Computer graphics is a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Although the term often refers to the study of three-dimensional computer graphics, it also encompasses two-dimensional graphics and image processing. The individuals who serve as professional designers for computers graphics are known as "Graphics Programmers", who often are computer programmers with skills in computer graphics design.

Overview

Computer graphics studies the aesthetic manipulation of visual and geometric information using computational techniques. It focuses on the ''mathematical'' and ''computational'' foundations of image generation and processing rather than purely

aesthetic Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...

issues. Computer graphics is often differentiated from the field of

visualization Visualization or visualisation may refer to: *Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message * Data visualization, the graphic representation of data * Information visualiz ...

, although the two fields have many similarities. Connected studies include: *

Applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

Computational geometry Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems ar ...

Computational topology Algorithmic topology, or computational topology, is a subfield of topology with an overlap with areas of computer science, in particular, computational geometry and computational complexity theory. A primary concern of algorithmic topology, as its ...

Computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

Image processing An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

Information visualization Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...

Scientific visualization Scientific visualization ( also spelled scientific visualisation) is an interdisciplinary branch of science concerned with the visualization of scientific phenomena.Michael Friendly (2008)"Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, stat ...

Applications of computer graphics include: *

Print design Print design, a subset of graphic design, is a form of visual communication used to convey information to an audience through intentional aesthetic design printed on a tangible surface, designed to be printed on paper, as opposed to presented on ...

Digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names ...

Special effect Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual wor ...

s *

Video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s *

Visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action foota ...

History

There are several international conferences and journals where the most significant results in computer graphics are published. Among them are the

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference on computer graphics (CG) organized by the ACM SIGGRAPH, starting in 1974. The main conference is held in North America; SIGGRAPH Asia ...

and

Eurographics Eurographics is a Europe-wide professional computer graphics association. The association supports its members in advancing the state of the art in computer graphics and related fields such as multimedia, scientific visualization and human–compu ...

conferences and the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM) Transactions on Graphics journal. The joint Eurographics and

ACM SIGGRAPH ACM SIGGRAPH is the international Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques based in New York. It was founded in 1969 by Andy van Dam (its direct predecessor, ACM SICGRAPH was f ...

symposium series features the major venues for the more specialized sub-fields: Symposium on Geometry Processing, Symposium on Rendering, Symposium on Computer Animation, and High Performance Graphics. As in the rest of computer science, conference publications in computer graphics are generally more significant than journal publications (and subsequently have lower acceptance rates).

Subfields

A broad classification of major subfields in computer graphics might be: #

Geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

: ways to represent and process surfaces #

Animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

: ways to represent and manipulate motion # Rendering:

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

s to reproduce light transport #

Imaging Imaging is the representation or reproduction of an object's form; especially a visual representation (i.e., the formation of an image). Imaging technology is the application of materials and methods to create, preserve, or duplicate images. ...

: image acquisition or image editing

Geometry

The subfield of geometry studies the representation of three-dimensional objects in a discrete digital setting. Because the appearance of an object depends largely on its exterior,

boundary representation In solid modeling and computer-aided design, boundary representation (often abbreviated B-rep or BREP) is a method for representing a 3D shape by defining the limits of its volume. A solid is represented as a collection of connected surface el ...

s are most commonly used. Two dimensional

surface A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is t ...

s are a good representation for most objects, though they may be non-

manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a n ...

. Since surfaces are not finite, discrete digital approximations are used. Polygonal meshes (and to a lesser extent

subdivision surfaces In the field of 3D computer graphics, a subdivision surface (commonly shortened to SubD surface) is a curved surface represented by the specification of a coarser polygon mesh and produced by a recursive algorithmic method. The curved surface, t ...

) are by far the most common representation, although point-based representations have become more popular recently (see for instance the Symposium on Point-Based Graphics). These representations are ''Lagrangian,'' meaning the spatial locations of the samples are independent. Recently, ''Eulerian'' surface descriptions (i.e., where spatial samples are fixed) such as

level set In mathematics, a level set of a real-valued function of real variables is a set where the function takes on a given constant value , that is: : L_c(f) = \left\~, When the number of independent variables is two, a level set is calle ...

s have been developed into a useful representation for deforming surfaces which undergo many topological changes (with

fluids In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (''flows'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are substances which cannot resist any shear ...

being the most notable example). Geometry subfields include: *

Implicit surface In mathematics, an implicit surface is a surface in Euclidean space defined by an equation : F(x,y,z)=0. An ''implicit surface'' is the set of zeros of a function of three variables. ''Implicit'' means that the equation is not solved for o ...

modeling – an older subfield which examines the use of algebraic surfaces,

constructive solid geometry Constructive solid geometry (CSG; formerly called computational binary solid geometry) is a technique used in solid modeling. Constructive solid geometry allows a modeler to create a complex surface or object by using Boolean operators to combi ...

