Easy

K-3D's interface uses your platform's look-and-feel, and it's consistent with the applications you already know. New artists will find K-3D easy to understand, and professionals feel right at home. K-3D is intuitive, consistent, and discoverable.

Powerful

K-3D features procedural and parametric workflows. Properties can be adjusted interactively and results appear immediately. The powerful, node-based visualization pipeline allows more possibilities than traditional modifier stacks or histories. Selection flows from one modifier to the next.

An advanced undo/redo system ensures you can always go back, and the pioneering undo tree means you can always go forward, even where other programs lose the ability to redo.

Industrial-strength standards form the foundation on which K-3D builds - including native RenderMan(TM) support that integrates tightly with the K-3D user interface.

Flexible

Get all the power of a node-based visualization pipeline: connect anything to anything else. K-3D gives you the freedom to create combinations never before seen.

Work on one side of a model, show the other side mirrored, and see the end result welded together as a subdivision surface in realtime. Using K-3D, complex workflows are easy to create and understand. Go back, modify the beginning of a workflow, and watch as changes propagate automatically to the end.

Free

K-3D is Free Software. Run it on your choice of platform. Adapt it for any purpose. Receive it at no cost. Share it with your friends. All of the K-3D source code is available under the GNU General Public License.

What's New:

  • Completely rewritten data storage for geometric meshes - capable of rendering one million polygons at interactive rates.
  • Introductory support for the LuxRender render engine.
  • Experimental support for CSG operations on polyhedra, using either CGAL or CARVE
  • Introductory support for NURBS.
  • New / rewritten support for 3DS, Collada, OBJ, MD2, Ogre, PLY, STL, and SVG files.
  • Interactive Python Shell
  • New CMake-based cross-platform build system.
  • Over 300 regression tests run every night.
  • Nightly coverage testing.
  • New Mercurial-based version control.
  • New website.
  • New time-based release schedule - the next K-3D release will be October, 2010.