3Delight
3Delight is a fast renderer that supports many of the features required to produce photorealistic images, including motion blur, depth of field, programmable shaders, antialiasing, ray tracing and the ability to read RIB (RenderMan) files. It is currently available for the MacOS X, IRIX, Linux-i686, LinuxPPC and Windows platforms.

ABVENT Artlantis Studio
As a continuation of the Artlantis technologies, the Studio version puts in action the exploration of any of your virtual worlds made in Artlantis. Offering all the advanced functions for digital imagery that were provided in Artlantis R, Artlantis Studio, with the adding of the animated visualization of 3D objects and 3D scenes, manages to keep the same obviousness of use and the same vocation of technological revolution which are the trademarks of the Artlantis product family.

Amabilis 3D Canvas
3D Canvas is a freeware real-time 3D modeling and animation tool that incorporates an intuitive drag-and-drop approach to 3D modeling. Complex models can be constructed from simple 3D primitives, or created using 3D Canvas' Object Building Tools. Modeling tools are provided to deform, sculpt, and paint 3D objects.

ARC+ Render Pro
Innovative, easy to use and powerful 3D photo-realistic rendering, animation and virtual reality software, ARC+ Render Pro let you design and communicate your ideas through the use of unsurpassed rendering technologies. Rendering High quality, photo-realistic images with accurate reflections, refraction, transparency, shadows and textures. Animation Create photo-realistic walk-throughs and fly-bys animation in your 3D designs. Virtual Reality Allow your clients to become immersed in panoramas.

auto.des.sys RenderZone Plus
form·Z RenderZone Plus is the version of form·Z that, in addition to all the modeling/drafting /animation tools found in the basic package, includes photorealistic rendering based on the LightWorks® rendering engine. It offers three levels of rendering: simple, z-buffer, and raytrace. A user can start developing the image of a 3D model at the simple level and gradually turn on features and render it at the most photorealistic level. form•Z RenderZone Plus also includes the ability to produce images based on global illumination techniques, which create renderings with the most realism, as the illumination of a scene takes into account the accurate distribution of light in the environment. In RenderZone Plus, global illumination includes final gather, ambient occlusion, and radiosity techniques, which can be applied separately or can be combined.

Autodesk 3ds max
3ds max™ for Windows® is the world’s best-selling professional 3D modeling, animation and rendering software for creating visual effects, character animation and next generation game development. 3ds max delivers a fully collaborative 3D environment and new high-speed interactive rendering. Its completely customizable and extensible architecture allows for absolute artistic freedom.

Autodesk ImageStudio
Alias ImageStudio™ is a powerful rendering package for designers that delivers an easy-to-learn, efficient workflow. Now you can focus your time where it counts – designing and modeling – and still produce fully rendered images.

Autodesk Maya
Maya is a powerful suite of award-winning 2D/3D animation and visual effects software used in the film, video, broadcast, game development, interactive and location-based entertainment markets.

Blender
Blender is a free powerfull 3D modeling, rendering, animation package.

Cadalog SU Podium
SU Podium is a photo-realistic rendering software program that works entirely as a plug-in to SketchUp Pro 5 or Google SketchUp (Windows only). SU Podium is referred to as Podium for short. Podium works entirely inside SketchUp and uses SketchUp’s surfaces, textures, views, background color and shadows to produce photo-realistic images. It also works with SketchUp groups. Anyone familiar with SketchUp modeling features will find Podium to be very easy to use. It does not require you to learn a lot of complicated rendering techniques. Podium employes a very simple user interface inside SketchUp. The two main options in the user interface are the amount of lighting and the amount of reflection applied to each surface.

Caligari trueSpace
trueSpace is used widely by 3D artists and animators and has gained industry recognition for advanced capabilities such as hybrid radiosity rendering and direct manipulation user interface.

Chaos Group VRay
VRay is an advanced raytracing system. Equipped with modern raytracing techniques it offers its users most advanced features.