, etc., for surface representation. * Digital geometry processing –

surface reconstruction Surface reconstruction refers to the process by which atoms at the surface of a crystal assume a different structure than that of the bulk. Surface reconstructions are important in that they help in the understanding of surface chemistry for variou ...

, simplification, fairing, mesh repair,

parameterization In mathematics, and more specifically in geometry, parametrization (or parameterization; also parameterisation, parametrisation) is the process of finding parametric equations of a curve, a surface, or, more generally, a manifold or a variety, de ...

, remeshing,

mesh generation Mesh generation is the practice of creating a mesh, a subdivision of a continuous geometric space into discrete geometric and topological cells. Often these cells form a simplicial complex. Usually the cells partition the geometric input domain ...

, surface compression, and surface editing all fall under this heading.
CS 598: Digital Geometry Processing (Fall 2004)
* Discrete differential geometry – a nascent field which defines geometric quantities for the discrete surfaces used in computer graphics. * Point-based graphics – a recent field which focuses on points as the fundamental representation of surfaces. *

Subdivision surfaces In the field of 3D computer graphics, a subdivision surface (commonly shortened to SubD surface) is a curved surface represented by the specification of a coarser polygon mesh and produced by a recursive algorithmic method. The curved surface, t ...

* Out-of-core mesh processing – another recent field which focuses on mesh datasets that do not fit in main memory.

Animation

The subfield of animation studies descriptions for surfaces (and other phenomena) that move or deform over time. Historically, most work in this field has focused on parametric and data-driven models, but recently

physical simulation Dynamical simulation, in computational physics, is the simulation of systems of objects that are free to move, usually in three dimensions according to Newton's laws of dynamics, or approximations thereof. Dynamical simulation is used in computer ...

has become more popular as computers have become more powerful computationally. Animation subfields include: *

Performance capture Motion capture (sometimes referred as mo-cap or mocap, for short) is the process of recording the movement of objects or people. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robo ...

* Character animation * Physical simulation (e.g.

cloth modeling Cloth modeling is the term used for simulating cloth within a computer program, usually in the context of 3D computer graphics. The main approaches used for this may be classified into three basic types: geometric, physical, and particle/energy. ...

, animation of

fluid dynamics In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) an ...

, etc.)

Rendering

Rendering generates images from a model. Rendering may simulate light transport to create realistic images or it may create images that have a particular artistic style in

non-photorealistic rendering Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art, in contrast to traditional computer graphics, which focuses on photorealism. NPR is inspired by other ...

. The two basic operations in realistic rendering are transport (how much light passes from one place to another) and scattering (how surfaces interact with light). See

Rendering (computer graphics) Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...

for more information. Rendering subfields include: *

Transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, an ...

describes how illumination in a scene gets from one place to another.

Visibility The visibility is the measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly discerned. In meteorology it depends on the transparency of the surrounding air and as such, it is unchanging no matter the ambient light level or time of ...

is a major component of light transport. * Scattering: Models of ''

scattering Scattering is a term used in physics to describe a wide range of physical processes where moving particles or radiation of some form, such as light or sound, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by localized non-uniformities (including ...

'' (how light interacts with the surface ''at a given point'') and ''

shading Shading refers to the depiction of depth perception in 3D models (within the field of 3D computer graphics) or illustrations (in visual art) by varying the level of darkness. Shading tries to approximate local behavior of light on the object's ...

'' (how material properties vary across the surface) are used to describe the appearance of a surface. In graphics these problems are often studied within the context of rendering since they can substantially affect the design of

rendering algorithm Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...

s. Descriptions of scattering are usually given in terms of a

bidirectional scattering distribution function The definition of the BSDF (bidirectional scattering distribution function) is not well standardized. The term was probably introduced in 1980 by Bartell, Dereniak, and Wolfe. Most often it is used to name the general mathematical function which de ...

(BSDF). The latter issue addresses how different types of scattering are distributed across the surface (i.e., which scattering function applies where). Descriptions of this kind are typically expressed with a program called a

shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as ''shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of spec ...

