Art of Illusion is a free application for creating high quality, photorealistic (or non-photorealistic) still images and animations (either in .mov format or as a sequence of still frames which can be joined together using other software to make movie files). Images are produced by rendering scene files. These scene files need to contain some 3-D objects, at least one light (or some form of global illumination) so that the objects can be seen and at least one camera, the view from which provides the image. Complex scenes may contain many hundreds of objects and several lights. Files built for animation may have several cameras between which the view is cut to make for an interesting animation sequence.

3-D objects come in 4 basic flavours: Primitives, spline meshes, triangle meshes and tubes. Art of Illusion has flexible, but easy to use, editors for textures (surface properties such as colour, bumpiness, shininess, transparency etc.) and materials (inner properties for simulating glass, smoke etc.).

Animation of objects within the scene is achieved with a keyframing system including support for skeletons using forward and inverse kinematic animation. Textures can also be animated.

Rendering of the scene file is achieved with a raster engine or a raytracer capable of producing photorealistic images. Motion blur, depth of field, Global Illumination and caustic effects are supported.

In addition, Art of Illusion includes a scripting feature allowing the creation of new types of objects and tools amongst virtually unlimited other possibilities via the Beanshell scripting language.

Plugins and scripts are also available that allow additional objects and tools. You need Java Environment to use this program.

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