Cebas Computer finalRender
finalRender Stage-0 is a full-blown raytracing system for 3ds max 4.2. It enables users of 3ds max 4.2 to create rendering effects that were previously impossible. The most important new feature added by finalRender is its true and ultra - fast Global Illumination. Because of its unique implementation in 3ds max, finalRender supports all types of rendering /raytracing effects for standard 3ds max materials as well as working with most of the plug-ins available for 3ds max.

Dot C Software RenderDotC
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:

E I Animation System
Since 1987, ElectricImage has been pushing the limits of computer generated imagery. Creating a world class animation system for the Macintosh wasn't easy, and many thought it couldn't be done. Designed by visual effects artists, ElectricImage was made to handle the worst of what Hollywood could throw at it. ElectricImage is the first desktop 3D product to score major credits in such films as "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", "Star Trek: First Contact", "The Mask" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Television credits include "Star Trek Voyager," "The X-Files," "Dateline NBC," "Babylon 5," numerous other shows and commercials.

Emmanuel Viale YASRT
YASRT is a raytracing program. It uses the raytracing algorithm to generate realistic pictures from textual descriptions of three-dimensional scenes. By using Monte Carlo raytracing techniques, YASRT supports features such as smooth shadows, depth of field, fuzzy reflections, etc.

Feversoft fryrender
fryrender is a new unbiased renderer that simulates the real behavior of light to produce true-to-life renders with a minimal set of light and material parameters. What makes fryrender different? Beyond its photographic quality, fryrender is able to transform a scene into a Virtual Reality environment that can be experienced in real-time.

Gabor Nagy EQUINOX-3D
EQUINOX-3D is a powerful 3D modeling, animation and rendering software for Linux and UNIX.

Gestel solidThinking DESIGN
solidThinking DESIGN is the professional surface modeling and rendering solution for industrial designers, style centers and CG artists available on Windows and Macintosh. solidThinking DESIGN is fully parametric: thanks to the exclusive Construction History, the designer has complete freedom to explore design alternatives and exploit creativity. Not only a Class-A surface modeler, solidThinking DESIGN lets you render your manufacturable models with unsurpassed photo-realism.

Gestel solidThinking VANTAGE
solidThinking VANTAGE is the high-end CAID solution for the most demanding industrial designer with engineering needs. The top version of solidThinking offers all the modeling and rendering features you can find in the DESIGN version plus some exclusive features such as Make Manifold, Associative Dimensioning, Plotting, advanced control of Tangency and Curvature Continuity (G2), and more.

GPU-Tech RTSquare
RTSquare is a 3D rendering software designed with a new architecture to accelerate rendering. It takes advantage of the programmability, performance, and quality of your GPU to render imagery of uncompromising quality at unheard-of speeds. It enables users to browse and render a 3D scene in real time with all common rendering features. A tree that describes the current scene allows the user to edit all rendering parameters in Real Time.

Holomatix Rendition
Holomatix Rendition is a very fast, interactive, production-quality raytracer. It is designed to render your scenes up to 10 times faster than alternative ray tracing solutions, at extremely high quality. Holomatix Rendition implements support for Maya, 3ds Max and mental ray shaders and renders directly from .mi files, as well as raytracing scenes from directly within Maya using the supplied Maya Plug-In.

Illuminate Labs Turtle
Turtle 2 is a radically faster photorealistic renderer that is fully integrated with Maya. Turtle 2 is based on the second generation LiquidLight® rendering technology, which provides the user with superior rendering performance while still being easy to use. Turtle is well known for its speed, ease-of-use and quality. Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Lockheed Martin and others have created world class CG productions with Turtle since 2003.

Kerkythea Rendering System
Kerkythea is based on the source code I developed from scratch in the past for various applications including C++ containers, numerical analysis, color management. Nevertheless, it uses some popular external libraries as well mostly for window and image management. Apart for the MFC used in the windows standard interface (something that is going also to be replaced shortly), all these libraries are open source (although K is released without source).

