listed in alphabetical order!
3DMax	3D Studio MAX software is designed to enable numerous creative professionals to work on specific aspects of the same project while easily combining discrete elements into complex shots, animations, or game levels. The software also boasts a redesigned renderer that retains the speed of its predecessor while delivering superior results and simplifying the process of creating stunningly realistic images, scenes, and special effects. Produce high resolution still renderings, animated fly-bys, lighting studies, contextual integration and VRML output for 3D walkthroughs on the web.
Amorphium	Amorphium is used to create and animate 3D text, objects and morphs using a keyframe - based timeline to control the motion, lighting, effects and backgrounds. Export your animation to a Flash (.SWF), Animated GIF or QuickTime file. A lightning-fast rendering engine allows you to produce stunning 3D imagery at virtually any resolution for Web, print, digital video, and film. Advanced capabilities include Radiosity rendering for photo-realistic scenes, Raytracing for true-to-life surface reflections and refractions, as well as variable smoke and lighting effects.
Deskartes	DeskArtes design software packages have been specially developed as design tools for industrial designers. In the most user-friendly way, DeskArtes performs all the tasks required for designing, styling and rendering of industrial products.
Lightwave3D	LightWave 3D gives you an easy way to create the most sophisticated 3D animation imaginable, with formidable capabilities from an incredibly powerful, professional animation system. Its intuitive, complete, easy-to-use layout and modeling system delivers the ultimate in creative control, not to mention flexibility - the likes of which you've never seen. And unparalleled features for modeling, surfacing, lighting and animating are right at your fingertips. LightWave 3D packs a wallop of a punch. Raytracing, motion blur, MetaMation, inverse kinematics (IK), Bones, field rendering, lens flares, compositing - they're all here. LightWave 3D's OpenGL and QuickDraw 3D support mean you can see your creations in real time. Leading software of this field. .
Maya	Alias Wavefront software has been used to create visual effects in some of the hottest recent film releases, including Armageddon, A Bug's Life, Contact, Men in Black, The Truman Show and Titanic. Maya's dramatic new approach to character animation strengthens Alias|Wavefront's leadership position in visual effects. In fact, many customers have taken the extraordinary step of switching to Maya in mid-production in order to take advantage of Maya's next generation open system architecture. Maya was used to create spectacular film effects in Mighty Joe Young , the tornado sequence in The Avengers, and a fleet of CG spacecraft for Star Trek: Insurrection
Merlin3D	Merlin 3D is a real-time visualization, animation and rendering package for the desktop PC.Main features are; hybrid radiosity, lens flares, real-time texture support up to 2048 x 2048, customizable shaders, DXF/DWG Import, high speed frame rates, real-time lighting effects...
Raydream	Ray Dream Studio is the 3D graphics application, providing a comprehensive set of professional tools for 3D design and animation. It includes spline, polygonal, text and metaball modelers, with such editing capabilities as boolean operations and deformations like spikes and twists. Users can apply texture maps or movies to their models, and even paint directly onto an object. Rendering options include everything from wireframe to ray tracing, with optional hand-sketched or cartoon styles. Ray Dream's animation has full key-framing capabilities, an advanced physics system and realistic motion blurs for smooth animations. Users can even drag-and-drop predefined behaviors like bouncing and spinning directly onto an object.
Softimage3D	Softimag3D is designed to follow the natural workflow of the animation process. Highly interactive Softimage modeling toolset including polygon, patch, NURBS, and Meta-Clay geometries. Advanced NURBS covers full quadratic/cubic modeling support, including trim/project/blend NURBS surfaces, and curve extrusion. Also supports 2D and 3D Boolean including intersection, difference, and union. It has powerful, flexible tools for bringing characters to life with realistic movement,personality, and expression. Procedural shaders, volume rendering and true distributed processing make mental ray one of the most powerful image-rendering systems available.
Truespace	TrueSpace matches the high end 3D software feature by feature and is the only 3D authoring tool with integrated hybrid radiosity renderer. At the same time it blazes the trail with the next generation true 3D interface which takes full advantage of 3D acceleration. TrueSpace redefines the state of the art for 3D authoring. Accurate collision detection, forward dynamics, Inverse kinematics and integrated VRML browser make it the ultimate tool for animations, illustrations, designs, web pages, games, VRML worlds and more.
Specialized Software for 3D Nature Modeling
BlueBerry3D	Blueberry3D is an advanced tool with which you can design and create your own virtual landscape or automatically generate it from real map data. Where the resolution of the map data is limited, Blueberry3D uses mathematical fractals to extend the data and create smaller details automatically. Coarse terrain-class rasters are sufficient to create terrain in which every leaf of all trees is visible. The user can move around freely in the terrain, from a birds-eye view down to the level of the blueberries.
Bryce	Bryce is dedicated to designing, rendering and animating breathtaking natural 3D worlds and abstract 3D sculptures. Bryce is a perfect application for both beginners and advanced users because it is extremely easy to use and it comes loaded with libraries of presets to use in your own work. As you become more proficient, Bryce allows you to easily create your own surface materials, skies and more.
Psunami	Atomic Power's Psunami 1.0 generates precise 3D geometry of an ocean surface, then produces ultra-realistic ray-traced output that is practically indistinguishable from the real thing. With Psunami, artists can design, animate and render 3D oceanographic effects completely within Adobe After Effects 4.0/4.1. Psunami utilizes the "RenderWorld" ray-tracing render engine from Arete Image Software, for render quality previously unavailable except in high-end 3D systems.
Terragen	Terragen is a work-in-progress scenery generator for Windows. At this stage of its development, Terragen is free for personal non-commercial use. Terragen is already capable of photorealistic results for professional landscape visualisation, special effects, art and recreation.
Vue d'Esprit	Vue is a powerful 3D application optimized for the creation, rendering and animation of natural scenery and was designed for beginners as well as advanced users. It has been granted many awards for its amazing render quality and incredible ease of use.
Waves World	Waves World is a program for simulating waves. You give it a height map of the terrain, specify where sea level should be, create some wave fronts, then let it work. It produces another height map which describes the waves.
World Builder	World builder is the number one 3D landscape creation, animation and rendering tool available. A high-end stand-alone 3D-landscape generator that offers support of both dual processors and network rendering and integrates with leading 3D graphics packages like 3d Studio Max, Maya and Lightwave.
World Construction Set	World Construction Set is a photorealistic terrain modeling, visualization, rendering and animation software. WCS lets you create stunning, photorealistic images and animations, from close-ups to the entire planet.