Mesh objects can be rigged with a skeleton, that can be used to control shape changes. With skeletons it is possible to save predefined gestures that can be combined as poses, to generate complex repeatable movements. Animation data of each object is stored into animation tracks as key frames. Rendering Art or Illusion uses multi threading for rendering images and it provides several options for lighting. The core software package comes with two built in renderers: The Ray Tracer renderer provides anti-aliasing, soft shadows, depth of field, transparent background, photon mapping caustics and subsurface scattering. The Raster renderer provides a few options for shading methods and super sampling Feature-extensions Scripting Art of Illusion supports two scripting languages, BeanShell and Groovy and it comes with a basic level text editor for writing, editing and running scripts. There are three different types of scripts each for their specific purpose: Tool scripts, Scripted objects and Start-up scripts. Tool scripts operate at the same level as the commandSelected() function of a modeling tool. This means that with only minor changes the code from a script could be placed into a more permanent plugin, or the code from a plugin could be pulled out into a script to allow for changing the code within the environment. Plugins Art of Illusion provides a programming interface for plugins. The code for the plugins are written in Java like the core software. This code is combined with an extensions.xml file that describes what the plugin does and most importantly, which class implements it. In some cases the XML file specifies methods that are exported for use by other plugins or specifies plugins that are imported for use by the plugin. Tags used in the extensions.xml file are Author, Date, Plugin, Export, Import, Description, Comments, History, and Resource. The compiled .jar-files are added to the Plugins folder in Art of Illusion root directory and they are effective immediately at the next start up. A large number of plugins have been developed for Art of Illusion that are available on the scripts and plugin repository. These include object types and their accompanying editors, user interface enhancements and various tools. These include the Scripts and Plugins Manager, that is used to download and update the extension parts. The types of plugins that can be created for Art of Illusion are, Plugin, Renderer, Translator, ModellingTool, Texture, Material, TextureMapping, MaterialMapping, ImageFilter, Module. Plugin