Best Visual Effects (VFX) Software for Linux

Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline. Cycles is Blender’s built-in powerful unbiased path-tracer engine that offers stunning ultra-realistic rendering. Blender’s comprehensive array of modeling tools make creating, transforming and editing your models a breeze. VFX professionals say: “Probably the best tracker in the market”. Blender includes production ready camera and object tracking. Allowing you to import raw footage, track the footage, mask areas and see the camera movements live in your 3D scene. Eliminating the need to switch between programs. Thanks to the high quality rigging and animation tools, Blender is being used for numerous short films, advertisements, TV series and feature films now.

DaVinci Resolve is an all-in-one post-production software that integrates professional editing, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production into a single platform. Its intuitive interface makes it accessible to beginners while offering advanced tools for professionals, making it the go-to solution for filmmakers, television editors, and content creators. DaVinci Resolve is known for its Emmy-winning color grading capabilities and industry-leading audio processing with Fairlight. The software includes dedicated workspaces for each task—editing, color grading, visual effects, and audio—enabling users to seamlessly switch between tasks. Its powerful features are enhanced by AI tools and real-time collaboration capabilities, allowing teams to work simultaneously on the same project without the need for complex file transfers or conversions.

Natron is a powerful digital compositor that can handle all of your 2D/2.5D needs. Its robust OIIO file formats and OpenFX architecture is what make Natron the most flexible open source compositor for the visual effects community. Its interface and functionally are the same across all platforms such as MacOS, Linux and Windows. Natron has a powerful keying, roto/rotopaint, 2D tracking tools that are staple for all current film production project that requires visual effects. On the surface Natron has a powerful GUI interface that is a flexible and intuitive multi-platform node based engine. Natron may seem to be a simple compositing application but it does have layers of complexity that will allow your creativity to reach new heights. Natron has flexible Roto and Rotopaint tool-set that can generate unlimited layers of masks, mattes and shapes.

LWKS, established in 2020, LWKS is a new creative technology company developing software for content creators and distributors in the media and entertainment industry, including the popular and multiple award-winning Lightworks and QScan products. Lightworks is a non-linear editing system for editing and mastering digital video. For over 30 years, Lightworks has helped every type of video editor and creator imaginable, from Oscar-winning Hollywood legends to YouTubers. QScan, everything you need to automate your media QC. The professional automated media QC platform that takes all the effort out of ensuring video files meet international delivery standards.

3D visual effects (VFX), finishing, and color grading software. Flame® 3D VFX and finishing software provides powerful tools for 3D compositing, visual effects, and editorial finishing. An integrated, creative environment means faster compositing, advanced graphics, color correction, and more. Extract mattes of the human body, head, and face with AI-powered tools for color adjustment, relighting, and digital cosmetic and beauty work. Isolate skies and salient objects quickly for grading and VFX jobs. Edit, composite, and color correct in one environment, without toggling between software. Create and iterate quickly for more productive client sessions. Tools for fast and interactive visual effects finishing and 3D compositing. A timeline-centric, fully compatible assistant station for Flame. A fully compatible creative assistant station for Flame in collaborative VFX workflows. Real-time color grading software for creative look development.

Sapphire plug-ins let you create stunning organic looks unmatched by any host native effect tools. Key features include over 270 effects and 3000+ presets, a powerful effect and transition builder, and integrated tracking and masking with the academy award-winning mocha. Sapphire’s superior image quality, control, and render speed offers massive time-savings — allowing creatives to focus on what matters most, delivering an impact that keeps audiences coming back. Mac users with Sapphire 2021 will rejoice with the introduction of Metal GPU acceleration for over 60 Sapphire effect. Dramatic speed gains can be achieved with Metal acceleration in Sapphire; S_Rays renders over 4x faster with metal than CPU only. Performance can vary depending on GPU specs, host application, OS version, and individual Sapphire effects, but on average Sapphire 2021 with Metal acceleration renders 20% faster than CPU only.

Academy and Emmy Award-Winning VFX Tools Silhouette is a best-in-class, GPU-accelerated compositing application, delivering the industry’s most robust non-destructive paint and roto tools to feature film and visual effects teams. Since 2005, Silhouette has made its mark on Hollywood’s biggest film and TV shows including Avatar, Black Panther, Stranger Things and many more. Silhouette is officially recommended by the Netflix Post Technology Alliance in the VFX category. The artists tool for Roto, Paint & Tracking. Silhouette 2020.5 goes beyond traditional roto and cleanup as a professional stereoscopic enabled node-based compositing system with 146 nodes designed for every finishing task. Silhouette is available as a standalone application for macOS, Windows, and Linux with floating license options for enterprise. New Silhouette Paint plug-in! Our paint tools have now been streamlined into a multi-host plug-in supporting Adobe and OFX hosts, free for all Silhouette 2020 owners.

