amazing applications and immersive experiences with a complete solution for professionals across industries. Change up your splash screen. Or completely remove it. Gain greater insight into what’s happening in your game with real-time data on crashes, exceptions and user feedback. Minimize downtime with access to expert technical support when you encounter issues. Available as a separate purchase through a Unity sales representative. Unity Gaming Services: backend and LiveOps services trusted by world-class studios to support multiplayer and live games at any scale, with any engine or tech stack.Starting Price: $35.00/month -
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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. -
13
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. -
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ZBrush
Pixologic
ZBrush is a digital sculpting and painting program that has revolutionized the 3D industry with its powerful features and intuitive workflows. Built within an elegant interface, ZBrush offers the world’s most advanced tools for today’s digital artists. With an arsenal of features that have been developed with usability in mind, ZBrush creates a user experience that feels incredibly natural while simultaneously inspiring the artist within. With the ability to sculpt up to a billion polygons, ZBrush allows you to create limited only by your imagination. Designed around a principle of circularity, the menus in ZBrush work together in a non-linear and mode-free method. This facilitates the interaction of 3D models, 2D images and 2.5D Pixols in new and unique ways. ZBrush gives you all of the tools needed to quickly sketch out a 2D or 3D concept and then take that idea all the way to completion. You can create realistic renders directly in ZBrush with lighting and atmospheric effects.Starting Price: $39.95 per month -
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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 -
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KeyShot
KeyShot
KeyShot brings you real-time 3D rendering that displays results instantly and reduces the time to create realistic product visuals. KeyShot is trusted by brands around the world for its speed, ease of use, scientifically accurate materials, and advanced material editing capabilities. Communicate your ideas easier, explore concepts sooner, and deliver jaw-dropping visuals faster – Try KeyShot today. KeyShot includes native support for over 30 leading 3D file formats. Free plugins offer one-click loading, while LiveLinking keeps your design in sync across applications. Whether it’s a small gadget or a massive assembly, using KeyShot means less time loading and more time creating. KeyShot includes over 750 preset materials, with thousands more on the KeyShot Cloud, and advanced capabilities to create your own. Apply textures, labels, and variations with ease. KeyShot’s powerful lighting, studio, and image tools allow you to capture and style the perfect shot, every time. -
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Massive Prime
Massive Software
Academy Award winning Massive Prime™ is the complete solution for authoring, directing and rendering custom autonomous agents for animation and visual effects. Massive is the world’s most sophisticated crowd simulation software for rapidly creating realistic crowd scenes. In many cases, our Ready To Run Agents™ together with Massive for Maya or Massive for Max is the ideal solution for creating crowds. But when a shot calls for agents to perform custom motion or behaviors, then choose Massive Prime. Massive Prime's intuitive node based interface allows artists to interactively create AI enabled agents without any programming. Whether your custom agents number in the few to thousands, professional artists rely on Massive Prime to deliver realistic and natural crowd performances that are without equal. Each agent can have any number of actions. Actions can be motion captured clips or keyframe animations. -
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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 -
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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 -
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SOLIDWORKS Visualize
SOLIDWORKS
Turn your 3D CAD data into photo-quality images, animations, and interactive 3D content that bring your products to life. Quickly and easily create professional, photo-quality images, animations, and other interactive 3D content to get your products to market faster. SOLIDWORKS® Visualize allows you to leverage your 3D CAD data to create photo-quality content in the fastest and easiest way you can–from images to animations, interactive web content, and immersive Virtual Reality. Bring your products to life. SOLIDWORKS Visualize is the “camera” for your CAD data! SOLIDWORKS® products are easy to learn and use, and work together to help you design products better, faster, and more cost efficiently. A seat of SOLIDWORKS Visualize Standard is included with each seat of SOLIDWORKS Professional and Premium on active Subscription. SOLIDWORKS Visualization solutions enable you and your team to quickly transform new ideas into great products, beating your competition to the market. -
