Tuesday 24 March 2015
Autodesk 3ds Max is a 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations,models,and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Inc. which also develops Autodesk Maya, a similar 3D graphics software.
Autodesk offers a free student version and also sells a perpetual student license, it can be used for non-commercial purposes only. The commercial version of the software is very expensive and out of the reach of many people. So, here are some free and open source alternatives to 3ds Max.
1) Blender
Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D models, 3D applications and video games. Blender’s features include 3D modelling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. It also features a built-in game engine. Blender has had a reputation of being difficult to learn for users accustomed to other 3D graphics software. Since Blender became free software, there have also been efforts to visually enhance the user interface.
Available on: Windows|Mac|Linux
Download from Official site
2) Art of Illusion
Art of Illusion is a software package used for 3D modelling, texturing, ray tracing, and otherwise rendering computer generated imagery stills or animations. It is written in the Java programming language and the primary creator & maintainer of the software is Peter Eastman. Distributed under the GNU GPL, it is a free and open source software.
Art of Illusion is capable of modelling and rendering photorealistic images and animations. It is also capable of non-photorealistic rendering as well. It has features, such as mesh editing, texture mapping, and Boolean modeling, that are comparable to other high end commercial graphics software like 3ds Max and Sketchup.
Some of its features, like the use of online repositories and a built-in downloading tool for installing extensions, are not found in similar proprietary software.
Available on: Windows|Mac|Linux
3) Wings 3D
It loads and saves models in its own format (.wings), but also supports several standard 3D formats as well.
Wings 3D can be used to model and texture low to mid-range polygon models. Wings does not support animations and has only basic OpenGL rendering facilities, although it can export to external rendering software such as POV-Ray and YafRay. Still, Wings is often used in combination with other software, whereby models made in Wings are exported to applications more specialized in rendering and animation such as Blender.
It uses context sensitive menus as opposed to a highly graphical, icon oriented interface.
Available on: Windows|Mac|Linux
4) K-3D
K-3D is a free 3D modelling and animation software. Despite its name it is not a KDE application. it uses the GTK+ toolkit. It features a plug-in-oriented procedural engine for all of its content. K-3D supports polygonal modelling, and it includes basic tools for NURBS, patches, curves and animation.
K-3D’s interface uses platform’s look-and-feel, and it is therefore consistent with other applications that already exist. K-3D features procedural and parametric work-flows. Properties can be adjusted interactively and results appear immediately.
5) DAZ Studio
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