Optics is the definitive digital toolbox for photos. Created by professional feature film VFX artists, Optics is designed to simulate optical camera filters, specialized lenses, film stocks and grain, lens flares, optical lab processes, color correction as well as natural light and photographic effects. Take your images to the next level, try Optics. Available now as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as a standalone application for macOS and Windows. Apply Optics and choose from 160 filters and thousands of presets. Optics provides everything you need to creatively enhance and improve photos using a staggering amount of filters and presets. Color grade your image using film style controls or go from reality to sci-fi with incredible lighting effects. All filters can be limited to a portion of the image using sophisticated but simple to use masking controls. A layering system to apply multiple filters, a built-in paint system for touch-ups,

Ziva VFX is changing the way 3D characters are brought to life for films, games, and interactive experiences. With Ziva's intuitive toolset, artists can replicate the effects of physics and simulate any soft-tissue material, including muscles, fat, and skin to create blockbuster-quality assets with ease. Ziva VFX lets you simulate the materiality of any soft tissue, using intuitive parameters and real-world units. Everything was purpose-built for creature work. Ziva Anatomy Transfer tools let you replicate, warp, and retarget creatures rapidly, so you can adapt and multiply your existing creatures for infinite hero-quality characters. Character alterations can be applied retroactively at nearly anytime. Simply adapting the underlying anatomy of your characters will allow you to react faster to changes and last-minute decisions. Use multiple material types, producing robust motion even under large deformations, StVK, NeoHookean, co-rotational, anisotropic.

3DEqualizer4 is the dominating 3D tracking solution in today's vfx world - merging live action footage with digital visual effects at highest quality possible. It is a cornerstone of modern post production business and used by virtually all of the major players around the globe working in this field. Many of those companies rely on 3DEqualizer since its very first version which has been introduced over 20 years ago - some of them exclusively! But this is just the tip of the iceberg. 3DEqualizer is widely being used throughout the entire vfx industry, which means if you go to the box office today to watch the latest visual effects driven blockbuster movie, you will most likely be entertained by the help of our work! The best product is nothing worth without reliable support - this is even more important for professional clients. The things we learn, while using 3DEqualizer under real production conditions, makes us understand our client's demands much better.

Mocha Pro is the world renowned software for planar tracking, rotoscoping and object removal. Essential to visual effects and post-production workflows, Mocha has been recognized with prestigious Academy and Emmy Awards for contribution to the film and television industry. Mocha Pro has recently been used on global hits including The Mandalorian, Stranger Things, Avengers: Endgame, and many more. The next evolution of Mocha. PowerMesh enables a powerful new sub-planar tracking engine for VFX, roto and stabilization. Warped surface tracking and roto that sticks. Track complex organic surfaces through occlusions and blur using Mocha’s intuitive layer based interface. Simple to use and faster than most optical flow based techniques. Apply to source files for realistic match moves, convert to AE Nulls to drive motion graphics, render a mesh warped stabilize/reverse stabilize plate for compositing, or export dense tracking data to host applications.

Fusion’s curve editor uses splines for creating smooth motion between keyframes. They can be interpolated as linear, bezier or as b‑splines. This lets you apply custom curves to loop, reverse, or ping pong between keyframes to create sophisticated animations. You can also move, stretch and squish groups of keyframes to create incredible variations! The replicate tool automatically creates rows of repeated objects that can fill any pattern. You can create complex and sophisticated-looking animations by simply offsetting parameters on replicated objects! There are also randomized controls for adding subtle variations to create organic-looking animations that would be impossible on another system! Build fantastic particle effects that glow, swirl and sparkle using physics like avoidance, gravity and bounce! Each behavior influences and alters the particles in natural ways.

Final Effects Complete Version 7. See how flexible the transitions are to use from within Avid editing systems and how they can be easily tweaked to give the desired effect. Features: Includes 120 filters & 800 presets, quickly generate 3D particle animations, includes the BCC Beat Reactor - Animate your effects to the sound of music, stylized filters such as Vector Blur, Glass, Kaleida, and 3D Relief, auto-animating transitions including Blur Dissolve, Glass Wipe, and Light Wipe, integrated pixel chooser for masking options. Compatibility: Adobe After Affects, Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer.