Below is a list of some of the most popular digital tools used by today's visual effects artists. It is by no means a complete list. Tools are arranged by their parent company, since many companies make more than one product. Links will take you to the company's World Wide Web site. For reviews and news on the latest software, be sure to visit Visual Magic at http://visualmagic.awn.com.

3D Animation Systems Alias/Wavefront Makers of a wide range of products including Animator, Dynamation, Composer, among other programs. Softimage Microsoft's Softimage is the industry standard in 3D animation. Side Effects Makers of the powerful 3D software, Prisms and Houdini. Pixar Pixar's Renderman is the essential CG renderer. Electric Image ElectricImage is simply the most powerful, fastest 3D Macintosh system available. NewTek The makers of LightWave 3D, the excellent multi-platform 3D system. Kinetix Creators of 3D Studio MAX R2, the popular and affordable 3D animation system. RenderDotC Dot C Software's photorealistic scanline renderer for UNIX and NT platforms. ShadeTree Cinema Graphics' interactive shader authoring tool for Renderman and Mental Ray. Film Scanning & Recording EFilm Electron Filmworks provides digital input scanning and film recording services. Celco Celco has a line of eXtreme digital film recorders for visual effects needs. Solitaire Management Graphics' popular and precise film recorders. Imagica Imagica's IMAGER3000V is one of the most recommended film scanners in the industry.

2D Animation & Compositing Systems Ultimatte The ultimate bluescreen tool, Ultimatte is available for a wide range of systems. Photron Photron's Primatte is an extremely powerful chromakey system. Discreet Logic Makers of the highly popular, high-end image processing systems, Flame, Flint and Inferno. Quantel The highlight of Quantel's image tools, Domino, is extremely popular among effects houses. Interactive Effects Makers of the powerful Amazon high-end paint program. Avid One of the pioneers of digital video, Avid makes the popular and powerful Elastic Reality, Matador and Media Illusion systems. Silicon Grail The makers of Chalice, a brand new high-rez compositing tool. Adobe Makers of the essential Macintosh-based image tools, Photoshop and After Effects. Commotion Puffin Designs' smart and intuitive painting/animation/roto tool, for Macintosh. Shake A fast, versatile compositing program by Nothing Real, for the SGI and NT platforms.

Hardware Silicon Graphics SGI not only produces the SGI computers, which run the vast majority of visual effects software, but it also is the parent company of Alias/Wavefront. Sun Microsystems Providers of high-end computers. Apple Computer Makers of the Macintosh. Digital Equipment Company DEC's Alpha and RenderTowers are the risings star of the effects industry. Content Viewpoint DataLabs Viewpoint has a wide array of services for 3D projects, including stock 3D models and advanced scanning capabilities. Scanlab Studios 3D scanning and digitizing facility for all your scanning needs. Located in the SF Bay area. Pyromania! Pyromania 1, 2 and Pro are CD-ROMs filled with high-quality, royalty-free explosions and fire elements. A review of the Pyromania series. NVision NVision provides laser scanning services, hi/low res polygon and NURBs models for high-end CG work.

Don't forget about the visual effects newsgroup: alt.movies.visual-effects.

. . VFX HQ Produced by Todd Vaziri . . http://www.vfxhq.com . . e-mail: tvaziri@gmail.com . .
All text Copyright © 1998 Todd Vaziri, unless otherwise noted