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Linux Graphic Tools
Recap: at my presentation at the July 1998 NTLUG meeting, I gave
demos of Blender, Moonlight Creator, POV-Ray, ImageMagick, Mesa, and Pryan.
All of these packages are available for free. I've also included
links to other free and non-free graphics tools for Linux. This list
is by no means complete. Enjoy.
3D Modeling/Animation Systems (free)
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3Dom
- free 3D modeling package
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Blender - free
3D design/animation package from NeoGeo
.
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GL-Space
- free Open GL-based 3D modeling package similar to TrueSpace. Requires
Open GL or Mesa.
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Midnight
Modeler - modeler and GUI interface to POV-Ray raytracer
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Mind's Eye - free 3D
modeling/animation package
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Moonlight Creator
- free 3D modeling package. Exports a variety of formats, including
POV-Ray and RenderMan.
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Pixcon/Anitroll
- free 3D render and animation system
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SCED
- free constraint-based modeling package
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Virtuoso - free
3D modeling/animation package
3D Modeling/Animation Systems (shareware/commercial)
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AC3D
- shareware 3D modeling system ($40 registration)
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Amapi
- shareware 3D modeling system ($25 registration)
3D Raytracing Systems (free)
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POV-Ray - free 3D raytracer.
Well-established, fairly easy to use, and mostly bug-free. Scene
description language somewhat resembles C programming language.
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Panorama
- new free 3D object-oriented raytracer. Looks very promising.
Scene description language somewhat resembles C++ programming language.
(Not compatible with POV-Ray, though.)
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Radiance
- free 3D radiosity raytacer, developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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Rayshade
- free 3D raytracer developed at Stanford University. Currently not
in active development.
3D Raytracing Systems (shareware/commercial)
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Blue Moon
Rendering Tools - shareware RenderMan-compliant renderer.
NOTE: RenderMan is the rendering standard developed by Pixar. Among
other things, Pixar's PRMan commercial rendering package is the RenderMan-compliant
package used to create the movie Toy Story.
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RIBit!
- commercial RenderMan-compliant renderer from Eidolon Research.
Free demo available. Full version is somewhat expensive ($950).
3D Programming Libraries (free)
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Mesa
- free Open GL "workalike" developed at the University of Wisconsin.
Used to program 3D graphics in applications.
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GLUT
- free GL Utility Toolkit. Easy to use. Adds some basic GUI
functionality to Open GL programs. Not functional enough for complex
Open GL-based applications, though. NOTE: GLUT is already shipped
with the Mesa source distribution. If you download Mesa, you do not
need to download GLUT as well.
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GLTT
- free GL TrueType library. Allows rendering of TrueType fonts in
3D applications.
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GL4Java -
free Open GL bindings for the Java programming language. Allows Open
GL programming in Java. Requires an Open GL implementation or similar,
such as Mesa.
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Open GL Perl Module
- free Perl5 module for Open GL programming. (Somewhat outdated?)
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Togl
- free Tk widget for rendering Open GL graphics. From the author
of Mesa.
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Pryan
- free Open Inventor "workalike" that won second prize in TrollTech's Qt
programming contest. Requires the Qt widget library.
3D Programming Libraries (shareware/commercial)
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Magician
- commercial Open GL bindings for Java.
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Metro Open GL
- commercial Open GL implementation from Metro Link. Includes Metro-X
server. ($199)
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TGS Open Inventor
- commercial Open Inventor implementation from Template Graphics.
Paint/Image Manipulation Utilities (free)
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GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation
Program. Excellent free graphics package similar to Adobe Photoshop.
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xpaint
- simple free paint program for X.
Image Display/Conversion Utilities (free)
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Image
Magick - excellent suite of free image display and conversion
utilities.
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