. (Note that there is some confusion since the word "shader" is sometimes used for programs that describe local ''geometric'' variation.) *

Non-photorealistic rendering Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art, in contrast to traditional computer graphics, which focuses on photorealism. NPR is inspired by other ...

Physically based rendering Physically based rendering (PBR) is a computer graphics approach that seeks to render images in a way that models the flow of light in the real world. Many PBR pipelines aim to achieve photorealism. Feasible and quick approximations of the b ...

– concerned with generating images according to the laws of

geometric optics Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ca ...

Real-time rendering Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface ( GUI) to ...

– focuses on rendering for interactive applications, typically using specialized hardware like

GPUs A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

* Relighting – recent area concerned with quickly re-rendering scenes

Notable researchers

* Arthur Appel * James Arvo *

Brian A. Barsky Brian A. Barsky is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, working in computer graphics and geometric modeling as well as in optometry and vision science. He is a Professor of Computer Science and Vision Science and an Affiliate ...

Jim Blinn James F. Blinn (born 1949) is an American computer scientist who first became widely known for his work as a computer graphics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), particularly his work on the pre-encounter animations for the Voya ...

Jack E. Bresenham Jack Elton Bresenham (born 11 October 1937, Clovis, New Mexico, United States, US) is a former professor of computer science. Biography Bresenham retired from 27 years of service at IBM as a Senior Technical Staff Member in 1987. He taught for 16 ...

Loren Carpenter Loren C. Carpenter (born February 7, 1947) is a computer graphics researcher and developer. Biography He was a co-founder and chief scientist of Pixar Animation Studios. He is the co-inventor of the Reyes rendering algorithm and is one of the ...

Edwin Catmull Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist who is the co-founder of Pixar and was the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics (computer sci ...

James H. Clark James Henry Clark (born March 23, 1944) is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon. His research work in comput ...

Robert L. Cook Robert L. Cook (December 10, 1952) is a computer graphics researcher and developer, and the co-creator of the RenderMan rendering software. His contributions are considered to be highly influential in the field of animated arts. In 2009, Cook ...

Franklin C. Crow Franklin C. (Frank) Crow is a computer scientist who has made important contributions to computer graphics, including some of the first practical spatial anti-aliasing techniques. Crow also proposed the shadow volume technique for generating geom ...

Paul Debevec Paul Ernest Debevec is a researcher in computer graphics at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. He is best known for his work in finding, capturing and synthesizing the bidirectional scattering distribution ...

David C. Evans David Cannon Evans (February 24, 1924 – October 3, 1998) was the founder of the computer science department at the University of Utah and co-founder (with Ivan Sutherland) of Evans & Sutherland, a pioneering firm in computer graphics hardwar ...

* Ron Fedkiw *

Steven K. Feiner Steven K. Feiner is an American computer scientist, serving as Professor for computer science at Columbia University in the field of computer graphics. He is well-known for his research in augmented reality (AR), and co-author of '' Computer Gra ...

James D. Foley James David Foley (born July 20, 1942) is an American computer scientist and computer graphics researcher. He is a Professor Emeritus and held the Stephen Fleming Chair in Telecommunications in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia In ...

* David Forsyth *

Henry Fuchs Henry Fuchs (born 20 January 1948 in Tokaj, Hungary) is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Federico Gil Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nor ...

Andrew Glassner Andrew S. Glassner (born 1960) is an American expert in computer graphics, well known in computer graphics community as the originator and editor of the ''Graphics Gems'' series, ''An Introduction to Ray Tracing,'' and ''Principles of Digital Image ...

Henri Gouraud (computer scientist) Henri Gouraud (born 1944) is a French computer scientist. He is the inventor of Gouraud shading used in computer graphics. He is the great-nephew of general Henri Gouraud. During 1964–1967, he studied at École Centrale Paris. He received his ...

Donald P. Greenberg Donald Peter Greenberg (born 1934) is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics at Cornell University. Early life Greenberg earned his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, where he played on the tennis and soccer ...

Eric Haines Eric Haines is an American software engineer, and is an expert in computer graphics, specifically image rendering. he is with NVIDIA Corporation as Distinguished Engineer. He is a co-author of the book ''Real-Time Rendering'', currently in its ...

* R. A. Hall *

Pat Hanrahan Patrick M. Hanrahan (born 1954) is an American computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algo ...

