Alembic is focused on efficiently storing the computed results of complex procedural geometric constructions. It is very specifically NOT concerned with storing the complex dependency graph of procedural tools used to create the computed results. For example, Alembic will efficiently store the animated vertex positions and animated transforms that result from an arbitrarily complex animation and simulation process which could involve enveloping, corrective shapes, volume-preserving simulations, cloth and flesh simulations, and so on. Alembic will not attempt to store a representation of the network of computations (rigs, basically) which are required to produce the final, animated vertex positions and animated transforms.

The production ready version of Alembic 1.0 was announced at Siggraph 2011 and released on August 9th, 2011 by Lucasfilm and Sony Pictures Imageworks with support from major vendors including Autodesk, Side Effects Software, The Foundry, Luxology, Pixar’s Renderman and NVidia.

Home Page: http://alembic.io/
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/alembic/
Language: C++, Python
Platform: Linux, OSX, Windows
License: New BSD License
Sponsor: Sony Pictures Imageworks, Lucasfilm

It contains several C++ classes from simple string operations down to complex geometric operations. Essence can give you a boost when developing, by providing all of the basic framework you need.

Home Page: http://opensource.studionestbarcelona.com/studio_NEST/essence.html
Project Page: http://github.com/studioNEST/Essence
Language: C++
Platform: Windows, Linux
License: LGPL v3
Sponsor: StudioNest

Additionally OpenFlipper provides a highly flexible interface for creating and testing own geometry processing algorithms. A powerfull scripting language can be used to access all parts of OpenFlipper and modify geometry or the user interface at runtime.

For more information about OpenFlipper and its features take a look at the Introduction page.

Home Page: http://openflipper.org
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: GPL v3

1. Flexibility : provide a basis for many different algorithms without the need for adaptation.
2. Efficiency : maximize time efficiency while keeping memory usage as low as possible.
3. Ease of use : wrap complex internal structure in an easy-to-use interface.

Home Page: http://openmesh.org
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: GNU GPL and LGPL

• No UV assignment is required! Ptex applies a separate texture to each face of a subdivision or polygon mesh.
• The Ptex file format can efficiently store hundreds of thousands of texture images in a single file.
• The Ptex API provides cached file I/O and high-quality filtering – everything that is needed to easily add Ptex support to a production-quality renderer or texture authoring application.

Home Page: http://ptex.us/
Project Page: http://github.com/wdas/ptex/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, OS X, Windows
License: New BSD
Sponsor: Walt Disney Animation Studios

Aimed world-wide at media professionals and artists, Blender can be used to create 3D visualizations, stills as well as broadcast and cinema quality videos, while the incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the creation of 3D interactive content for stand-alone playback.

Originally developed by the company ‘Not a Number’ (NaN), Blender now is continued as ‘Free Software’, with the source code available under the GNU GPL license. It now continues development by the Blender Foundation in the Netherlands.

Key Features include:

• Fully integrated creation suite, offering a broad range of essential tools for the creation of 3D content, including modeling, uv-mapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animation, particle and other simulation, scripting, rendering, compositing, post-production, and game creation
• High quality 3D architecture enabling fast and efficient creation work-flow
• User community support by forums for questions, answers, and critique at http://BlenderArtists.org and news services at http://BlenderNation.com
• Small executable size, easy distribution

Home Page: http://www.blender.org/
Project Page: http://www.blender.org/development/
Language: C, Python
Platform: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD 5.4 (i386), Sun Solaris 2.8 (sparc)
License: GNU GPL

In the nearest neighbor problem a set of data points in d-dimensional space is given. These points are preprocessed into a data structure, so that given any query point q, the nearest or generally k nearest points of P to q can be reported efficiently. The distance between two points can be defined in many ways. ANN assumes that distances are measured using any class of distance functions called Minkowski metrics. These include the well known Euclidean distance, Manhattan distance, and max distance.

Based on our own experience, ANN performs quite efficiently for point sets ranging in size from thousands to hundreds of thousands, and in dimensions as high as 20.
(For applications in significantly higher dimensions, the results are rather spotty, but you might try it anyway.)

The library implements a number of different data structures, based on kd-trees and box-decomposition trees, and employs a couple of different search strategies.

The library also comes with test programs for measuring the quality of performance of ANN on any particular data sets, as well as programs for visualizing the structure of the geometric data structures.

Project Page: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mount/ANN/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: LGPL

The code is written entirely in C with an object-oriented approach based mostly on the design of GTK+. Careful attention is paid to performance related issues as the initial goal of GTS is to provide a simple and efficient library to scientists dealing with 3D computational surface meshes.

A brief summary of its main features:

• Simple object-oriented structure giving easy access to topological properties.
• 2D dynamic Delaunay and constrained Delaunay triangulations.
• Robust geometric predicates (orientation, in circle) using fast adaptive floating point arithmetic (adapted from the fine work of Jonathan R. Shewchuk).
• Robust set operations on surfaces (union, intersection, difference).
• Surface refinement and coarsening (multiresolution models).
• Dynamic view-independent continuous level-of-detail.
• Preliminary support for view-dependent level-of-detail.
• Bounding-boxes trees and Kd-trees for efficient point location and collision/intersection detection.
• Graph operations: traversal, graph partitioning.
• Metric operations (area, volume, curvature …).
• Triangle strips generation for fast rendering.

Home Page: http://gts.sourceforge.net/
Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gts/
Language: C
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: LGPL

Home Page: http://www.cgal.org/
Project Page: http://www.cgal.org/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
License: LGPL or QPL (if used for open source projects, or proprietary projects that are internal to the studio), or a commercial license (if distributed in a commercial product).