3d - Short animation scene "Death soldier" part III

Hey folks!


It has been lot time of my previous post, but now I have some news, so I can write.. :)


The "death soldier" scene stopped to the ivies ause I were too lazy to model them all by myself.
But I knew that there is also the program called "an ivy generator".

Simply the program just "grows" some ivies on the model you choose and you can edit from the settings how they do it. Very fast and very easy. My problem of that was the materials. Because an ivy generator is not a blender plugin, it is intependent program. So you must set the materials by yourself in blender. Blender material settings can be very confusing for me kind of beginner...

Probably I would not ever figure how to do that material thing correctly by myself without this nice tutorial.
So here we go!


The first one ever:

Test1


The problem of that was in scaling. I did mess it somehow and now some times the ivies grow trough the marble, but i dont care because this scene was just test.

Second problem was that the leaves actually "fly" without sense around and are not connected with the wooden parts of the ivies. I dont know better solution for that than just make smaller leaves and  ingrease the count of them so it looks better.

Here is the test with the Death soldier:

test2

After that I realised that I can't do it with only one ivy. The ivy generator every time does the biggest mess in the place that you have been set as the beginning point. No matter what settings you are using. So if i wanna make the effect i want to, i need to set few ivies to the different places around the model.

The last test:

test3

But still there is maybe too much stuff around my model. Actually in some views you cant even see the model trough the ivies...
So I still must play with the ivies lot of time.
I will show the results some day here when i have time to write again.

3d - Technologies that will change the future of 3d-modeling

The fact is that we have gone far from the times of Utah teapot.

GPU-rendering  

If you are player of computer games, then
you may have figured out that the games of today are actually
graphically in the same level with the 3d-movies were few years
ago.  

It is intresting because the rendering of the games are
not done with the CPU (Central Processing
Unit). They are rendered with GPU (graphicalprocessing unit) and something like
60-100 frames / second. The rendering process of the movies can
easily take about 60 minutes / frame of your life with CPU-rendering.
So the graphic cards of computers have become in these days so
powerfull, that it may be better that we start inventing rendering
softwares not anymore using CPU  for the rendering process, but GPU .

Actually I am sure that if the rendering
developement goes like this in the future also, then we will forget
the word "rendering" in the 3d-modeling process. With the future
programs we can model everything as we model today, but then we are
working with the full working materials and settings while modeling. So the
process will be more and more similar with the real world.

Interestung links:
Octane render
Lux-render
Cycles

Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition) 
Commercial link

Image-Based 3D Photography 

Scanning 2D-photos to the 3D is actually
really old invention. (if anything in the computer world can be
called old) We have seen many of different projects about
3d-scanning, but all of these have been focused for the professional
movie making etc. so all the amateurs just have to wait until
someone can make so cheap system that everyone can
buy and use it.

Here is for you
some really intresting video from Wojciech Matusik, who is
research scientist at Disney
Research Zurich.

 Photosynth  

Also Microsoft have done some intresting
research work about 3D-photography.

Their project name is
Photosynth. Idea about this wonderful technology is that the admin of this utility does not take the photos. He just only provides their processing capasities for the people who has the photos.
Okay, good examble would be
The Colosseum in Rome. So, we have 1000 people who have been in the
Colosseum and they all have uploaded their photos to Facebook or
other same kind of place. Then they just have to upload their photos
to photosynth and it generates 3d model of the
whole place.

Interesting links:
Photosynth

Video based 3d-objects

Video/movie is actually same than just
taking 24 photos in second (PAL) or 30 photos in secod (NTSC). So
with using video we can do more detailed 3d models in the shorter
time period than just messing around with ordinary camera and taking photos.

3D-printing

Some day you will model
full working 3d-porche and then you realised that you did 6 months
of full time work with your model, but you still can't touch it or
start driving. It is just only the picture on your computer screen
until...

