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https://github.com/mikeroyal/3d-graphics-and-design-guide

3D Graphics and Design Guide
https://github.com/mikeroyal/3d-graphics-and-design-guide

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3D Graphics and Design Guide

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README 

        


 

  


  3D Graphics and Design Guide




#### A guide covering 3D Graphics and Design including the applications, libraries and tools that will make you a better and more efficient Graphics Designer.



 **Note: You can easily convert this markdown file to a PDF in [VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com/) using this handy extension [Markdown PDF](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yzane.markdown-pdf).**

 

 


 

  







 

  





 **Blender's Cycles Render Engine. Source: [Blender](https://www.blender.org)**

 

 


 

  





 **Blender VFX(Visual Effects). Source: [Blender](https://www.blender.org)**





 

  





**Designing a simple UI/UX for an application in Adobe XD. Source: [Adobe](https://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html)**



# 3D Graphics and Design Learning Resources



[Introduction to Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD)](https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/index.html)



[Intro to using Universal Scene Description with NVIDIA](https://developer.nvidia.com/usd)



[First steps with Universal Scene Description in Blender](https://code.blender.org/2019/07/first-steps-with-universal-scene-description/)



[AMD Radeon ProRender Developer Suite](https://gpuopen.com/radeon-prorender-suite/)



[Blender Foundation](https://www.blender.org/foundation/)



[Blender Foundation Certification Training](https://www.blender.org/certification/)



[Blender Cloud Courses](https://cloud.blender.org/courses)



[Blender Institute](https://www.blender.org/institute/)



[Blender Education](https://www.blender.org/get-involved/)



[Blender Network](https://www.blendernetwork.org/)



[Blender Courses from Udemy](https://www.udemy.com/topic/blender/)



[AutoDesk Learning, Training & Certification](https://www.autodesk.com/training)



[AutoDesk Design Academy](https://academy.autodesk.com)



[AutoDesk Courses and Specializations from Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/autodesk)



[Cinema 4D Quick Tips](https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/cinema_4d_quick_tips)



[Getting Started with Cinema 4D](https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/getting_started_with_cinema_4d_r20)



[Graphic Design Masterclass(Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) from Udemy](https://www.udemy.com/course/graphic-design-masterclass-everything-you-need-to-know/)



[Vectr: Beginner's Guide To Graphic Design from udemy](https://www.udemy.com/course/vectr-beginners-guide-to-graphic-design/)



[Canva MasterClass: Design For EveryDay Use from Udemy](https://www.udemy.com/course/canva-masterclass-design-for-everyday-use/)



# 3D Graphics and Design Tools



[Adobe Creative Cloud](https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html) is a collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps(Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Rush, Etc.) and services for photography, design, video, web, UX, and more.



 


 

  





[Autodesk®](https://www.autodesk.com/) is a collection of professional software products and services used in 3D design, architecture, engineering, manufacturing, and high production entertainment companies. 



[Maya®](https://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/overview) is a 3D computer animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering software that can create realistic effects from explosions to cloth simulation.



[Maya LT™](https://www.autodesk.com/products/maya-lt/overview) is a game design software for indie game makers that can create and animate realistic-looking characters, props, and environments using the sophisticated 3D modeling and animation tools.





 

  





**Autodesk® Maya. Source:[Autodesk](https://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/overview)**



[3DS Max®](https://www.autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/overview) is a 3D modeling and rendering software for design visualization, games, and animation.





 

  





**Autodesk® 3DS Max. Source:[Autodesk](https://www.autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/overview)**



[Arnold](https://www.autodesk.com/products/arnold/overview) is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing(Global illumination) renderer that helps you work more efficiently.



[ReCap™](https://www.autodesk.com/products/recap/overview) is a Pro 3D scanning software to transform the physical world into a digital asset. With reality capture data you can better understand and verify existing and as-built conditions to gain insights and make better decisions.



[Flame®](https://www.autodesk.com/products/flame/overview) is a 3D VFX and finishing software provides powerful tools for 3D compositing, visual effects, and editorial finishing. An integrated, creative environment means faster compositing, advanced graphics, color correction, and more.