* John Hughes *

Jim Kajiya James Kajiya is a pioneer in the field of computer graphics. He is perhaps best known for the development of the rendering equation. Kajiya received his PhD from the University of Utah in 1979, was a professor at Caltech from 1979 through 1994 ...

Takeo Kanade is a Japanese computer scientist and one of the world's foremost researchers in computer vision. He is Uncas A. Whitaker, U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He has approximately 300 peer-reviewed academic publicatio ...

Kenneth Knowlton Kenneth Charles Knowlton (June 6, 1931 – June 16, 2022) was an American computer graphics pioneer, artist, mosaicist and portraitist. In 1963, while working at Bell Labs, he developed the BEFLIX programming language for creating bitmap comput ...

Marc Levoy Marc Levoy is a computer graphics researcher and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, a vice president and Fellow at Adobe Inc., and (until 2020) a Distinguished Engineer at Google. He is noted ...

Martin Newell (computer scientist) Martin Edward Newell is a British-born computer scientist specializing in computer graphics who is perhaps best known as the creator of the Utah teapot computer model. Career Before emigrating to the US, he worked at what was then the Computer ...

* James O'Brien *

Ken Perlin Kenneth H. Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, founding director of the Media Research Lab at NYU, director of the Future Reality Lab at NYU, and the Director of the Games for Learning Institute. He ...

Matt Pharr Matt Pharr is a computer graphics researcher and author, and one of the primary originators of the physically based rendering process. His research focuses on Rendering (computer graphics), rendering algorithms, graphics processing units, as well as ...

Bui Tuong Phong Bui Tuong Phong (December 14, 1942 – July 1975) was a Vietnamese-born computer graphics researcher and pioneer. He invented the widely used Phong shading algorithm and Phong reflection model. Life Phong was born in Hanoi, then French Ind ...

* Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz * William Reeves * David F. Rogers *

Holly Rushmeier Holly Rushmeier is an American computer scientist and is the John C. Malone Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. She is known for her contributions to the field of computer graphics. Biography Rushmeier has received three degrees in ...

Peter Shirley Peter Shirley (born 1963) is an American computer scientist and computer graphics researcher. He is a Distinguished Scientist at NVIDIA and adjunct professor at the University of Utah in computer science. He has made extensive contributions to i ...

James Sethian James Albert Sethian is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley and the head of the Mathematics Grouat the United States Department of Energy, United States Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laborator ...

Ivan Sutherland Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 1938) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subje ...

Demetri Terzopoulos Demetri Terzopoulos is an Academy Award winning Greek-Canadian-American computer scientist, university professor, author, and entrepreneur. He is best known for pioneering the physics-based approach to computer graphics and vision that has he ...

* Kenneth Torrance *

Greg Turk Greg Turk is an American-born researcher in the field of computer graphics and a professor at the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). His paper "Zippered polygon mes ...

Andries van Dam Andries "Andy" van Dam (born December 8, 1938) is a Dutch-American professor of computer science and former vice-president for research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Together with Ted Nelson he contributed to the first hyper ...

Henrik Wann Jensen Henrik Wann Jensen (born 1969 in Harlev, Jutland, Denmark) is a Denmark, Danish computer graphics researcher. He is best known for developing the photon mapping technique as the subject of his PhD thesis, but has also done important research in sim ...

Gregory Ward Gregory Ward is an American linguist, academic and researcher. He is Professor of Linguistics, Gender & Sexuality Studies and, by courtesy, Philosophy at Northwestern University. Ward's primary research revolves around pragmatics, with emphasis o ...

John Warnock John Edward Warnock (born October 6, 1940) is an American computer scientist and businessman best known for co-founding Adobe Systems Inc., the graphics and publishing software company, with Charles Geschke. Warnock was President of Adobe for ...

J. Turner Whitted John Turner Whitted is an electrical engineer and computer scientist who introduced recursive ray tracing to the computer graphics community with his 1979 paper "An improved illumination model for shaded display". His algorithm proved to be a pract ...

* Lance Williams

Applications for their use

Bitmap Design / Image Editing *

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...

Corel Photo-Paint Corel Photo-Paint is a raster graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel since 1992. Corel markets the software for Windows and Mac OS operating systems, previously having marketed versions for Linux (Version 9, requiring Wine). Its primary m ...

GIMP GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...

Krita Krita ( ) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. The software runs on Windows, macOS, Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on th ...

Vector drawing *

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and design program developed and marketed by Adobe Inc. Originally designed for the Apple Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began in 1985. Along with Creative Cloud (Adobe's shift to month ...