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Realsoft 3D
Realsoft Graphics
Open design combined with a rich set of features has been the main strength of Realsoft 3D. Feature wise, Realsoft 3D challenges the most famous competitors and offers a better price/performance ratio. In some areas (e.g. SDS modelling, ray tracing), the product is the best on the market. Another major advantage is that the intelligent, context sensitive user interface is suitable for both novice users and skilled professionals. The program grows with and adapts to the skill level of the user. The program is used in different applications, for example by artists working in the advertising industry, architects, product designers, educational institutions, game industry and hobby users. As a versatile yet affordable product ($700), Realsoft 3D has quite a large group of potential users. Realsoft 3D is a powerful tool for making best quality photorealistic images, and there is a huge number of people who need images every day.Starting Price: $700 -
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Daz 3D
Daz Productions
Founded in 2000, Daz 3D is a 3D modeling software and content company specializing in morphable, posable human models, two of which are the most widely used 3D figures worldwide (Victoria and Michael). Used by top brands and illustrators, Daz Studio gives amateurs and professional graphic artists a free, time saving tool to create and customize their creations. Daz is used in film, TV, animation, video games, web design, print illustrations and more. Download Daz Studio and explore our huge library of free and premium 3D content. Start building custom scenes and characters in seconds with our smart content library. Export beautiful photo-realistic images and animations with studio-class processing. Explore our huge library of free and premium 3D content, like characters, hair, creatures, vehicles, environments, and more. Build your own universe with Daz Studio, the free 3D software. Export beautiful photo-realistic images and animations with studio-class processing. -
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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 -
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Poser
Poser
Poser is a 3D computer graphics program optimized for 3D modeling of human figures. It is known for enabling digital artists to easily produce 3D animations and digital images, as well as the extensive availability of third-party digital content. Since 1995, Poser has been the go-to software tool for 3D characters in illustration and animation for over 500,000 digital artists. Poser is a digital stage that gives you full creative control. Work with 3D figures for any project requiring rendered images or animated video. Drag 3D content right from Poser’s own library of over 5 GB of content onto the stage and into your scene. Upgrade to Poser 12 from any Poser 11 license. Enjoy GPU rendering and import/export support for major 3D software packages. Poser 12 is a 3D universe that allows users to easily illustrate and animate using its new features including a new SuperFly render engine, expanded graphic card support, a new post effects palette, Python 3 support, and more.Starting Price: $249.95 one-time payment -
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metropoly
AXYZ design
Stunning photo-scanned 3D people models. Add life to your architectural visualization projects and renders with metropoly® 3d People Characters. Compatible with 3ds Max®, Maya®, Cinema 4D®, Blender®, Unreal Engine®, Lightwave®, SketchUp®, Rhino® and anima® with support for the best renderers in the industry. We work with passion combining technology and craftsmanship, a perfect union to obtain realistic 3D characters. Through the use of modern 3D photogrammetric scanning technologies and the craftwork of our group of artists, we strive to make Metropoly 3D People near to perfection. Our 3D human models are designed and optimized to offer the best performance during rendering, adding details where they are really needed. For our static models, we create meshes with about 40K polygons while the 3D characters for animation are retopologized to offer the best deformation during the animation and designed to be easily edited and modified.Starting Price: €19.90 one-time payment -
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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 -
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anima
AXYZ design
People and crowd animation software was developed specifically for architects and designers to add 3D animated characters to their projects quickly and easily. With anima®, 3D people become human beings. The new 4D Digital Humans are able to preserve every detail of the clothing and offer impressive facial animations. In addition, with the Ambient 3D characters you can populate the middle and front planes of a scene increasing the realism. anima® uses the same high-quality 3D people found in our metropoly® collections, so there’s no need to compromise on quality. Our actors are driven by real mocap data and a sophisticated AI engine with an automatic procedural motion to achieve super-realistic crowd animations. Add life to your Archviz or any other visualization project! anima® brings up a toolset to easily populate your still renderings and animation videos using our 3D Scanned Metropoly® Ready-Posed and Metropoly® Rigged 3D Human models.Starting Price: €279 one-time payment -
