| Name | Kind | Version | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houdini SideFX | DCC | 22.0 | Commercial. Free Apprentice (non-commercial). Splat tooling in 22: training in PDG, cleanup, Copernicus rendering. |
| Blender Blender Foundation | DCC | 5.2 LTS (5.3 due 2026-11-10) | Free, open source. Release notes at developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/5.2/. |
| Unreal Engine Epic Games | Engine | Free to start; royalties above a revenue threshold. | |
| RenderMan Pixar | Renderer | 27 | Commercial. Non-commercial edition is free. MaterialX Lama docs in the REN26 wiki. |
| V-Ray for Blender Chaos | Renderer | Commercial. Community edition is free, renewed every 3 months. V-Ray 7.4 for Houdini added splat relighting. | |
| EmberGen JangaFX | Real-time simulation | EmberGen 2 in public beta, planned Q4 2026 | Commercial. |
| Axiom Theory Accelerated | Houdini solver | $99 indie, $199 commercial. GPU smoke and fire. | |
| Paradigm Theory Accelerated | Houdini solver | 1.0 reported April 2026 | $99 indie, $199 commercial. Liquids. The product page still says open beta. |
| ComfyUI Comfy Org | AI workflow | 0.39.x | Free, open source. Comfy Org reported a $30M round at a $500M valuation on 2026-04-24. |
| OpenUSD Pixar and AOUSD | Standard | 26.08 | Open source. ParticleField3DGaussianSplat schema arrived in 26.03. |
| OpenShadingLanguage ASWF | Standard | 1.15.7.0 | Open source. 1.16 is due in October. |
| MaterialX ASWF | Standard | 1.39.5 | Open source. |
| OpenFX ASWF | Standard | 1.5.1 | Open source. Plugin API for compositing and editing hosts. |
| SuperSplat PlayCanvas | Splat editor | 3.5.2 | Free, open source. WebGPU renderer and streamed LOD. 35M splats at 75.8 fps on an M4 Max. |
| gsplat nerfstudio | Splat library | 1.5.3 (last release 2025-07-04) | Open source. |
| spectral.js Open source | Pigment mixing | MIT. Kubelka-Munk colour mixing for the web. | |
| Mixbox Secret Weapons | Pigment mixing | Free for non-commercial use (CC BY-NC 4.0). Commercial needs a licence. |
Prices come from vendors and trade press, and change. Check the vendor before you buy.