CorelDRAW CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs (see below). T ...

Inkscape Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Other formats can be imported and exported. Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. rectang ...

Affinity Designer Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor developed by Serif Europe, Serif for macOS, iPadOS, and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the "Affinity trinity" alongside Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. Affinity Designer is available for purc ...

* Sketch Architecture * VariCAD *

FreeCAD FreeCAD is a general-purpose parametric 3D computer-aided design (CAD) modeler and a building information modeling (BIM) software application with finite element method (FEM) support. It is intended for mechanical engineering product design bu ...

AutoCAD AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application. Developed and marketed by Autodesk, AutoCAD was first released in December 1982 as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. ...

QCAD QCAD is a computer-aided design (CAD) software application for 2D design and drafting. It is available for Linux, Apple macOS, Unix and Microsoft Windows. The QCAD GUI is based on the Qt framework. QCAD is partly released under the GNU General ...

LibreCAD LibreCAD is a computer-aided design (CAD) Application software, application for 2D design. It is free and open-source software, free and open-source, and available for Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems. Most of the interface and handle ...

DataCAD DataCAD is a computer-aided design and drafting ( CADD) software for 2D and 3D architectural design and drafting, developed and sold by DATACAD LLC. Usage DataCAD runs exclusively on Microsoft Windows-based operating systems, and was one of the ...

Corel Designer Corel DESIGNER is a vector-based graphics program. It was originally developed by Micrografx, which was bought by Corel in 2001. The last version developed by Micrografx was 9.0 in 2001. This program was later sold as Corel DESIGNER 9. There are ...

Video editing *

Adobe Premiere Pro Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based and non-linear video editing software application (NLE) developed by Adobe Inc. and published as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud licensing program. First launched in 2003, Adobe Premiere Pro is a succes ...

Sony Vegas Vegas Pro (stylized as VEGAS Pro, colloquially called ''Sony Vegas'') is a video editing software package for non-linear editing (NLE). The first release of Vegas Beta was on June 11, 1999. The software runs on Microsoft Windows, Windows operati ...

* Final Cut *

DaVinci Resolve DaVinci Resolve (originally known as da Vinci Resolve) is a color grading, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production video editing application for macOS, Windows, and Linux, originally developed by da Vinci Systems, and now deve ...

Cinelerra Cinelerra is a video editing and composition program (an NLE, Non-Linear Editor) designed for Linux. It is free software distributed under the open source GNU General Public License. In addition to editing, it supports advanced composition operati ...

VirtualDub VirtualDub is a free and open-source video capture and video processing utility for Microsoft Windows written by Avery Lee. It is designed to process linear video streams, including filtering and recompression. It uses AVI container format to ...

Sculpting, Animation, and 3D Modeling *

Blender 3D Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software tool set used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D-printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, and, formerly, video games. Blende ...

Wings 3D Wings 3D is a free and open-source subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware. Wings 3D is named after the winged-edge data structure it uses internally to store coordinate and adjacency data, and is commonly referred to by it ...

* ZBrush * Sculptris *

SolidWorks SolidWorks is a solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) application published by Dassault Systèmes. According to the publisher, over two million engineers and designers at more than 165,000 companies we ...

Rhino3D Rhinoceros (typically abbreviated Rhino or Rhino3D) is a commercial 3D computer graphics and computer-aided design (CAD) application software that was developed by Robert McNeel & Associates, an American, privately held, and employee-owned com ...

SketchUp SketchUp is a suite of subscription products that include SketchUp Pro Desktop, a 3D modeling Computer-Aided Design (CAD) program for a broad range of drawing and design applications — including architectural, interior design, industrial an ...

Houdini Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...

* 3ds Max * Cinema 4D * Autodesk Maya, Maya *

Digital composition * Nuke (Software), Nuke * Blackmagic Fusion * Adobe After Effects * Natron Rendering * V-Ray * RedShift * RenderMan * Octane Render * Mantra (Software), Mantra * Lumion (Software), Lumion (Architectural visualization) Other applications examples * ACIS - geometric core * Autodesk Softimage * POV-Ray * Scribus * Silo (software), Silo * Hexagon (software), Hexagon * Lightwave

References

External links

A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation

Industry

Industrial labs doing "blue sky" graphics research include:
Adobe Advanced Technology LabsMERLMicrosoft Research – GraphicsNvidia Research
Major film studios notable for graphics research include:
ILMPDI/Dreamworks AnimationPixar
{{Authority control Computer graphics, +