Tools:Content
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[edit] Graphic Tools
Graphical development can be a complex field. Listed below is a selection of common (and uncommon) tools used in the development of 2D and 3D Artwork.
[edit] 2D Raster Graphics
Old-fashioned, pixel based drawing
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Active Pixels - Active Pixels is an Image and Computer Graphics editor offering users a wide variety of possibilities in the fields of Image Enhancing and Image Editing.
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Adobe Photoshop - A powerful image manipulation program.
- Adobe Photoshop Elements 7
- Adobe Photoshop Elements combines power and simplicity so you can make ordinary photos extraordinary; tell engaging stories in beautiful, personalized creations for print and the web; and easily find and view all your photos.
- Autodesk Sketchbook Pro
- Sketch. Annotate. Communicate. Designed for use with tablet PCs or digitized pen tablets, Autodesk SketchBook Pro software is your digital sketchpad. Use it in any creative process where pen and paper would traditionally be use.
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Allegro Sprite Editor - A handy little sprite editor with frame animation support, similar to MSPaint or GraphicsGale.
- Anime Studio
- Includes everything aspiring artists and hobbyists need to create quality cartoons, movies, anime and cut out animations from start to finish. (See also Anime Studio Pro)
- ArtWeaver
- Artweaver is a simple Freeware program for creative painting that offers you all artistic effects which you need for your work.
- ArtRage 2.5
- With ArtRage you can paint with oils, sketch with pencils, sprinkle sparkling glitter and much more. Stencils and rulers let you create precise shapes or smooth curves and straight lines freehand. Tracing and Reference images let you load photos to recreate as paintings either by eye or by letting ArtRage select colors for you as you paint. For professional users, ArtRage offers Layers, Layer Groups and Layer Blend Modes compatible with the PSD file format.
- CinePaint
- CinePaint is an OpenSource deep paint tool for higher color fidelity formats such as DPX, 16-bit TIFF, and OpenEXR, along with more conventional formats such as JPG and PNG.
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Corel Painter X - Painter has been the world's pre-eminent Natural-Media® painting and illustration software.
- FotoFlexer
- FotoFlexer is an Online digital photo editor equiped with layers, distortions, effects, shapes, and more.
- Genetica
- A powerful seamless texture editor that comes with over 500 preset textures of all types.
- GIMP 2.6
- Image manipulation program, on the level of Photoshop, but free. Many advanced plugins, writing new ones is rather easy. There is also a version called GIMPshop which is closer to Photoshop in function and layout (but with no photoshop plugin support) for those who may dislike GIMP's native interface.
- GraphicsGale
- Great for pixel art, GIF animation. Freeware and shareware versions available.
- ImageForge
- Merge images, create 3D titles and shapes, remove red-eye and other imperfections from photos, apply special effects filters, use custom brushes and natural media (watercolors, oil paint, etc.), produce your own animations (.GIF, .AVI, etc.), make your own web art, and much more.
- KolourPaint
- A very simple image manipulation program which is very similar to MS Paint, only built for KDE.
- Krita
- An image editor, part of the KOffice suit, Krita is relatively new, but has almost all the features of the GIMP and other alternatives.
- LView Pro
- LView Pro is a multi-featured image processor software suited to a wide variety of applications, ranging from simple image viewing to advanced image editing.
- Manga Studio Debut
- Manga Studio Debut 4.0 is your all-in-one solution for ready-to-publish manga and comics. Invigorate your artwork using color, express motion using speed lines, apply dimension with screen tones and add dialog through built-in word balloons. (See also Manga Studio EX 4)
- openCanvas 4.5
- openCanvas4.5 is the great painting and illustration software with a lot of new and improved features for not only experienced artists but also novices.
- Paintbrush
- Paintbrush is a Cocoa-based paint program for Mac OS X, similar to Microsoft Paint and the now-defunct MacPaint. The project's ultimate goal is to recreate the basic functionality of Microsoft Paint, which has been noticeably absent from Mac OS X for years. Paintbrush can open and save to most major image formats, including BMP, PNG, JPEG, and GIF.
- Paint.Net
- A commercial grade image and photo manipulation software. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows. It is designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003 and written primarily in C#.
- Paint Shop Pro
- An image manipulation program that aims to have features like Photoshop, but with a cleaner interface. Also does simple Vector graphics.
- Pixel Image Editor
- Pixel is a RGB, CMYK and HDR image editing, photo retouching, graphics manipulating and animation program available for many operating systems formerly known as Pixel32. It is available for Windows, Linux, Linspire, MacOSX, BeOS, Zeta, QNX, MorphOS, FreeBSD, eComStation, OS/2, SkyOS and even old plain DOS, for both x86 and PowerPC architectures. It is often called as Photoshop alternative.
