Hey all aside from gaming and bullshitting the other hobby I have is playing around in graphics software, mostly 3D junk.

Just thought I'd make a thread to point out some decent apps to others here with the same interests.

Everyone knows Blender http://www.blender.org/ out of complete gratuity for a complete 3D modeling and animation software being free, I am first and foremost attempting to learn this.

Aside from Blender I also play around in Sculptris which is currently free but bought out by Pixologic whom make Z-Brush and when it gets to full bloom I'm bettting they will charge a pretty penny for it.

It's not great for making game models because the models are poly heavy but it's an awesome paint program and if you're just modeling for pics, this is almost like cheating. Your ten year old can cough up good stuff with it. http://www.sculptris.com/download.html

Finally, for 3D, I have a full, earned and legitimate copy of the latest Curvy 3D. Sculptris models like working with clay where as Curvy models through drawing in 2D.

http://curvy3d.com/

Afiliated with the Curvy guy are Project Dogwaffle whom have designed the most useful 2D art and animation program that I have ever seen. I will admit that I know polys and vertices better than 2D so I ran screaming intimidated by this program for Beta testing of the most recent release however, will say, that if you have a flair for 2D animation, this is one of the best programs out there and deserves some attention. Just watch the videos they have on site of the latest Dogwaffle in action and the animation of the meteorite crashing!

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/

Finally for photo editing and manipulation I used G.I.M.P. (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) it's part of the Gnu network creating free alternatives to rather expensive programs and it's nearly identical to Photoshop.

http://www.gimp.org/

There are more good ones that I can suggest but these are the few that i'm most focused on.

Favourited!

Thanks for that list, been watching them all except for that animation one, must look into that!

The head of promotions for Dogwaffle is named Dan and he's an awesome person to deal with.

Also you can sort of haggle with The Best 3D or maybe even ask if Dan needs any more Beta testers.

He picked me because he liked my cartoony 3D style but I was too intimidated by DogWaffle because I just don't know my way around 2D animation software very well.

I also use http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/ to make sure that I don't have any N-Gons or disconnected vertices.

and

http://www.uvmapper.com/ to optimize models.

Also http://www.metaseq.net/english/ is probably the easiest poly-based modeler to learn and was used in the creation of some older Final Fantasy games.

There is a free version and a $50 that allows you to export your models to .obj files which are the most compatible with other 3D software.

The Free Software List has a whole section on graphics applications for you to play around with. You seem to have found most of the better ones though.

http://www.crazybump.com/ ;)

Normal maps, bump maps, parallel maps, whatever maps.

That's cool. I'll check it out.

Yea, its great, but you obviously need good textures to use it with.

Curvy 3D meshes also form to textures pretty easily as well. The only thing is, in Curvy, I have not figured out how to seclude specific sections of the model. Usually the texture to bump method covers the entire model.

I might be able to do it piece by piece but I'd never be able to finalize the model by welding all together again into one piece.