A 3D animation authoring and playback system for Windows and Mac from Adobe. Director is used to develop sophisticated interactive games and virtual worlds. Using a bitmap-based rendering engine and supporting myriad multimedia formats, including Flash, developers script their animations in JavaScript or Adobe's Lingo.

Create in Director, Play in Shockwave
Director source files use a .DIR extension and can be edited and run between platforms. For distribution over the Web, DIR source files are published to Shockwave files (.DCR extension) that are played in Shockwave Player either within the Web browser or from stand-alone applications.

Introduced by MacroMind in 1985 for the Mac as VideoWorks, it became MacroMind Director and finally, via mergers, Macromedia Director. A version for Windows was later developed, and Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. See Shockwave, Shockmachine, shocked site, SWF and Flash.