Inca
A free, open-source 3D modeling, animation and rendering application for the desktop, with the
workflow and layout of Autodesk Maya. Inca is a native app written in Rust (egui + wgpu).
Website and downloads: https://incacad.com
See FEATURES.md for the full feature list.
Inca saves .inca scenes, opens, imports and exports Maya ASCII (.ma) and FBX (with skeletons, skin
weights and animation), imports OBJ, glTF/GLB and STL, and exports OBJ, GLB and STL. Maya Binary (.mb)
is an undocumented format Inca can't read: in Maya, save the scene as Maya ASCII instead.
Contributing
Write an issue on the GitHub issues page. Pull requests are welcome;
docs/ARCHITECTURE.md explains how the code is organised.
Download and run
Go to the Releases page and open the newest release. Under Assets, download the file for your computer.
Windows
- Download
Inca-<version>-win-x64-portable.exe.
- Double-click it. You don't need to install anything.
- If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway. Windows shows this for apps from small developers. It doesn't mean anything is wrong.
You can also download the .zip instead. Unzip it, then double-click Inca.exe inside the folder.
Inca needs a graphics card with DirectX 12, Vulkan or OpenGL support (any card from the last ten years).
Linux
- Download
Inca-<version>-linux-x86_64.AppImage.
- Right-click the file, open Properties → Permissions, and tick Allow executing file as program.
In a terminal you can do the same with
chmod +x Inca-*.AppImage.
- Double-click it to start Inca.
If it doesn't open, start it from a terminal so you can see the error: ./Inca-*.AppImage.
On Ubuntu 22.04 or newer, if you get an error about FUSE, run sudo apt install libfuse2 once. On Ubuntu 24.04 the package is called libfuse2t64.
You can also download the .tar.gz, unpack it and run ./inca inside the folder.
Inca needs a Vulkan or OpenGL driver (Mesa is fine) and the usual X11 / Wayland libraries.
macOS
- Download
Inca-<version>-mac-arm64.dmg for Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and newer), or Inca-<version>-mac-x64.dmg for older Intel Macs.
To check which you have, open the Apple menu → About This Mac: "Chip: Apple M…" means Apple Silicon.
- Open the
.dmg and drag Inca into Applications.
- The first time, macOS says it can't check Inca for malware, because Inca isn't registered with Apple (that costs $99 a year).
Click Done, then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway next to the message about Inca.
On macOS 14 or older you can instead right-click Inca in Applications and choose Open.
You only need to do this once.
Run from source
- Install Rust (current stable) from https://rustup.rs, or update it with
rustup update.
- In the
inca folder:
cargo run --release -p inca # start Inca
cargo run --release -p inca -- scene.inca # open a scene
The first build takes a few minutes; later builds are quick.
Linux builds need no extra packages beyond a C toolchain (build-essential); running needs a
Vulkan or OpenGL driver and X11 / Wayland. Windows needs the MSVC build tools (rustup offers to
install them). macOS needs the Xcode command line tools (xcode-select --install).
Tests
cargo test --workspace # geometry kernel, construction history, MEL, file IO, booleans, path tracer, rigging, UI logic
Drive the real app from a MEL script and capture the window:
INCA_TEST=script.mel INCA_SHOT=out.png [INCA_SHOT_FRAME=12] cargo run -p inca
Lines starting with //!ui <action> in the script run UI actions, e.g. //!ui layoutFour or //!ui renderCurrent.
Build release packages
cargo build --release -p inca
packaging/package.sh linux # dist/Inca-<ver>-linux-x86_64.AppImage and .tar.gz
packaging/package.sh windows # dist/Inca-<ver>-win-x64.zip and -portable.exe (run in Git Bash)
cargo build --release -p inca --target aarch64-apple-darwin
packaging/package.sh mac aarch64-apple-darwin # dist/Inca-<ver>-mac-arm64.dmg (x86_64-apple-darwin for Intel)
Releases
Bump version under [workspace.package] in Cargo.toml and push to master. The
release workflow tags v<version>, builds Windows, Linux and macOS
packages and publishes them on the Releases page. Pushing a
v* tag does the same. Every push and pull request also runs the CI workflow
(tests and release builds on all three platforms).
Layout
crates/inca-core — engine without a GUI: scene graph and construction history, polygon kernel and
modeling ops, primitives, curves, materials, animation, undo, MEL interpreter, file I/O, rigging,
deformers, constraints, dynamics, booleans, the Inca Path Tracercrates/inca — the application: viewports, menus, shelves, panels, editors and toolspackaging/ — release packaging (AppImage, zip, dmg)build/ — app icons
The .inca scene format is the same JSON format the earlier Electron versions (up to 0.1.12) used,
so old scenes open in this version.
MIT licensed. Built with egui, wgpu, glam, rapier3d, boolmesh, rhai and other Rust crates.