- PaintStar
- PaintStar is a versatile digital image processing software suitable for such tasks as retouching of photographs, composing and authoring images, image morphing, screen capture, and displaying image thumbnail in Windows Explorer context menu. It supports alpha, layer, path ,and the most common editing techniques.
- Pixen 3
- Pixen is a graphics editor for the Mac. It's designed from top to bottom for pixel artists—people who make low-resolution raster art like the sprites you see in old video games. But it's great for artists of all arenas: Pixen is like a very powerful MSPaint or a simpler, more agile Photoshop.
- Pixia
- An image manipulation program, mostly aimed at truecolor illustration, with transparent layers and outstanding support for gradients, palettes and fill patterns. Old versions in many languages; Japanese, English, and German are up-to-date.
- Photobie
- Photobie is image editing software that combines features amateurs can use with advanced tools professionals will appreciate. Photobie is free for personal use with no Pro upgrade to pay for -- all features are free.
- PhotoFiltre Studio
- PhotoFiltre Studio is a complete image retouching program, it allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. PhotoFiltre Studio also has layer manager (with Alpha channel), advanced brushes, nozzles (or tubes), red eye corrector, batch module and a lot of other powerful tools.
- Photogenics HDR
- Photogenics HDR is a powerful image manipulation program capable of handling HDR formats and 3D scene's. Also available for PocketPC.
- PhotoImpact
- Combines full-featured photo editing with inspiring photo projects and amazing digital art to make digital photography and image creativity fun, fast and easy.
- Photoscape
- Photoscape is the fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos.
- PhotoSEAM
- Special purpose image editor for creating seamless textures and tiles from digital images, or from scratch.
- PhotoStudio
- PhotoStudio® 5.5 is a powerful photo editing application featuring an array of advanced tools, filters and special effects inside a very friendly user interface.
- Texture Maker
- Texture Maker is a seamless texture generator and designer. The application contains everything needed to create seamless textures for use in 3D rendering packages, game development, web graphics, image and video editing. It can create procedural and hand painted textures from scratch, remove visible seams from existing images, crop textures from photos by applying a perspective correction, render seamless tiles from structure sample patches and combine existing textures and height maps with realistic illumination. Also animated textures are no problem with Texture Maker. The program is even capable of generating seamless animation loops.
- TVP Animation 9
- TVP Animation is a package for the creation of graphic content and 2D animation. This package offers a complete toolset to create a simple blue-lined rough anim sketch to digital hand-drawn paperless animation.
- Ultimate Paint
- Very similar to MSPaint/Deluxe Paint and its ilk.
[edit] 2D Vector Graphics
Drawing using shapes that contain properties.
- Adobe Illustrator
- A very powerfull but easy to use vector graphics application from the team at Adobe.
- Anime Studio (previously Moho)
- A vector-based drawing and animation tool. Has a skeletal animation system that greatly simplifies 2D animation.
- Corel Draw
- A nice vector editor, often used to design printouts.
- Inkscape
- An SVG editor with a "Corel Draw"-like interface.
- Microsoft Acrylic (formerly Creature House Expression)
- A powerful vector and bitmap editing suite with many revolutionary features not seen in other apps. It exports to all the major formats (EPS, AI, PDF) available for Windows and MacOS.
- Pencil
- Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics.
- Real-DRAW
- Real-Draw V seamlessly combines vector tools with the rich look of pixel based images and innovative natural paint techniques into a new type of graphics editor.
- Skencil
- An interactive vector drawing application. It is a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes.
- Synfig
- A great 2D animation studio, relased under GNU/GPL license.
- Xara Xtreme
- Xara Xtreme for Linux
- Very good software for vector drawing, which is now OpenSource software and ported for Linux and Mac. Windows Version is still Commercial.
[edit] 3D Modeling
Utilities that are used to create 3-dimensional figures.
- 3D Canvas
- Amabilis 3D Canvas modeling and animation tool. Three versions: free, plus and pro.
- 3D-Coat
- 3D-Coat is a powerful modeling tool in development that uses Volumetric Sculpting (voxels) to produce 3D images. 3D-Coat V3 will support NVIDIA's CUDA™ technology which considerably accelerates volumetric sculpting performance.
- 3D Matrix
- The 3D Matrix modeler is great for those building real-time applications such as simulation, interactive animation and games. It functions as a standalone program or as a utility to integrate with your other favourite 3D applications.