"3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing technology
where a three dimensional object is created by
laying down successive layers of material.
3D printers are generally faster, more affordable and easier to use
than other additive manufacturing technologies. 3D printers offer
product developers the ability to print parts and assemblies made
of several materials with different mechanical and physical
properties in a single build process. Advanced 3D printing
technologies yield models that closely emulate the look, feel and
functionality of product prototypes." Wikipedia

Okay, it can be bossible that you ever can't print your full
working 3d-porche in the real world, but no worries, you can use it
in the other way in some computer programs.  Probably in the future in every home is one 3d printing device and you can buy models from the internet stores and just print it. Maybe that closer of teleportation we cannot ever reach.


Few printing services:
http://www.shapeways.com/
http://www.3dcreationlab.co.uk/
http://www.thinglab.co.uk/
http://i.materialise.com/

3D-internet   

Today internet is somehow really different world than our real world. I
believe that in the future internet will be also more and more
going to be similar with the real world where we are living,
because for human being it is more natural to go and remember
things in the 3d world, than in the 2d.

Or it is for me, because I have photographic memory.
It means that I can remember easily what kind was the shop inside where I visited year ago, but
hard to remember my bank account number.
First we will see more and more differend and innovative 3d worlds that we can use traight
with the browser. Then you shall see that the worlds will be linket
together, so you can go from the world to the another without
leaving the 3d space.

Then, some innovative big or small company
invests for their internet pages and models paraller version of
their internetpages by the 3d-technology.

Let's think that the company is a bank. (I know, we all have in our mind the idea that 3D =
game, but just fall with me to this thought experiment)

So when you
type the internet address of that bank to the browser and press enter
you'll fastly see that you're actually in the street and straight
front of you is the bank.

It is similar with the real world bank,
you can see all the logos and other things that you have seen in
the same company bank when you visited there last time, but this 3d
bank is still somehow more beautifull and shiny. You can see also other people with you
on the street and they are all going to that bank, you will follow them inside of the building.

Virtual Reality Technology
Commersial link

Everything inside looks nice and
safe. You can see somewhere the flying screen. When you touch it
with your mouse, it will come to you and you can read the text.

"Welcome to the Nytech Bank of internet Mr _your name_. If you need
customer service, choose it by clicking the button one. If you just
want to check your bank account or disburse your bills, press
button two."

You click the "button one" and the machine pulls out
the paper with number 141. It is your queue number.

"You have 12 people before of you in the queue. You can wait you'r turn in
our waiting room. Let me lead youe way to there Mr _your name_"

You will be teleported some new place and you see  lot of peoplewith you there.
You hear speaking and you realise that everyone there is 3D-avatar of the
real people.
You can speak with them with your microphone if you want to. You can also ignore them.

Everyone also can show their real faces. It can be projected
from the web-camera to their avatar faces as a texture. Because of this - you
actually can know with who you are speaking.

You take the seat and start  reading magazines.Text interactive and it is from the RSS-feed from the
magazines web page.

Soon its your turn and you get teleported to the room where you are with your service agent. She will ask you
that how can she help you and you tell that you need a second pank
account. Everything works fast and soon you are ready to go.

Interesting links:
http://www.khronos.org/webgl/
http://secondlife.com/
http://www.minecraft.net/
http://www.habbo.com/

Holograms  

Have you ever wanted to touch your models or
edit them with your hands? Soon it will be possible, because
japanese scientists have invented in the university of  Tokio
some cool technology that provides for you the feeling that you
actually are touching the holographic images.

So, in the future when this kind of technology is more developed I am sure that we
can use 3d modeling tools with our hands. Like sculpting the clay.

Volumetric modeling

When the computing capasities will
increase, the complexity of the 3d modeling will increase at the
same time and speed. First in the professional movie making, like
Hollywood, but then you'll see more and more different optons for
doing it by yourself with your own home computer.

