Extreme 3D is a polygonal surface modeler that uses spline-based modeling and familiar 2D drawing tools to create its models. Although it's billed as CAD-accurate to 15 decimal places, the strength of Extreme 3D is really in organic modeling with the Metaform tool, which can create organic shapes that flow together naturally, as water does from a jar.

A single window can support multiple render styles for different objects. This means that once you've set the textures for an object, you can switch it to display as a bounding-box or a wire-frame for improved display speed while you work on other objects in shaded mode.

The animation tools are easy to use and allow you to have independent control over any object, light, camera, or material property. Users can edit all the paths and objects in their animations. For example, paths can be edited as splines. The program also supports time-based and frame-based animation.

Extreme 3D supports cross-platform distributed rendering, allowing any animation or model to be rendered across multiple machines in a network running their own copy of Extreme 3D, including the Mac and Windows.