KIBEREKS Wizard Eye 3D
Wizard Eye 3D is an external renderer for professionals who want to have a flexible mechanism with many ways to turn their desires into a picture or an animation. Advanced Scripting System is to assist them in their ideas. Graphical User Interface provides them with an easy way to visualize and animate all values of the scene. Because Wizard Eye 3D inherits a lot from Renderman World, anyone familiar with Renderman rendering style can simply use Wizard Eye 3D system to create custom materials, volumetric and camera effects. Wizard Eye 3D Scripting language does not have so many differences from Renderman Scripting language, but Wizard Eye 3D architecture has lots of them. It provides a flexibility and a extensibility to Wizard Eye 3D. Currently we have developed a Lightwave 3D compatibility only. A scene can be exported to a file or sent to Wizard Eye 3D through the Lightwave 3D plugin. It allows to change geometry, object and light positions with no loss of Wizard Eye 3D data.

LightWork Design
LightWork Design, the leading supplier of rendering engines for 3D design software applications, has a flexible, affordable solution for giving your customers the high-quality photorealism they want.

Luxology modo
modo delivers the next evolution of 3D modeling, painting and rendering in a single integrated and accelerated package for the Mac and PC. And now, modo also includes true 3D sculpting tools, item animation and network rendering! More than just features, modo is a truly elegant integration of technology, raw horsepower and refined workflow.

Martin Wengenmayer Cheetah3D
Cheetah3D is a lean, fast and elegant (like a Cheetah) 3D modeler and renderer for MacOS X with a steep learning curve. It offers many tools from simple polygon editing over advanced subdivision modeling to boolean operations and Beziere splines. Cheetah3D also includes a basic raytracer which offer oversampling, bump mapping, anisotropic texture filtering, reflectionsand so on.

Maxon Cinema 4D
The CINEMA 4D family of products has everything to satisfy your professional 3D modeling, texturing, animating and rendering needs. CINEMA 4D is fast, stable, powerful and delivers dazzling imagery. CINEMA 4D offers customizable configuration suitable for any industry and all skill levels.

Maxon Cinema 4D XL
The CINEMA 4D XL Bundle includes advanced tools for professional users, including character animation functions and advanced rendering and particle features. The XL Bundle launches your 3D projects to the next level of realism and opens a wealth of new possibilities. If your 3D projects advance beyond hobby or casual use you should take a good look at the CINEMA 4D XL Bundle.

Maxon Cinema 4D Studio
Equip your production environment with the CINEMA 4D Studio Bundle and take advantage of all the power CINEMA 4D
has to offer. Your advanced 3D projects will come alive with the addition of hair and fur tools, dynamic simulations and non-photorealistic rendering. The CINEMA 4D Studio Bundle lets you unleash your creativity and enjoy 3D without limits.

mental images mental ray
mental ray is the first rendering software which combines the physically correct simulation of the behavior of light with full programmability for the creation of any imaginable visual phenomena. mental ray has been integrated into Softimage|3D and Softimage|XSI, Autodesk 3ds max and VIZ, Alias Maya, Side Effects Software's Houdini 5, SolidWorks PhotoWorks 2, and Dassault Système's CATIA V4 and V5 products. A number of translators and translator plug-ins allow for using mental ray
in conjuction with various 3D modeling and animation front-end systems.

Microspot Modeler
Microspot Modeler is an interactive 3D modeling application that makes it simple to create and render models in real world dimensions and make animations that can be recorded as movies and viewed by anyone with QuickTime. Microspot Modeler can be used on its own or as an ideal companion product for Microspot Interiors enabling you to produce your own furniture items and accessories to add to the items already supplied with Interiors. Modeler now supports import of 3DS files, so millions of different 3rd party objects may be imported for use in your designs. Modeler has six simple and four more complex modeling tools to create basic shapes and a 3D text tool. These shapes can then be changed using modifier tools and further enhanced using color, lighting and textures. There are twenty one palettes that allow you to change your viewpoint, add and modify textures and colors, change shapes, align objects, set your rendering options and control your animations.