Think about your own body. What is the first idea about it? Something with the shape? Or what?
Your body is an object and it looks like an object,
but acually you are cloud. You are the horde of the small particles. That
horde is just too tight for that nothing can go trought of it
without using damaging force.

So it is fact that you are the cloud of the millions and millions different living cells.
And the cells are the clouds of the smaller units, called atoms.

Now theorically we can model this kind of clouds, and movie industry will rub their hands togeter because if everything is modeled like that, it means that
you can also explode everything in the same way how it happens in
the real world. We just need to wait few years until our computers
can handle this kind of data that much.

Other - An inspiration

Few years ago I was reading Donald Duck comics and I learned from there, that you will need some kind of "Muse" that helps you for finding an inspiration. And why did I started with Donald Duck? Because it is one of the most readed and respected science magazine in the world. You should also use it for the learning purposes.


Muse?

From ancient Greek stories we can learn that Muses were goddess women who lived on the Pieria's rivers and help'd an artists for finding their inspirations. Of course this is just a fictional story, but today the word "muse" is the symbol for all kind of artistical inspirations. (Muse is also a band)

Everyone who want's to be creative needs an inspiration before they can start doing their work. Picture without an idea is just too boring. You can create technically nice pictures and they still can be lame, but you can also do pictures that are technically lame, but their ideas are brilliant. Internet is filled with this kind of memes. Somebody just draws the picture without drawing skills, but because the idea - that picture will be viewed millions of times around the net. 

The fact is that people will look longer the one picture that has nice idea - even it is technically lame. So the idea is of course that inspiration what we are looking for. If you can make pictures that are brilliant with their ideas and technically also, then you have done something that will be also remembered and you have possibilities to earn with them. That fact also works with music and writings and speakings and with every creative work.

3-D World magazine
Commercial link

How to get an ideas then?

• Scrapbook
  
  Everyone can get an ideas. So you are also the one who has an ideas, maybe you just forget them.
  
  Start doing scrapbook. Buy from somewhere the small book that you can draw everywhere with you. So if you find something intresting from the  newspaper, you can take your scissors and cut it off and put it to the book. If some of your friends will say something funny or intresting - take the scissors.. or not. You can write it to the book.. etc. Did you get the idea of scrapbook?
  Then next time when you have some job to do, you will search an ideas from that book.
  
  
• Music
  
  Most of people have skill to "see" pictures when they are listening music, you can try it just by listening something.
  
  You are walking in the forest and then you suddenly hear the sound of benguin. You know that its penguin before you really can see it - and you may "see" the penguin inside of your head - and run away before it eats you. Then you may say to your friend that "Guess what did I saw in the forest?? The penguin." Even you did not actually see anything, just heard the sound.
  
  Do you remember the first time when you heard the sound of piano? For me the first time was when I were kid and my father did play it nearly every day. So when I hear piano somewhere, I can see/remember my father playing it if I want to. But we all have heard millions of times sound of piano, so we can mix the situationst togeter and make our own "scenes" in our head. Thats the reason why you can't put the action or horror music to the romantic part of your movie. Eventhough that music so nice is. (But if you're musician, you probably can't see anything else in your mind than just notes..."
  
  D.I.Y. Or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist
  Commercial link
  
  
• Nature and travelling
  
  Walking around of the forest may be great source of  the ideas.
  
  Seriously, do you really think that you will find an ideas while watching an empty photoshop screen?
  This is not going to happen, you must find the ideas from something else than photoshop manual. So the best solution for this problem is just go out and watch around you. You will find lots of different details from your own yard that you can use for your future works. Take photos of all the differend and intresting things. Then come back and finish your work.
  
  
• Other people
  
  You just don't have time for thinking about everything and at the same time draw pictures about it. So let other people think about everything and then draw pictures about their mindings.
  
