Free tools!

[ZygoUgo]

Having ventured through the depths of the interwitch I have emerged with several interesting freewares, these I put before thee as some are rather rad, wot wot.

I should think pretty much everyone knows this one..
http://www.blender.org/
3D modelling and animation tool, it also has a very nice video editor embedded in it!

Xnormal, this does certain things better than Blender, producing better quality normals, height, ambient occlusion.. It's a very nice set of tools
http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx

BlackSmiths 3D paint.. Paint directly on to your model! It's nowhere near photoshop (for which there is a plug-in to do this..droooool.. at nearly two hundred quid bah!..), but still this lets you paint straight over any seams in a manner that makes it very easy to see accurately which bits join exactly where.
http://www.blacksmith3d.com/blacksmith3 ... ftware.php
The freeware version of 3Dpaint is buried in the download that you can only find once you've registered

Ooh yeah! One of these was real hard to dig up.. Mix your normal maps!
http://www.planetinaction.com/software/ncombiner.htm

Ooh! Free tiling filter tools!
http://www.filterforge.com/download/
They're at ze bottom!

Maybe if people have stuff to add to this list it would be useful

[JazHaz]

Thats great. Have added these links to the wiki, here.

Have put the programs under the 3D applications, and the Filter Tools under Graphics Editors.

[Killer Wolf]

3D Artist mag currently has the full Carrara Pro v7 on the cover disc. not tried it myself but thinking, Carrara's supposed to be pretty damn good. full Pro version for the £6 mag price can't be bad for a tryout i guess.

[Cmd. Cheyd]

... It's nowhere near photoshop (for which there is a plug-in to do this..droooool.. at nearly two hundred quid bah!..), ...

Can you point me to that plug-in?

[ZygoUgo]

Most certainly, albiet I found it when using my girlfriends laptop but did book-mark it to read more about it later. If I remember correctly it works for Photoshop 7 and later (don't quote me, I was looking for something free in a hurry). I have PS-6 and certainly no sign of that sort of cash currently
I'll post it up when I see her later.

[Killer Wolf]

fyi CS4 does 3D painting as part of its features
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/1 ... F578F64E92

dunno if there's plug ins for earlier versions.

[ZygoUgo]

Hmmmmm..CS4 seems prevantly available at $99.. I'll have to dig that other one up later but I'm pretty sure it was near the two hundred mark, as breif as our meeting was I remember thinking 'yoinks! Too expensive for me!
$99 is pretty damn good really considering the asking prices going on at the Adobe site (CS5), they never used to drop the prices of their outdated software by that much.

[ZygoUgo]

Aha! Access to the laptop at last!
http://www.electriciris.com/enzo.html
$199, haven't looked at it that closely so not sure what the benefit would be over buying it on top of PhotoShop..?

[McDjanoff]

Thats great. Have added these links to the wiki, here.

Have put the programs under the 3D applications, and the Filter Tools under Graphics Editors.

Great Jahaz, but I would like to suggest one thing :

Oolite isn't only free, it is opensource, licensed under the GPL. I think it is the reason why it become a great game around a not less great community on so many platforms.
7-zip, blender, gimp and many others are also such open source projects.

Is it possible to indicate the license in place of free to avoid confusion ?

Regards,
B.