AIR Alternatives

AIR

AIR is an advanced 3D graphics renderer with a unique architecture and extensive features designed for the rapid production of high-quality images. AIR is a hybrid renderer, combining the advantages of scanline rendering - fast rendering of complex scenes, motion blur, and depth of field - with the flexibility of on-demand ray tracing for accurate reflections, soft shadows, global illumination, and caustics.

AIR supports a broad range of geometric primitives, including polygon meshes, trimmed NURBs, subdivision meshes, curves, particles, and implicit surfaces. All primitives are supported in their natural form; no pre-meshing is required. AIR also provides true (sub-pixel) displacement and high-dynamic range (HDR) input and output.

AIR offers the flexibility of fully programmable shading and procedural modeling. Users can extend the shading language by writing new functions in any programming language. User-written programs can also be used to generate models on-demand.

AIR employs tiled rendering with user-controllable tile order for efficient rendering of complex scenes. AIR is fully multithreaded on Windows and Linux. AIR also ships with Vortex, a distributed rendering manager that enables multiple machines to work on a single image.

AIR doesn’t tie you to a particular modeling or animation program. AIR can be run from a command prompt or used with any of the many compatible companions or plugins for popular 3D software. The Windows version of AIR includes the standalone AIR Space user interface for shading and lighting models.

AIR is used by designers, architects, free-lance 3D artists, and production companies around the world.

AIR is compatible with the RenderMan® standard for the description of 3D scenes. RenderMan® is a registered trademark of Pixar.

Feature Summary:

- Multithreading
- Fast Scanline Rendering
- Ray Tracing
- Programmable Shading
- Global Illumination
- Motion Blur
- Depth of Field
- True Displacement
- Area Lights
- Automatic Meshing
- Trimmed NURBs
- Subdivision Meshes
- Curves/Hair/Fur
- Particles & Blobbies
- Caustics
- Level of Detail
- Procedural Modeling
- Ambient Occlusion
- Subsurface Scattering
- Toon Rendering