Cheetah3D8.1.3

Create animated characters, product visuals, game assets, and printable objects with Cheetah3D’s integrated 3D modeling, rendering, and animation workspace. It is designed for Mac artists and supports projects for games, virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D printing, iPhone games, and architectural fly-throughs.

Its modeling toolkit covers polygon, subdivision-surface, and spline workflows, while character rigging and object-property animation support both character performances and scene animation. Built-in Bullet physics handles rigid-body and soft-body simulations, such as falling marbles or a flag moving in the wind. UV unwrapping, texture painting, a UV editor, and node-based materials let users decorate models and construct their surface appearance.

For finished imagery and movies, Cheetah3D provides ray tracing, global illumination, HDRI, and caustics. It imports and exports FBX, STL, 3DS, OBJ, DAE, SCN, and USDZ models, making assets usable in popular game engines or suitable for 3D-printing services, and it exports rendered images and movies in formats including JPG, TIFF, PNG, and MOV.

Version 8.1.3 includes the version 8 generation’s native Apple Silicon and Metal API support, USDZ import and export, UV unwrapping, texture painting, joint-based character animation, and node-based materials. Cheetah3D is freeware in the Photo & Graphics category for macOS, with builds supporting both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.