Art of Illusion

Art of Illusion is a comprehensive software application that you can use to create and render 3D scenes and animations. It is backed by advanced options and configuration parameters.

The interface may seem outdated but it's quite easy to navigate. It's split into four panes for 3D modelling and also contains a timeline where you can select and move keyframes.

Smaller panes are responsible for quickly selecting objects and editing their properties, while a drawing box enables you to insert and manipulate objects easily.

It's possible to edit objects when it comes to their layout, field of view, depth of field and focal distance, set textures and materials, convert objects to triangle meshes or actors, or lock a selection of multiple objects.

Art of Illusion also lets you rotate, resize, scale, align and rename objects, insert cubes, spheres, cylinders, spline meshes and three-sided polygons, add points to establish connections between two items, create cameras and point lights, as well as move or rotate viewpoints.

It's possible to make live duplicates, modify the grid size and environment properties (e.g. ambient and fog color), show coordinate axes, insert external photos into the project, set a template image, or make a frame selection using the camera.

The display mode can be toggled between smooth, shaded, wireframe, textured, transparent, and rendered. Meanwhile, key frames can be edited in bulk (move, copy, rescale, loop, delete), and the animation can be previewed.

When rendering a scene, you can configure a wide range of settings, including animation height and width, camera, renderer, start and end time, frames per second, images per frame, surface accuracy, anti-aliasing mode, illumination, background transparency, and material step size.

Art of Illusion offers support for scripts and plugins. It used a reasonable amount of CPU and RAM in our tests, so it didn't hamper system performance. The application comes bundled with powerful 3D modelling tools that can be explored in a user-friendly environment. Plus, it's free for non-commercial use.