  Just take a little time for your friends. Probably you have created your own manners for your workflow. It means that you do everything by the same way and the result is the similar with the previous one just only little variations. It might be good result but if it is all the time same kind than all of your other works - then it becomes little bit boring. Most of cases you can't breake your manners by yourself, you need someone who laughts for your works and says, that they are all the same... (when it happens dont be angry, it happens to every one.) If youre doing graphical design and your boss wants you to do every day about 10 illustrations - then youre deeb in the swamp of manners. No one can be creative that fast.
  
  
• History
  
  Did you know that Roman emperor Caligula did named his horse Incitatus as a senator of Rome?  
  
  Not just only art history, but all the history. You know, everything that people ever has done, is in the history. So this is one of the most greatest sources for your inspiration, just don't despice it.
  
  
• Internet and library
  
  21th century inspiration source.
  
  Read books, blogs and forums, watch videos and play games. Stumble upon is some good add on for firefox browser. You can get it form here: https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/138/
  You can rate internet pages and watch other pages that other people have rated as good.
  
  Red Dead Redemption game
  Commercial link
  
  
• Ideas are free
  You can copy the ideas from the pictures.
  
  If you like some idea you found from the work of somebody else, just copy the idea. But don't copy the work. You must make your own version from the original work. The idea can still be very same.
  
  Or actually you can't even know what was the real idea of the original artists, but you will get your own ideas from the pictures and you may think, that you have copied them. Its little weird psychology, but it works.
  
  You don't need to invent every time the wheel again because someone have already done it. You can just use it and you don't need to know what for the wheel was invented first time by the original invertor.

Other - Computer problems

So, you're the guy who don't have ever had any kind of problems with your computer and now you wanna know what it is if someone has. You're in the right place.

In the life there is some kind of weird rule that if you had one problem yesterday, today you have them 2, then 4 and at the day 60 you have more problems than in the universe is an atoms. I am now living at the day 335 with this process.

About one year ago I did bought components for a new computer. With my friend we did build the whole machine to ready. My plan was to do a computer for graphical design, 3d-modeling and for playing sometimes, but the windows 7 were not yet released so we planned that I would install an Ubuntu for the computer. Then I would use it before windows 7 can be bought.

Okay, Ubuntu is a great operating system. It works perfectly, except with my computer and asus ati radeon 4970 card and Mobile stick ZTE 636+.

Ati has some kind of problems because they just don't wanna make enough good drivers for ubuntu users. Their cards does work, but the system can't get all of the possibilities out of your hardware if you're using ati card with Linux. So buy nvidia if you wanna play with Linux system.

Faked cd-rom driver


The next problem was with that mobile stick. It really sucked and it was nearly to make me cry with all of this.

The stick, it was trying to become as a CD-ROM driver, even it actually was USB-stick. That was the base of most idiotic problems in the world of USB-problems.

The First solution was to make the stick work in the normal way with Linux. (just let me go to the internet!) I have no idea what my friend actually did for the stick, but it needed some kind of inbuilt firmware script changing to make it become again as USB-stick for the pc - not CD-ROM driver. Finding out the solution for this took about 2 months. Then and only then I did could use an internet with my computer. But this was just beginning.

Because the stick didn't work. The network was actually still cutting all the time. You know how annoying it would be if your internet cuts off every 2 minute and only way to make it work again is to get the USB-stick off and put it again.
From some forum we did found that the USB-stick needs script that checks out the text messages 1 times at 10 second. If it won't do that, it will cut off the internet. That of course needed scripting...
Why the messages must be checked so often is one of the biggest mysterios of the world. Woman is another one.

But actually it did not work as well as we planned. The real problem that cannot be fixed was actually that ZTE and Saunalahti (my network operator.) didn't wanna develope drivers for Linux and we did not have capacity for doing them by ourself. So their product was actually a shit, but they didn't wanna give me my money back.

I downloaded Windows 7 RC (relase candidate) for the computer.

The random blue screen generator

The internet started working, but the computer started also for producing mystical blue screen messages all the time without any sensible reason...