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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. -
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Bforartists
Bforartists
Bforartists is a complete, free and open source 3D suite to create 3D content. It offers you the full 3D art pipeline to create game graphics, prerendered movies and stills. From modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering, up to post processing. Bforartists stands for Be For Artists. A reminder to develop for the user, not the programmer. Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3D software Blender. Developed by some 3D enthusiasts to make Blender even better. The primary goal of the Bforartists fork is to deliver a better graphical UI and a better usability. This means a complete switch in the usage philosophy. Away from the hotkey and speed centered usage. Towards a user friendly and intuitive graphical UI. Bforartists is fully compatible with the Blender files and addons. Every feature that works in Blender should also work in Bforartists. And we are always up to date with the newest Blender version. The toolset is the same. -
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MotionBuilder
Autodesk
Capture, edit, and play back complex animations with MotionBuilder® 3D character animation software. Work in an interactive environment optimized to help you work faster and more efficiently without compromising creativity. Produce high-quality 3D character animations with prebuilt moves. Create realistic character movements using one of the industry's fastest animation tools. Fine-tune character animations with production-proven tools used to manipulate motion capture data. Included software development kit and FBX data exchange enable easy interoperability with other 3D applications. MotionBuilder software is available with a subscription only. We no longer sell perpetual licenses. Your MotionBuilder subscription gives you access to install and use the 3 previous versions. With a subscription to MotionBuilder software, you can install it on up to 3 computers or other devices.Starting Price: $1,950 per year -
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Mixamo
Adobe
Animate 3D characters for games, film, and more. Empowering creativity with animated 3D characters. Bring your projects to life with 3D characters, skeletal rigs, and animations, ready for use in film, games, interactive experiences and illustration. Browse a collection of high-quality 3D characters. From realistic to cartoon, fantasy to sci-fi, there’s a character for every purpose. Each character comes fully textured and rigged so you can use immediately in your creative projects. Upload your custom character to Mixamo and get an automatically rigged full human skeleton, custom fit to your model and ready to animate. Customize your rigging options with optimizations for mobile performance. Explore a library of thousands of full-body character animations, captured from professional motion actors. Each animation is transferred to your own character and can be previewed and edited directly with Mixamo, so you can control the look and feel of each motion. -
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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 -
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Animation Paper
Animation Paper
Pro animators, students, filmmakers, and game developers will love the ease and speed of working in Animation Paper for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Quickly test ideas, or train your skills. Work rough, then clean up. This awesome app will feel effortless, while super efficient and powerful, and so much fun! A most important part of your animation production pipeline. Super responsive interface, prompt, and real-time workflow. Quickly gets you in the zone. Non-intrusive and cleverly built. The way 'traditional' animation is supposed to be done today. Uncluttered, intuitive, and what the pro needs. Super fast responsiveness, while drawing, while flipping, while everything. High-quality lines, no degradation when transformed or resolution is changed. Small to large format frames. Real-time smooth rotation and zooming of the view. Light table (onion skinning, advanced and customizable) Easy, yet powerful timing and reuse (also scribbled notes and sound wave display).Starting Price: $79 one-time payment -
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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 -
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V-Ray
Chaos
Chaos® V-Ray® is a 3D rendering plugin available for SketchUp, 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Rhino, Revit, and more. It is widely used in architectural visualization, advertising, and visual effects for film and television. With V-Ray, artists and designers can explore and share their projects with real-time ray tracing and render high-quality visualizations. V-Ray has a large community of users and is recognized for its incredible versatility. V-Ray has been honored with a Sci-Tech Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy Award® for bringing fully ray-traced photorealistic CGI to the film and television industries. For more information, please visit chaos.comStarting Price: $60 per month -