- 3dom
- 3dom is a 3D Solid Object Modeler, designed to be independant of the renderer back-end. Highlights include constructive solid modeling, reality-based material representation, a flexible plugin system, scripting through Python bindings and a constraint solving engine.
- 3D Studio MAX
- Modeling, animation and rendering. Used very often in professional game productions.
- AC3D
- Linux-friendly 3D modeler, with simple click-and-drag interface.
- Amapi Pro
- Amapi Pro 7.5 provides product designers and 3D modelers a NURBS-based environment for conception and creation of highly refined 3D models.
- Amorphium
- Amorphium 3 offers a variety of intuitive, yet powerful design tools.
- Anim8or
- Modeling, animation, and rendering. Very simple yet powerful tool, free, runs only on windows.
- Art Of Illusion
- A full featured 3D modelling, rendering, and animation studio. It is written entirely in Java, and can run on almost any operating system.
- Aztec
- Aztec is a 3D Modelling and Animation tool that is intended to provide a decent set of tools for use in the Game development process.
- Blender
- A free 3D animation suite that can be used for modeling, uv-unwrapping, texturing, animation, simulation, particles, and rendering. Very powerful program with a very obscure interface which, once mastered, is indispensable.
- BRL-CAD
- Modeling, geometry processing, collision detection, rendering, networking, mathematics, etc. BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source solid modeling system.
- Carrera
- Carrara 6 provides 3D figure posing and animation, modeling, environment creation, and rendering tools within a single application.
- CharacterFX
- CharacterFX is a character animation tool, created for gamers, artists, modellers and hobbyists. It allows you to breathe live into your meshes using skeletal animation and advanced tools like Inverse Kinematics or Weighted Vertices, but still it is easy enough to use for all levels of computer graphic artists.
- Cheetah3D
- Simple but elegant modeler for Mac OS X (Cocoa) with integrated raytracing.
- Cinema 4D
- Modeling, animation and rendering. It has one of the most intuitive interfaces.
- ClayWorks
- 3D Modeling software. ClayWorks is a procedural modeling program.
- Deep Paint 3D
- Right Hemisphere's Deep Paint 3D delivers an intuitive, easy to use tool to paint and texture 3D models interactively in 3D.
- DoGa
- Odd Japanese modeler. 3 versions available, L1 is free and produces sci-fi models from building blocks.
- EIAS (Electric Image Animation System)
- The Electric Image Animation System (EIAS) is an eminent 3D animation and rendering package. Available for the Mac and PC, with it, you can texture, animate and render your 3D scenes. EIAS includes the ability to network render to an unlimited number of computers across both platforms.
- Equinox 3D
- The 3D modeler with the fastest, fully integrated ray-tracer. Because "rasterization is so 20th century(TM)".
- FragMOTION
- FragMOTION is a powerful 3D modeler specifically intended for the creation and animation of characters. fragMOTION is intuitive and easy to use and if that's not enough for you, the event driven scripting system makes it a breeze for you to add your own features.
- Google SketchUp
- A free version of SketchUp, limited to saving Google Earth objects.
- Grome
- Professional landscape and level editor for games and visual simulations.
Demo version is available which doesn't support saving.
- GroBoto
- 3D modeling and animating framework designed with an easy interface in mind.
- Hash Animation Master
- This program includes everything you need to create computer graphics, including complete sculpting features, animation tools, rendering, and is compatible with most platforms.
- Houdini
- An advanced 3D and CG animation and modeling program.
- Innovation 3D
- Innovation3D is a 3D modeling program for Linux. It's primarily a mesh based modeler with preliminary support for NURBS.
- K-3D
- Up and coming 3d modeling package, features engine based animated tutorials.
- LightRay3D
- A 3D modeling, rendering, animation and game creation application for Windows 95/98/Me/2k/XP.
- Lightwave
- Modeling, animation, rendering. Good modeler with a great renderer.
- Loq Airou
- Loq Ariou is a 3D modeler that works like a sketch pad. Hi end, Low poly, concept art or just playing about, Loq Ariro does it for you.
- MakeHuman
- MakeHuman (c) is a completely free, innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional characters.
- Maya
- Modelling, animation and rendering. Preferred by many modelers and animators because of its intuitive interface and its scripting ability. (Free Personal Learning Edition available to students)
- Metasequoia
- Metasequoia is a polygon modeler for 3DCG and game development. It provides you efficient modeling works. It is very easy to use and learn.
- Milkshape
- Modeling and animation. Nice tool that can handle many formats natively.