So I tested the memories and seemed that they were ok, so I did send the mother board back to the shop. The post officer probably though that the mother board were some kind of a bomb, because she did change to calm and just did few steps backward when she saw the component... Until it was clear that the motherboard won't explode she did came back for helping me for sending the box.

The mother board was ok after the tests, so the shop did send it back to me...

But the random blue screen generator still was there.

Finnish post office

So I did send all of the components for them except hard drives and CD-ROM driver and that wonderful USB-CD-stick-ROM.


And then something happened.

You probably don't know what Itella is, but I'll tell you that its Finnish post office.
Nobody in the world knows what Itella means. Few years ago post office here was "posti" but now its "itella", because they thought that it would be more global name. Eh.
Before postmen were "posteljooni's" but not they are "itellajooni's" in Finland. Actually its kind of cool because now they are more international etc. Maybe.

What ever. Post office still did lost my computer. I did call everywhere and no one did know where it would be. It was also my own mistake, because I did lost the paper where was the tracking code, but still. How can that kind of huge box just lost somewhere?

My own guess is that the "itellajooni's" still were thinking that the computer was a bomb and they did sent it for CIA so they can test it with their bomb tools. When it was tested they did send it to the Alaska where the crayfishing boat were towing it to the Finland. But they did not had changes to come in Finland so they did gave it back to the itellajooni's in the black side of the moon.

After towing the box, no one wont read the text from it because paper made box will get wet if you drop it to the sea. So they did send it to the London if some Sherlock would read it. And it was in German France and Portugal... Then it just arrived into the Verkkokauppa.com in Finland. This episode did took more than two months.

Verkkokauppa.com did send all of the stuff back to me, except the motherboard. They did change it to the new.. Maybe it was broken?

So when I did get all of the components back, I did test it and it worked perfectly! Even it were in the Alaska and it was been used in German as a football in the some empty storage.

Good. Now I have been used it about 3 or 4 months without any visible problems, except now, when it crashed and did not boot again. I am nearly sure that the power supply breaked.

So I am writing this story with my 10 years old computer that still works perfectly. Is it good now mr. president?

And when the 10 years is again gone, I could say about that my new computer that "this is my favorite computer! Processor is changed 5, memories 15, motherboard 3, graphic card 9, power supply 4 and the cover about 3 times."

3d - Sintel is out!

Sintel - the movie

Young Girl finds a dragon baby from her hometown. After the bigger one dragon took the baby from the girl by the violentic way starts the long and dramatic path in her life to find the dragon baby back...

The process

Sintel is an open movie created by Blender foundations with their international team in their studio that is in Netherlands. The main function of this animation film is to help developing open source program Blender by using it in the real production process. With this kind of productions can Blender foundations find the real challenges of the software developement with Blender and defeat them.

Because Blender itself is an open source program, will the movie also be open as in every section of its production. It means that the movie and all of the materials that are created during this throughput will be relased under the creative commons license shortly after the premiere day. (That was today)

So you will have all of the possibilities to reproduce the movie for uncommercial purposes like you have also with the other open movies created by Blender foundations. Thats why this is  a great opportunity for the film makers who are intrested about working with Blender. (and other nerds who are intrested about everything.) You will get full completed movie and all of it's files that you can use for your tests and demonstrations.
Also if you're software developer - this can be helpful for your research work with blender developement.

The movie employed up to 14 full time workers for more than year.

Budget of the film was about 400 000€ and most of it came from the benefactors.

The complete list of the benefactors can be found from the credits of the movie.

Sintel is the thirth open movie.

Previous two movies were Big Buck Bunny and Elephants dream.

You can download all of the movie files from www.sintel.org

Blender foundations have also relased game as in CC license.

Other - The Complete 3d link gallery

I would like to share with you some cool links about everything that has something to do with graphical design. Mostly with 3d modeling etc. This list is going to be huge, so I'll try to categorize everything so it'll be more easy to find something that is interested by you. I am not tested everything yet so you test it on your own risk. Also I am trying to focus on the things that are free. Just download and start playing stuff.

