LinSys3D
LinSys3D allows you to simulate plants and plant growth on your own computer. You can even load and customize 3D objects for use with L-Systems, setup a 3D representation for each object in the L-System you have built, setup a view to watch the 3D representation of your configurations and finally export the 3D view as a bitmap or as a 3D model.
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Maya Personal Learning Edition
Maya Personal Learning Edition gives 3D graphics and animation students, current industry professionals, and those interested in breaking into the world of computer graphics (CG) an opportunity to explore all aspects of the award winning Maya Complete software in a personal, non-commercial capacity.
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Celestia
Celestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
Stellarium
Stellarium is a free software available for Windows 95/98/2000 and Linux. It renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time. With stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.
Gravity 3D
Gravity3D simulates the gravitational interaction between galaxies as they collide. It uses the gravity equation F=G*M1*M2/R^2 and assumes that orbiting stars have neglibible mass compared to the parent stars/black holes. This software renders hundreds of thousands of stars in realtime.
DEMETER
Demeter is a cross-platform C++ library that renders 3D terrains using OpenGL. Demeter is designed for fast performance and good visual quality and makes use of advanced techniques such as dynamic tessellation (adaptive mesh) to render vast landscapes in real-time, without the need for high-end hardware.
OPENFLY
OpenFly is an open source replacement game engine enabling designers of flight sims created with Domark Flight Sim Toolkit created by SIMIS Limited (Kuju Entertainment Limited) to take their simulations to the next level of graphical excellence.
Cal 3D
A free 3d character animation library for pretty much all systems. Cal3d is a skeletal based 3d character animation library written in C++ in a platform-/graphic API-independent way. Originally designed to be used in a 3d client for Worldforge, it evolved into a stand-alone product which can be used in many different kinds of projects.
3D Boids Simulation
The 3D Boids Simulation is a project from Robert Platt, which he continually improves. The realtime simulation of his boids is very impressive: you can choose how many boids you want to fly around, determine their size, change the camera view to the view of any of these boids, change the general behaviour of the boids and show their field of view, where they detect obstacles. In this newest version you can even change the landscape. Best of all: Source code is available for the previous D3DRM version of the project!
Ambient Flock Saver
3D OpenGL screen saver for Windows PCs. Smooth organic flocking motion leaving behind beautiful soft blended tails which are blown around by the wind. Ambient flock is a real-time screen saver with infinite variations and only 80k in size. It is free for personal use.
TerraGen
Terragen is terrain generation program with all the features you normaly expect from a comerzial high end program. This is a MUST for everybody interested in terrain generation.
VirtuaLight
VIRTUALIGHT is a sophisticated standalone raytracer that allows previewing and photorealistic rendering of 3D scenes. Like the RenderMan Interface® 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 raytracer to produce photorealistic quality images.VIRTUALIGHT is free for personal use and available for Windows (Win32). VIRTUALIGHT is also distributed with several utilities that allow data conversion from other 3D geometry file formats (like 3DS, 3DSMax, Blender, Maya, etc.) to the VirtuaLight Interface Bytestream.
Blender
Blender is a very powerfull high-end scanline renderer/animation package, that is available for all major platforms (Linux, Windows, SGI, Beos, Sun,...). Some of the Highlights in Blender are: Radiosity, volumetric lightning effects, inverse kinematics, integrated script language, game engine,... These features allow you to create photorealistic images/movies and even animate particle systems, fire, smoke, water,...
Gimp
Gimp is a bitmap oriented image manipulation program (GIMP = Gnu Image Manipulation Program), which is also available for a couple of different platforms. However I would strongly recomend to use the Linux version, because some of the other versions (i.e. windows version) have more bugs. Most of the effects you know from Photoshop can be achieved with Gimp as well, in fact in some parts Gimp is significantly better than Photoshop (for example it offers more powerfull selection tools).
