Fractal Design
Encyclopedia
Fractal Design was a US software company, originally known as Fractal Software and founded in 1985. It merged into MetaCreations
in 1997. It was initially known as Fractal Technology, and produced several best-selling creative software packages for the PC and Macintosh platforms. Its initial success was Fractal Painter, a natural media drawing program released in 1990. It acquired Ray Dream Software in 1996. In 1997, it was merged into MetaCreations. The products in its portfolio were later sold off to other major software producers including Corel
and Microsoft
.
Fractal Design's original products included
Fractal Design also purchased and released Creature House Expression
from Creature House software.
MetaCreations
MetaCreations was a computer software company founded in 1997 by the mergers of MetaTools, Fractal Design Corporation, Ray Dream, Specular, and RTG...
in 1997. It was initially known as Fractal Technology, and produced several best-selling creative software packages for the PC and Macintosh platforms. Its initial success was Fractal Painter, a natural media drawing program released in 1990. It acquired Ray Dream Software in 1996. In 1997, it was merged into MetaCreations. The products in its portfolio were later sold off to other major software producers including Corel
Corel
Corel Corporation from the abbreviation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that specializes in graphics processing, similar to Adobe Systems...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
.
Fractal Design's original products included
- PainterCorel PainterCorel Painter is a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking. It is intended to be used in real-time by professional digital artists as a functional creative...
, a natural media painting program, currently available from Corel - PoserPoserPoser is a 3D CGI rendering and animation software program optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional form, mostly used to pose and animate the figures in a similar way as a mannequin...
, a 3D modeling program, currently available from Smith Micro SoftwareSmith Micro SoftwareSmith Micro Software, Inc. , founded in 1983 by William W. Smith, Jr., is a diversified developer and marketer of both enterprise and consumer-level software solutions and services... - DabblerDabblerDabbler, is a natural media drawing software aimed at beginners. It was initially developed by Fractal Design. It is a simplified version of Fractal Design Painter, and included multimedia tutorials and a fullscreen interface. Dabbler was released as "Art Dabbler" after the MetaCreations merger,...
, a basic natural media program. - Sketcher, a basic grayscale program.
- Detailer, a 3D painting program, later known as Painter 3D
Fractal Design also purchased and released Creature House Expression
Creature House Expression
Creature House Expression was a vector graphics editor initially developed by Creature House in Hong Kong, then Ray Dream, then Fractal Design Corporation and later MetaCreations as a companion to then-Fractal Design/MetaCreations Painter. At the time, Creature House was an independent Hong Kong...
from Creature House software.