EQUINOX-3D is a 3D modeller with a fast and fully integrated ray-tracer.

Here are some key features of "EQUINOX 3D":

· Super-fast renderer, the first fully integrated interactive ray-tracer in a modeler!
· Fully integrated Cg renderer with a quality that closely matches the ray-tracer:
· HDR texture support and HDR rendering output
· Unlimited number of lights with hardware-accelerated shadows
· Reflection and refraction cube mapping with fresnel term
· Code generator that can automatically create billions of variations per shader type from the user interface settings!
· No need for hand-coding Cg shaders or for using external programs that break the artist's workflow.(this feature requires at least an NVidia FX5700 or equivalent graphics card. FX6800 or 7800 recommended)
· Clean, easy to use and fast user-interface (UI). EQUINOX-3D is often called "the free modeler with by far the best UI".
· Very fast and memory-efficient design. For example: thanks to some design decisions and development techniques, EQUINOX-3D starts up in ~1 second with about 75 plugins loaded
· Try that with other modelers!
· Way ahead of the curve and future-proof core design:
· Other modeler companies eventually end up with unmanageable code, need to throw out their product and start from scratch every few years to keep up with advances in 3D graphics.
· EQUINOX-3D on the other hand is built on a heavily runtime-typed "evolvable" core.
· There was never a need to (re)start from scratch in the ~14 years it's been under development!
· EQUINOX-3D is more like a "3D operating system" than a monolythic application (over 90% of it is plugins), which allows for adding anything from an integrated renderer to a new modeling tool-kit as a plugin!
· For example, it took about half an hour to "turn" EQX into an XML schema viewer. You can also turn it into a Solar system simulator. See projects.
· Plugin-manager: allows you to change, re-compile and reload plugins without restarting EQUINOX-3D.
· Multiple Geometries allowed on transform nodes (much fewer nodes needed to group things, resulting in cleaner/more efficient hierarchies).
· True texture and material sharing: unlike in most other 3D packages, texture-mapping is stored on the geometries, not with the texture (no need for 'cloning' textured materials and keeping them in sync manually just because you want to map a texture differently on a different object).
· Universal, unlimited undo/redo infrastructure
· Camera "fly-to" feature for all view-modes (3D, schematics, animation etc.). After me showing off this feature for years, it was partially copied (3D view only) in the latest version of Maya.
· Fully programmable texture-mappers: just like programmable shaders, per-pixel custom texture-mappers allow you to use your own texture mapping algorithms, fully integrated into EQUINOX-3D. This allows for things like easy direct support for multiple environment-map projections to custom character-specific texture mappers.
· Full high dynamic range image support (texture) and rendering with sophisticated exposure control and direct support for angle-maps, mirror-sphere maps etc.
· EQUINOX-3D uses , Cg and GLSL for advanced shaders.


Requirements:

· X11 started before application program.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

Improved renderer:
Fast and physically accurate area lights, using adaptive stratified sampling:
· Specular highlights are correct when viewed through reflections and refractions.
· Faster ray-tracing.
· Basic key-frame animation editing works now and supports undo/redo.
· Animation infrastructure improvements.
· Undo/redo works for normal Spline CV deleting (add CV, delete CV etc.).
· Undo/redo works for "Merge Geometries".
· Undo/redo standardized (moved to "Edit" menu and to Ctrl Z / Ctrl Y).
· "File->New scene" resets view modes and cameras.
· Revolve tool works correctly for all revolution axes and it visualizes the revolution axis.
· Duplicate tool can clone Animations as well.
· COLLADA 1.4.1 import (animation, skinning, polylists, common-profile materials). (in addition to 1.3 import/export).
· COLLADA 1.4.1 export (animation, common-profile materials).
More user-interface improvements:
· Posted menus and menu items highlight on mouse-over and
· You can let go of the mouse button while browsing through menus
· Better-behaving text-fields
· Better looking buttons, list, menus scrollbars etc. and faster UI updates
· Better material editor.
· Schematics window defaults to a nicer view.
· More reliable keyboard handling for transient modes (e.g. hold down a key to...).