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Houdini
SideFX
Houdini is built from the ground up to be a procedural system that empowers artists to work freely, create multiple iterations and rapidly share workflows with colleagues. In Houdini, every action is stored in a node. These nodes are then “wired” into networks which define a “recipe” that can be tweaked to refine the outcome then repeated to create similar yet unique results. The ability for nodes to be saved and to pass information, in the form of attributes, down the chain is what gives Houdini its procedural nature. While the nodes are what makes Houdini unique and give it power, there are lots of viewport and shelf tools that allow for artist-friendly viewport interactions. Behind the scenes, Houdini builds up the nodes and networks for you. Houdini lets artists explore different creative paths because it is easy to branch off a new node to explore alternative solutions. -
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3DCoat
3DCoat
3DCoat is the one application that has all the tools you need to take your 3D idea from a block of digital clay all the way to a production ready, fully textured organic or hard surface model. Today 3DCoat is available to learn at 300+ Universities, colleges and schools worldwide. 3DCoat is one of the most advanced software applications for creating detailed 3D models. Where other applications in this market segment tend to specialize in one specific task, such as Digital Sculpting or Texture Painting, 3DCoat provides High-End capability across multiple tasks in an asset creation pipeline. These include Sculpting, Retopology, UV Editing , PBR Texture Painting and Rendering. So it can be called a 3D texturing software and 3D texture painting software and 3D sculpting program and Retopology software and UV mapping software and 3D rendering software all combined. In short, 3DCoat removes the need to purchase (and learn) multiple specialty software titles.Starting Price: $49 one-time payment -
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Ultimate Unwrap 3D
Ultimate Unwrap 3D
Ultimate Unwrap 3D is a standalone UV mapping software for unfolding and unwrapping 3D models. It includes an easy-to-use UV coordinate editor, a standard set of UV mapping projections such as planar, box, cylindrical, and spherical, as well as advanced UV mapping tools for those difficult to map areas on a model. The Pro version includes a full-featured set of additional UV mapping editing tools, such as straightening, aligning, packing, and seaming. It is ideal for artists, professionals, modellers, game developers, and hobbyists, and easy enough to use for all levels of computer users. Ultimate Unwrap 3D supports over 100 file formats, including FBX, DAE, ASE, DXF, LWO, OBJ, and DirectX. We support 3ds Max, Maya, SoftImage, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Modo, Sketchup, and many more! Interactive seam picking mode. For marking seams in the 3D views. Repainting UVs for creating texture atlases from multiple textures. AutoTD UV islands. Scales UVs using the average texel density.Starting Price: $59.95 one-time payment -
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Build and assemble 3D scenes in this intuitive staging tool. Set up assets, materials, lights, and cameras. Export and share media, from images to web and AR experiences. Substance 3D Stager lets you make creative decisions in context. Refine and adjust your composition in real time. Visualize and edit advanced materials with complex lighting and shadows. Build your realistic 3D scenes with quick and efficient smart tools. Block out shapes, snap elements, activate physics to avoid collisions between models, and generate simple lights. Stager comes with models, materials, and lights to get started. Or explore and use the thousands of high-end assets made by our 3D experts and included with your Substance 3D Collection plan. Enhance your lighting with the environment light editor or add physical 3D lights to your scene for advanced lighting design.Starting Price: $39.99 per month
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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. -
41
Maxwell Render
Maxwell Render
Reality means predictable, reliable first-time results. Maxwell Render™ unleashes your creativity without having to struggle with complex computer graphics terminology and countless parameter tweaks. Maxwell Render is specifically made to help architects, designers, and artists to visualize their projects efficiently and accurately with minimum set-up time. Maxwell 5 is the best rendering software for light simulation. The rendering engine combines physically correct lighting with thousands of Maxwell materials to create accurate and extremely realistic images. It is compatible with most 3D or CAD applications. Best lighting engine for designers, architects, and artists from any industry. We constantly strive to improve the realism quality of the render and make the engine faster and easier to use. Maxwell remains unbiased with an easy transition from GPU to CPU, as well as the best cloud rendering service.Starting Price: $60 -