- MindsEye
- The goal of MindsEye is to create a complete (and free) 3D modeling and animating package for GNU/Linux similar to larger commercial software (Lightwave, 3DS Max, Maya, etc).
- Misfit Model 3D
- Open source modeler, with skeletal animation. Support for MD2,MS3D,3DS,LWO formats.
- Modo
- Modo includes true 3D sculpting tools, animation and network rendering. More than just features, modo is a truly elegant integration of technology, raw horsepower and refined workflow.
- Moonlight 3D
- Moonlight|3D is a free modern, flexible and extensible modelling and animation tool.
- OpenFX
- Powerful free 3D Modeler similar to 3ds.
- OpenTeddy 3D Modeller
- Easy-to-use freeform sketch-based 3D modeler based on the paper by T. Igarashi et al, "Teddy: A Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design."
- Pixels 3D
- 3D software for Mac OS/X.
- Poser
- With Poser, you can design using the human form for art, illustration, comics, animation, etc.
- Q2Modeller
- Quake 2 Modeler. Create/convert .md2 for pickier apps (e.g. Cube/Sauerbraten).
- Realsoft 3D
- Modeling, Solid modeling, animation and 64bit per channel rendering.
- Rhino3D
- A powerful NURBS modeling program, also features Raytracing and Animation suites.
- Shade
- Shade 8 Standard is a 3D graphics toolkit that delivers powerful 3D modeling, rendering and animation for designers, illustrators and architects.
- Silo
- Silo 2 is a focused 3D modeling application with the ability to effortlessly switch between organically sculpting high-polygon models and precisely controlling hard-edged surfaces. It can be used for anything from creating 3D characters for video games and movies to quickly exploring 3D architectural ideas.
- SoftImage XSI
- Professional 3D suite used for games, but more commonly used movie special fx.
- SoftImage ModTool
- Freeware version of SoftImage XSI specialized on game mods.
- Strata 3D CX
- Possibly the most powerful new features in Strata 3D CX 5.0 are the Adobe connection features. These include improved native Photoshop file import for linked 3D textures and improved native Illustrator import to create 3D objects, and Render to Layers where each image component gets rendered out as a separate layer in a native Photoshop ".psd" file.
- trueSpace 7.6
- Modelling, animation and rendering , version 7.6. Free for all!!!
- Vue 6 Easel
- Vue Easel is perfect for anyone who wants to produce their own high quality 3D landscape art, scenery or animation.
- Wings 3D
- Modeling and rendering.
- ZBrush
- Powerful sculpting and modeling program.
[edit] Specialized Graphics Tools
Art tools that don't quite fit into any section.
- Auto FX
- Photoshop Plug-in Filters.
- AutoTrace
- Converts bitmap to vector graphics.
- AVI Creator 1.5
- A handy little utility by Bloodshed Software, just add Bitmaps or Icons.
- Biturn
- Converts between several game model formats.
- Calimax Modeller
- Calimax is a freeware program to create Povray scripts. So you can make photo realistic pictures and animations with the two programs Calimax and Povray.
- Deep Exploration
- Right Hemisphere 5 Deep Exploration CAD Edition enables your extended teams to easily create and deliver visual product communications and collaborate more effectively. Rapidly and easily transform, author, and publish 2D and 3D product graphics and documents on your desktop using existing engineering CAD design data and other digital content.
- ImageMagick
- Convert and edit images from the command line.
- Image Packer
- Put multiple images into one and generate code.
- LHFire
- A script based Particle Renderer, good for creating explosions, flares, and other sprites.
- Microsoft Gif Animator
- A utility used for making GIF animations.
- obj2ogl
- Converts .obj model files to OpenGL C code. Crude shell script but sometimes useful.
- PhotoSuite 8
- With One Button Photo Fix, Smart Views, and Peer-to-Peer photo sharing your life just got a whole lot more organized.
- Polytrans
- PolyTrans is a good utility for accurate 3D CAD/DCC+Animation/Model/NURBS/Skinning translation, optimization and viewing.
- povray
- A free ray tracer for creating 3 dimensional graphics.
- Scythe Physics Editor
- A modeler for constructing physics-based objects, such as vehicles, buildings, ragdolls.
- Ultimate Unwrap
- A UV mapping utility.
- YafRay
- The preferred ray tracer for Blender users. It creates very good renderings. Looks very promising.
[edit] Terrain and World Editing Tools
Tools for creating (2d and 3d) world,levels,maps,terrains to your games.