NewTek LightWave
LightWave 3D has consistently dominated the television and film markets. The game development market is soon to follow. Designed for production use, LightWave boasts the industry's fastest most beautiful rendering engine, complete subdivision modeling, and an animation system built upon the worlds fastest, most accurate 3D Inverse Kinematics (IK) engine. You have found the application that delivers all the power you need today, the flexibility to expand tomorrow, and at a price the competition cannot beat. With radiosity, caustics, subdivision surface animation, Skelegons, thousands of enhancements, and an unsurpassed workflow, LightWave [6] is everything you need in an animation system.

Ngoc Truong Nguyen myStudio
myStudio is a free/open source 3D Modelling, Rendering, Animation Studio & Movie Editor for all platforms support Java Virtual Machine. It released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. myStudio was based on Art Of Illusion project (developed by Peter Eastman). You can get the latest version of myStudio here or if you want some idea of what myStudio can do, visit the features page, take a look at the screenshots section or visit myStudio Art Gallery...

NVIDIA Gelato
NVIDIA Gelato rendering software brings high-quality rendering to the masses. A hardware-accelerated, non-real-time renderer, Gelato allows you to use your NVIDIA GPU to create stunning images fast. Originally designed for the creation of 3D visual effects and animation in feature films, Gelato can be used by anyone with NVIDIA hardware to create images of the very highest quality. Gelato is a software program that leverages the NVIDIA GPU as a floating point math processor. This allows Gelato to render images faster than comparable renderers, but without the quality limitations traditionally associated with real-time graphics processing on the GPU. Yes, Gelato is available free of charge. Now students, freelancers, startups, and small studios can take advantage of a high-end renderer with the capabilities of renderers costing thousands of dollars.

Pixologic ZBrush
With ZBrush, you can take a classic, painterly approach, or really dig in and sculpt. Either way, the images you create –- from the very first day -- are simply amaZing! ZBrush's allows you to paint with a variety of materials -- from plastic to chrome, wood to reptilian skin -- and includes many adjustable attributes: ambient, specular, diffuse, transparency, metallicity and more.

POV-Ray.org The Persistence of Vision Raytracer
The Persistence of Vision Raytraceror or POV-Ray for short, is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows, Mac OS/Mac OS X and i86 Linux. The source code is available for those wanting to do their own ports.

Punch! Software Shark FX
Shark is the industry’s first modeling application totally focused on conceptual and preliminary design for those requiring precision content for 2D/3D digital models.  Shark is a full featured package uniquely positioned to provide solutions that address versatile modeling practices, photorealistic rendering, animation, and precision drafting capabilities all within one seamlessly integrated package.  

Robert McNeel AccuRender
Rendering Photometrically accurate images with reflections, refraction, diffusion, translucency, transparency, color bleeding, shadows, depth of field, depth attenuation, ClearFinish™, and indirect lighting. Animation Viewpoint animation for walk-throughs and fly-bys, and sunlight animation for shadow studies. Virtual reality Panorama networks using iMove or Live Picture technology. Lighting analysis Walk through a pseudocolor display showing illuminance or luminance contours. Use the cursor as a meter to measure the values on any surface. Hardware requirements No special hardware is needed beyond what is required for AutoCAD, Revit, or Rhino.

SiTex Graphics AIR
AIR is an advanced 3D graphics renderer with a unique architecture and extensive features designed for the rapid production of high-quality images. AIR is a hybrid renderer, combining the advantages of scanline rendering - fast rendering of complex scenes, motion blur, and depth of field - with the flexibility of on-demand ray tracing for accurate reflections, soft shadows, global illumination, and caustics.

Shoran Software RenderPal
RenderPal 2004 Workstation is an exceptionally feature-rich and easy-to-use solution for batch rendering on a single workstation for various renderers, includung Maya, Mental Ray, XSI, Lightwave and more. Its intuitive and modern concepts allow everyone, whether hobbyist or professional, to render scenes with ease. Offering the ability to change a great variety of render settings on-the-fly, queuing up of multiple scene files and an advanced job queue, RenderPal 2004 Workstation is an invaluable application for every production.