42
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 -
43
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 -
44
The industry standard for creating custom materials, Adobe Substance 3D Designer gives you complete authoring control. Design tileable textures and patterns, and edit complete texture sets. Use pre-made resources or create materials from scratch in this non-destructive, node-based environment, and take advantage of Designer’s ever-expanding scripting capabilities. Want to change something or adjust the look of a material after the fact? Make changes at any time; never lose any of your work. Edit full sets of textures in real-time and produce tileable Substance materials and MDL materials that are will be directly compatible with your renderer or game engine. Combine a large number of preset filters and tools for procedural and hybrid workflows. Access and modify the sources of any resource or filter: you have absolute editing control. Our team develops and maintains integrations with all the major 3D apps.Starting Price: $19.90 per month
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45
Adobe Character Animator
Adobe
Character Animator uses your expressions and movements to animate characters in real time. It’s so fast, you can livestream while you work to wow audiences every step of the way. Put your best face forward. Your performance can bring a character to life. Using your webcam and microphone, Character Animator matches your expressions — from syncing lips to tracking eyes — to animate in real time. Create a character in seconds. Turn any art into an animated character with your webcam, powered by Adobe Sensei AI. Import art from Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, or start with built-in character templates. Animations with legs — and arms and heads. Control gestures like waving with your keyboard or MIDI device. Movements can be saved as triggers, so they’re easier to remember than key commands. Hollywood studios and online content creators use Character Animator to bring their characters to life in real time. It integrates seamlessly with other Adobe apps like Premiere Pro and After Effects.Starting Price: $19.99 per month -
46
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 -
47
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. -
48
Flamingo nXt
Robert McNeel & Associates
Present your Rhino models in their best light. Next generation rendering technology. Flamingo nXt was developed for designers. You don't need to be a CG professional to quickly present your Rhino model in the best light. Results in a few clicks and a few minutes. In Rhino, just click Render to try the nXt defaults, or spend a few minutes to select a lighting scenario and add some materials before you click Render. Flamingo nXt 5 allows you to easily create stunning, life-like images in Rhino. With nXt you don't need to be a professional renderer to get realistic results quickly. You provide materials and lighting and press the Render button. nXt provides the simulation. Unlike many rendering products, there are very few settings to worry about or understand. nXt produces realistic results by simulating light transport in your model. Indirect lighting as well as complex reflection and refraction can be easily incorporated into the simulation.Starting Price: $195 -
49
Toon Boom Harmony
Toon Boom
Harmony 20, the industry's leading 2D animation software, brings the latest in digital drawing sensitivity to its brushes — every marking, every style, every texture you want to create and leave for the audience is felt. Rulers, guides, colour control & features as well as innovative deformers enrich your animation, bringing reality and fantasy within millimeters of each other. Artists express themselves through their work, creating distinctive markings on a surface — each as unique as their maker. The right tool can capture both the true essence of an image and offer a glimpse into the creative spirit of the person behind it. Create art and emotion in every style with one powerful end-to-end animation software. Whether you prefer paperless or cutout animation, Harmony 20 is helping to set the trends for award winning animation that is hitting the market by storm. The latest in lighting, shading, special effects and others give more life to your features and series.Starting Price: $24 per month -
50
Pinreel
Pinreel
Create pro animated video content at the speed of light. A reels maker to make youtube shorts, TikTok, stories & promo video intros. Create social media content using over 1,000 professionally designed video templates, animated text & effects. With the intuitive drag-and-drop video editor, creating engaging social media content has never been simpler. Combine animated text, images, logos, stickers, and effects in just a few clicks. This reels maker app comes with a good selection of free templates, to get you started. Influencers can find the perfect animated video content, including music templates designed for TikTok, Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reel & Insta Stories. Unleash your creativity with our animated text, stickers, music, graphics, & effects. Combine your own images and videos to produce stunning social media content that will impress your followers.Starting Price: $4 per month