- 3D World Studio
- A constructive solid geometry (CSG) modeler with support for object placement, terrain, and lighting.
- Bryce
- A powerful 3D Landscapes Modelling program.
- DeleD
- 3D Level-Designer (free but functional lite version available).
- Dungeon Crafter 3
- Dungeon Crafter III is a floorplan mapping application used to create graphical maps of dungeons for your table top or roleplay gaming. Use it to create highly detailed maps to hand out to your players or as a background for your table top miniature battles.
- Fractal Terrains Pro
- Want to create an entire world in under five minutes? Want to generate rivers, lakes, craters and continental shelves? Want to generate maps from real world Earth data? Welcome to FT Pro.
- GtkRadiant
- Quake's map editor.
- Mappy
- A utility for creating flexible 'maps' for 2D and 3D tile based games.
- Quark
- QuArK stands for Quake Army Knife and is a Quake editor. It can edit maps and models, import sounds and textures, create pak-files and run compilers.
- Spritesheet Editor
- A useful little program used for the creation of 2D sprites, tiles, and tilesets.
- T.Ed
- T.Ed Professional Terrain Editor. A full featured editor for designing mesh or 'dynamic LOD' terrains, lightmaps.
- Terraformer 3
- A terrain editor that allows dynamic painting and shaping of environments.
- Terragen
- A tool for rendering landscapes, good for background graphics eg. the skybox.
- Tile Studio
- Graphics editor for 2D tile-based games, contains a sprite editor and a map editor, programmable output with examples for several languages.
- World Builder 4
- A powerful world building program compatible with mainstream modeling programs such as Maya, Lightwave, 3DS Max, and Softimage.
- WorldCreator
- This software integrates many unique labour saving features specifically aimed at creating artwork / graphics / tiles for Games, Media and Web design quickly and easily.
[edit] Font Tools
Need to make bitmap fonts?
- Bitmap Font Builder
- TTF -> TGA,RAW,BMP for use in OpenGL and Direct3D.
- Bitmap Font Generator
- Makes a grid bitmap from TTF fonts. Optimizes placement of the characters in the bitmap to make efficient use of the space.
- Codehead's Bitmap Font Generator
- Build bitmap fonts for OpenGL/DirectX applications. Supports 8, 24 and 32 bit font images, export to BMP and TGA. Default output to custom file containing texture and character width data. Example source code included.
- FontMaker 2
- Import a .tif image (can have alpha channel, shadows, etc) and mark up the position and spacing of the letters. The project file is stored in .fmk (xml file). Then you can export a .rft (rasterized font file(xml)) with a compressed and texture-sized .TGA file.
- Font Mechanic
- Built for the mainly for the Goblin 2D+ Engine, this tool is written in VB.Net and offers options like shadow and optionally omitting some characters. The created textures could be used in basically any 2D or 3D application as the bitmap is saved as a 32 bit PNG and the font definitions are saved in a separate text file. This program has 100% unicode support so bitmap fonts for Chinese, Russian, etc are supported. Also, unlike a LOT of other bitmap font creators, the characters are positioned on the texture to optimize all free space. Basically create a bitmap font from any Windows True Type font.
- Font Studio
- It generates bitmaps from windows fonts, and applies special effects such as a drop shadow, colouring and kerning (space between characters). It provides support for any range of unicode characters you'd want and can output to any sort of file you want via a robust plugin interface.
- ppFonter
- Makes packed bitmaps (TGA,BMP,PNG) from TTF files from zips/system fonts.
- sfontmaker
- An improved bfontmaker that can output PNG with an alpha channel.
[edit] Screenshot/Video Capture Tools
Get some media to show friends or put on your website.
- AutoScreen
- Automatic screenshot taker than can also upload screenshots to an FTP server and/or ImageShack.
- BB FlashBack
- Screen recorder that allows you to export movies to Flash, AVI, WMV or EXE formats. Enhance movies with sound, text and images. Perfect for software demonstrations, screencasting, presentations, tutorials and training.
- CamStudio
- Free Program that captures all Screen and Audio activity to AVI
- Fraps
- Full version lets you record videos for OpenGL and Direct3D, but it costs money.
- Taksi
- Taksi aims to provide an open source alternative to Fraps.
- ScreenCap
- Nice little screen capture program.
- SnapShooter 2007
- Impressive screen capture software with plug-in support.
[edit] Audio Tools
- sfxr
- A simple Sound Effects Generator, originally made for people participating in the Tri-annual Ludum Dare 48hr game development competition as many entrants had difficulty finding the time to incorporate audio.
- Audacity
- Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.
