Tools:Content
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[edit] Graphics
These are some tools that are used to make graphics in your games. As graphics are very important in making of a game, there are a number of resources that can be used to help create them.
[edit] Raster-based drawing
Old-fashioned, pixel based drawing
- Adobe Photoshop
- A highly sophisticated image manipulation program, the standard of all professional graphic engineers (commercial)
- Alias Sketchbook Pro
- Award-winning Alias SketchBook™ Pro is a nimble, high-quality paint and drawing application designed specifically for use with Tablet PC or digitized pen tablets. (commercial)
- Corel Painter X
- Painter has been the world's pre-eminent Natural-Media® painting and illustration software. (commercial)
- Genetica
- A powerful seamless texture editor that comes with over 500 preset textures of all types. (commercial)
- The GIMP
- Image manipulation program, on the level of Adobe Photoshop, but free. Many advanced plugins, writing new ones is rather easy.
- GraphicsGale
- Great for pixel art, GIF animation. Freeware and shareware versions available.
- KolourPaint
- A very simple image manipulation program which is very similar to MS Paint, only built for KDE.
- 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 Adobe Photoshop, but with a cleaner interface. Also does simple Vector graphics. (commercial)
- 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.
- PhotoSEAM
- Special purpose image editor for creating seamless textures and tiles from digital images, or from scratch.
- Skencil
- Skencil is a Free Software interactive vector drawing application. Known to run on GNU/Linux and other UNIX-compatible systems, it is a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes.
- Tile Studio
- Graphics editor for 2D tile-based games, contains a sprite editor and a map editor, programmable output with examples for several languages
- 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.
[edit] Vector-based drawing
Drawing using shapes that contain properties.
- Adobe Illustrator
- A very powerfull but easy to use vector graphics application from the team at Adobe. (commercial)
- Corel Draw
- A nice vector editor, often used to design printouts (commercial)
- GameBrix
- A powerful free web-based vector graphics and animation tool from GameBrix generates industry standard SWF format with seamless photo capture editor. (commercial)
- 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 (commercial).
- Inkscape
- An SVG editor with a "Corel Draw"-like interface
- Moho
- A vector-based drawing and animation tool. Has a skeletal animation system that greatly simplifies 2D animation. (commercial)
- Skencil
- An interactive vector drawing application. It is a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes. (Not for Windows)
- Sodipodi
- Also an SVG editor but with a more "GIMP"-like interface
- Synfig
- A great 2D animation studio, relased under GNU/GPL license.
- Xara Xtreme
- A very good software for vector drawing, which will soon be OpenSource software and ported for Linux and Mac (commercial)
[edit] 3D Modeling
Utilities that are used to create 3-dimensional figures.
Freeware/Opensource
- 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.
- 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. Multi-platform
- BRL-CAD
- Modeling, geometry processing, collision detection, rendering, networking, mathematics, etc. BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source solid modeling system.
- Biturn
- Converts between several game model formats.
- DoGa
- Odd Japanese modeler. 3 versions available, L1 is free and produces sci-fi models from building blocks.
- Google SketchUp
- A free version of SketchUp, limited to saving Google Earth objects.
- K-3D
- Up and coming 3d modeling package, features engine based animated tutorials.
- Misfit Model 3D
- Open source modeler, with skeletal animation. Support for MD2,MS3D,3DS,LWO formats. (Win/Linux)
- OpenFX
- Powerful free 3D Modeler similar to 3ds
- Q2Modeller
- Quake 2 Modeler. Create/convert .md2 for pickier apps (e.g. Cube/Sauerbraten)
- Q2Modeller
- Quake 2 modeler link 2. Maybe link above is broken
- trueSpace3
- Modeling, animation and rendering. It's now free!
- Wings 3D
- Modeling and rendering.
Commercial
- 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
- Canvas 3D
- Amabilis Canvas 3D modeling and animation tool. Three versions: free, plus and pro.
- 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.
- GameSpace
- Low poly modeler from the makers of TrueSpace.
A free 'lite' version is available which still supports saving. - Grome
- Professional landscape and level editor for games and visual simulations.
Demo version is available which doesn't support saving. - LightRay3D
- A 3D modeling, rendering, animation and game creation application for Windows 95/98/Me/2k/XP. (shareware)
- Lightwave
- Modeling, animation, rendering. Good modeler with a great renderer.
- Maya
- Modelling, animation and rendering. Preferred by many modelers and animators because of its intuitive interface and its scripting ability.
- 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. Two versions, MetasequioaLE as (freeware) and (shareware).
- Milkshape
- Modeling and animation. Nice tool that can handle many formats natively. (shareware)
- Realsoft 3D
- Modeling, Solid modeling, animation and 64bit per channel rendering. Win, Linux, Mac?
- SketchUp
- Quick Modeling. Aimed at architects but useful by modelers of all sorts for quickly fleshing out basic shapes. Brilliantly simple!
- SoftImage XSI
- Professional 3D suite used for games, but more commonly used movie special fx. Bargain priced at $500 versus Max and Maya.
- Ultimate Unwrap
- A UV mapping utility. (commercial)
[edit] Specialized Graphics Tools
Art tools that don't quite fit into any section.
- AutoTrace
- Converts bitmap to vector graphics.
- 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.
- povray
- A free ray tracer for creating 3 dimensional graphics. For Linux, Mac and Windows.
- obj2ogl
- Converts .obj model files to OpenGL C code. Crude shell script but sometimes useful.
- Scythe Physics Editor
- A modeler for constructing physics-based objects, such as vehicles, buildings, ragdolls...(official site attracts trojan !!)
- YafRay
- The preferred ray tracer for Blender users. It creates very good renderings. Looks very promising.
- XImage2Mesh
- A tool that takes a 2D image and generates MAXScript code. This MAXScript code is then used in tools such as Discreet's 3DS MAX or gMAX to generate a Multi\Sub object material and a 2D plane mesh. The material is also applied to the mesh.
[edit] Terrain and World Editing Tools
Tools for creating (2d and 3d) world,levels,maps,terrains to your games.
- Tile Studio
- Graphics editor for 2D tile-based games, contains a sprite editor and a map editor, programmable output with examples for several languages
- 3D World Studio
- A constructive solid geometry (CSG) modeler with support for object placement, terrain, and lighting. (commercial).
- DeleD
- 3D Level-Designer (free but functional lite version available).
- GtkRadiant
- Quake's map editor.
- T.Ed
- T.Ed Professional Terrain Editor. A full featured editor for designing mesh or 'dynamic LOD' terrains, lightmaps. (shareware)
- Terragen
- A tool for rendering landscapes, good for background graphics eg. the skybox.
- 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.
[edit] Font Tools
Need to make bitmap fonts?
- bfontmaker
- BMP->BFont font for use with SFont and BFont (SDL).
- sfontmaker
- An improved bfontmaker that can output PNG with an alpha channel.
- 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.
- Bitmap Font Builder
- TTF -> TGA,RAW,BMP for use in OpenGL and Direct3D.
- 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. (Freeware)
thumb|right|300px|Sample Font Mechanic screen (click to enlarge)
- 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.
- 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 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. (freeware)
- ppFonter
- Makes packed bitmaps (TGA,BMP,PNG) from TTF files from zips/system fonts. (shareware)
[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. (30 day free trial)
- 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. (commercial or 14 day free trial)
- 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.