Sidefx Houdini Master
Houdini Master, the flagship product from Side Effects Software, is the ultimate tool for the creation of advanced visual effects. With capabilities spanning the entire production pipeline, Houdini Master delivers unparalleled possibilities and productivity to artists who wish to push the envelope of computer animation. Inclouding Modeling, Character Animation, Effects, Texturing , Compositing and Rendering.

Smith Micro Shade
Shade is a full-scale 3D geometric modeling, rendering and animation program for all levels of computer users. Its intuitive user interface makes it easy to use, not only for experts but also for beginners. Its robust and easy-to-use modeling with Bezier Curves and Surfaces, various lifelike environmental settings, and photo-realistic ray-traced rendering enable you to freely, quickly and effectively create any 3D shape you can imagine. It is the ideal product for graphic design, architectural design, industrial design, 3D animation, film & video, and other related fields.

Smith Micro Shade Pro
The personal model of the Shade series is a low cost - high performance choice for SOHO and personal use, including all the basic features of Shade Professional. It also supports plug-ins and scripting that allow unlimited function extension. Because the user interface is the same, you can easily shift to the Professional model as the need arises.

SOFTIMAGE XSI
SOFTIMAGE|XSI is the ultimate non-linear animation system that redefines animation. This complete, versatile toolset is designed for digital artists in the film, games, interactive and broadcast industries. SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.1.5 lays the foundation for the modern digital artist to achieve the freedom to innovate, create and collaborate in today's CG marketplace.

SplutterFish: Brazil Rio
Brazil Rio (aka, "Rio") is a feature-limited verison of Brazil r/s, the commercial production renderer from SplutterFish. Brazil is, at it's core, a high-performance raytrace renderer that supports many advanced and super cool features like area lighting, gi, sss, and much much more (see http://www.splutterfish.com/brazilfeatures.html for more information). Rio is distributed by SplutterFish for multiple reasons: It allows us to have many people stress testing our software in many different environments, it serves as a way for us to share with the community and to provide an educational version that can be used by students and other hobbiests, and it also provides an evaluatable version of Brazil that doesn't requre an interested individual go through the full evaluation/registration process.

Steamboat Jig
Jig is a fast, extensible, and open general purpose renderer for special effects companies and post production facilities of all sizes. Jig is a comprehensive solution for rendering traditional geometry as well as photorealistic hair, volumes, and particles. Jig is designed to be scalable, performing well on modest workstations as well as large rendering clusters.

Stephane Marty MetropoLight
MetropoLight is a simple freeware global illumination rendering program that uses
the Metropolis Light Transport algorithm to render images. MLT is a Monte Carlo method for solving the light transport problem. It is inspired by the Metropolis sampling method in computational physics. In short, a sequence of light transport paths is generated (based on Monte Carlo Markov Chain sampling) by randomly mutating a single current path. The probability density of visiting each path is proportional to its contribution to the final image. This algorithm has the particularity to be unbiased and can be orders of magnitude more efficient than previous unbiased approaches. It is highly recommended for complex and delicate indirect lighting

VIRTUALIGHT Renderer
VIRTUALIGHT is a sophisticated standalone rendering engine that allows previewing and photorealistic rendering of 3D scenes. Like the RenderMan Interface (R) from Pixar, its interface may be thought of as a 3D scene description format (this interface is not Renderman compliant). It can be used as a communication protocol between any modeling programs or production packages and the VIRTUALIGHT renderer to produce photorealistic quality images. VIRTUALIGHT is free for personal use and available for Windows (Win32). A Linux version should be coming soon. However, it is a shareware software. This means that to keep using it for educational purpose or commercial gain of any kind (including profiting from any published images or animations created with it), you will be requested to register by sending the author a donation ($50 US).