[Mudbox®](https://www.autodesk.com/products/mudbox/overview) is a 3D digital painting and sculpting software that let's you sculpt and paint highly detailed 3D geometry and textures.





 

  





**Autodesk® Mudbox. Source:[Autodesk](https://www.autodesk.com/products/mudbox/overview)**



[Blender](https://www.blender.org) is a professional, free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games.



[Cinema 4D](https://www.maxon.net/en-us/products/cinema-4d/overview/) is a professional 3D and VFX software suite that is capable of doing procedural and polygonal modeling, animation, lighting, texturing, motion graphic and rendering.



[Houdini](https://www.sidefx.com/) is a 3D procedural software for modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, look development, lighting and rendering in film, TV, advertising and video game pipelines.



[Open Graphics Library(OpenGL)](https://www.opengl.org/) is an API used acrossed mulitple  programming languages and platforms for hardware-accelerated rendering of 2D/3D vector graphics currently developed by the [Khronos Group](https://www.khronos.org/).



[Open Computing Language (OpenCL)](https://www.khronos.org/opencl/) is an open standard for [parallel programming](https://www.coursera.org/lecture/parprog1/introduction-to-parallel-computing-zNrIS) of heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other hardware accelerators found in supercomputers, cloud servers, personal computers, mobile devices and embedded platforms.



[Vulkan](https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/) is a modern cross-platform graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms. Vulkan is currently in development by the Khronos consortium. 



[Metal](https://developer.apple.com/metal/) is a low-level GPU programming framework used for rendering 2D and 3D graphics on Apple platforms such as iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.



[MoltenVK](https://moltengl.com/moltenvk) is an implementation of Vulkan running on iOS and macOS using Apple's [Metal](https://developer.apple.com/metal/) graphics framework.



[MoltenGL](https://moltengl.com) is an implementation of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API that runs on Apple's [Metal](https://developer.apple.com/metal/) graphics framework.



[Mesa 3D Graphics Library](https://docs.mesa3d.org/index.html) is a project began as an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification. A system for rendering interactive 3D graphics. Mesa ties into several other open-source projects: the [Direct Rendering Infrastructure](https://dri.freedesktop.org/), [X.org](https://x.org/), and [Wayland](https://wayland.freedesktop.org/) to provide OpenGL support on Linux, FreeBSD, and other operating systems.



[OpenGL ES](https://www.khronos.org/opengles/) is the mobile subset of OpenGL. It's supported on all major mobile platforms, and is also the base for WebGL.



[OpenCL](https://www.khronos.org/opencl/) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, FPGAs and other processors or hardware accelerators.



[Vuforia](https://developer.vuforia.com/) is a comprehensive, scalable enterprise AR platform. Our wide-ranging solution suite ensures that we can provide the right AR technology to every customer based on their business needs.



[Vuforia Studio](https://www.ptc.com/en/products/vuforia/vuforia-studio) is a tool that allows anyone to create beautiful 3D augmented reality (AR) experiences in a matter of minutes with no coding required.



[OpenVX™](https://www.khronos.org/openvx/) is an open-source, royalty-free standard for cross platform acceleration of computer vision applications. OpenVX enables performance and power-optimized computer vision processing, especially important in embedded and real-time use cases such as face, body and gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), object and scene reconstruction, augmented reality, visual inspection, robotics and more.



[openXR](https://www.khronos.org/OpenXR/) is a free, open standard that provides high-performance access to Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) collectively known as XR—platforms and devices. 



[GPUImage framework](https://github.com/BradLarson/GPUImage) is a BSD-licensed iOS library that lets you apply GPU-accelerated filters and other effects to images, live camera video, and movies. In comparison to Core Image (part of iOS 5.0), GPUImage allows you to write your own custom filters, supports deployment to iOS 4.0, and has a simpler interface. However, it currently lacks some of the more advanced features of Core Image, such as facial detection.



[GPUImage3](https://github.com/BradLarson/GPUImage3) is the third generation of the [GPUImage framework](https://github.com/BradLarson/GPUImage), an open source project for performing GPU-accelerated image and video processing on Mac and iOS. The original GPUImage framework was written in Objective-C and targeted Mac and iOS, the second iteration rewritten in Swift using OpenGL to target Mac, iOS, and Linux, and now this third generation is redesigned to use Metal in place of OpenGL.



[EGL](https://www.khronos.org/egl/) is an interface between Khronos rendering APIs such as OpenGL or OpenVG and the underlying native platform window system.



[VDPAU](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/VDPAU/) is the Video Decode and Presentation API for UNIX. It provides an interface to video decode acceleration and presentation hardware present in modern GPUs.



[VA API](https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi/) is an open-source library and API specification, which provides access to graphics hardware acceleration capabilities for video processing.



[XvMC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Video_Motion_Compensation) is an extension of the X video extension (Xv) for the X Window System. The XvMC API allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process to the GPU hardware.



[AMD Radeon ProRender](https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender) is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images on virtually any GPU, any CPU, and any OS in over a dozen leading digital content creation and CAD applications.



[NVIDIA Omniverse](https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-omniverse-platform) is a powerful, multi-GPU, real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines based on Pixar's Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX.



[Universal Scene Description](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/USD) is an efficient, scalable system for authoring, reading, and streaming time-sampled scene description for interchange between graphics applications.



[OpenTimelineIO](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenTimelineIO) is an interchange format and API for editorial cut information. OTIO is not a container format for media, rather it contains information about the order and length of cuts and references to external media. OTIO includes both a file format and an API for manipulating that format. It also includes a plugin architecture for writing adapters to convert from/to existing editorial timeline formats. It also implements a dependency- less library for dealing strictly with time, opentime.



[OpenSubdiv](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv) is a set of open source libraries that implement high performance subdivision surface (subdiv) evaluation on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures. This codepath is optimized for drawing deforming subdivs with static topology at interactive framerates. The resulting limit surface matches Pixar's Renderman to numerical precision. 



[Affinity Designer](https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/) is a professional vector graphics editor used by many industry leading illustrators, designers, and other creatives looking to create high-quality concept art.



[Sketch](https://www.sketch.com) is a professional vector graphics app with a beautiful UI and powerful toolset.



[Krita](https://krita.org/) is an open source professional painting program for digital painting and 2D animation.



[Vectr](https://vectr.com/) is a free graphics software used to create vector graphics easily and intuitively.



[Glimpse](https://glimpse-editor.github.io/) is a cross-platform raster graphics editor based on the GNU Image Manipulation Program available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. A great tool for making YouTube video thumbnails.



[GNU Image Manipulation Program(GIMP)](https://www.gimp.org/) is a cross-platform raster graphics editor based on the GNU Image Manipulation Program(GIMP) available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. A great free alternative for Photoshop.



[PhotoGIMP](https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP) is a simple Patch for [GIMP 2.10+](https://www.gimp.org/) to help all Adobe Photoshop Users feel at home.



[Photopea](https://www.photopea.com/) is an advanced online photo editor supporting Adobe Photoshop(PSD), GIMP(XCF), Sketch App(Sketch), Adobe XD(XD) and CorelDRAW(CDR) formats.



[Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/) is an open-source vector graphics editor; it can be used to create or edit vector graphics such as illustrations, diagrams, line arts, charts, logos and complex paintings.



[Gthree](https://github.com/alexlarsson/gthree) is a GObject/Gtk+ port of three.js.



[FreeCAD](https://www.freecadweb.org/) is a free and open-source general-purpose parametric 3D CAD modeler and a building information modeling software with finite-element-method support. 



[Ultimaker Cura](https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura) is the world’s most popular 3D printing software. Prepare prints with a few clicks, integrate with CAD software for an easier workflow, or dive into custom settings for in-depth control.



[Dust3D](https://dust3d.org/) is a cross-platform open-source modeling software. It helps you create a 3D watertight model in seconds. Use it to speed up your character modeling in game making, 3D printing, and so on.



[Goxel](https://github.com/guillaumechereau/goxel) is a free and Open Source 3D Voxel Editor.



[Sketchfab](https://sketchfab.com/tags/open-source) gives you open-source 3D models ready to view, buy, and download for free.



## Contribute



- [x] If would you like to contribute to this guide simply make a [Pull Request](https://github.com/mikeroyal/3D-Graphics-and-Design-Guide/pulls).



## License



Distributed under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Public License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).