I am going to update this list every time when I found something from internet. You can also recommend some links to me.

Updated: 12.2.2011

3D-tools

Biosphere3D
Biosphere3D is an open source software project that targets interactive landscape rendering based on a virtual globe. It is scale independent and ranges from first-person view to globe view.

Blender

Maybe everyone who are reading my blog also knows something about blender, but if you don't, then its better to get aware about it.

Sketchup

So you are interested about modeling building and outerior scenes, or just designing your own home in the new way. Everything is possible to do accurate measurement.
Sketchup is really easy to use program for everyone.

Mindseye
Complete modeling/animation package for the GNU/Linux operating system.

MLCAD
Lego model making program.

3D Modeling with Silhouettes
Interesting silhuette modeling tool. I cant explain the idea shortly here, so you must click the link and visit their site to understand the main idea of this consept.

Lego digital designer
Create your own lego buildings and vehicles on your computer.

Misfit Model 3D
An OpenGL-based 3D model editor that works with triangle-based models. It supports multi-level undo, skeletal animations, simple texturing, command-line batch processing, and a plugin system for adding new model and image filters. Complete online help is included. The primary design goal is to be easy to use.

Moonlight3D
Java based 3d modeling program

Sculptris
With this easy to use tool you can fastly make your own creatures in 3d. Using this funny little program is almost like the same when you play with clay on the real world. If you like that, you'll like this program also.

FreeCADis a general purpose Open Source 3D-modeler, aimed directly at mechanical engineering and product design but also fits in a wider range of uses around engineering,

BRL-CAD
An open source solid modeling tool

Salome
An open source software that provides a generic platform for Pre- and Post-Processing for numerical simulation. It is based on an open and flexible architecture made of reusable components.

Meshlab
MeshLab is an open source, portable, and extensible system for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes.
The system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models arising in 3D scanning, providing a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes.

Houdini
3D modeling and animation tool for students.

K-3D
Very powerful 3d-modeling and animation package. Includes basic tools for NURBS, patches, curves and animation.



Art of illusion

Free, open source 3D and rendering studio. Includes many of the features that are well known on the commercial programs.

The Pure Perl RayCaster
Pure Perl RayCaster can load a 3D object from a file (RAW format), display the object in wireframe perspective view, allow you to orbit and zoom your camera and produce a user defined sized ray casting image of the current wireframe view in a predefined color theme with or without smooth shading.

Zmodeler

Good modeling and texturing package for the game modelers.

BlenderPocket
BlenderPocket is a port of the famous Open Source 3D creation solution "Blender" dedicated for mobile devices (Phones, PDA, ...) having a touch screen, small amount of memory (RAM), a low speed processor (with no floating point unit) and no graphic unit (no hardware acceleration). BlenderPocket is working today on all mobile devices with Windows Mobile 2003 or newer but it should be "easy" to make it work on any other devices...

Ayam
Ayam is a free 3D modelling environment for the RenderMan interface, distributed under the BSD licence. This means that neither the author nor any contributors make money out of this software.

Anim8or
Another program that can be used for modeling, texturing and animating your meshes.

Seamless3d
3D-modeling and animating software for the dudes who wanna make quality content for their web sites.

OpenFX
OpenFX is an Open-Source 3D modeling, animation and rendering suite with a powerful feature-set includes a full renderer and raytrace engine, NURBS support, kinematics-based animation, morphing, and an extensive plugin API.

3dCavans
Real time 3d modeling and animation tool with an intuitive drag and drop approach at modeling.
Modeling tools as deform, sculpt, and texture painting.

GDesign 2.0
2d / 3d cool application for windows.

TrueSpace

Fully featured 3D package that lets you to model, light, texture, animate and render

your 3D content.

Wings3d

Subdivision modeler that also lets you to texture the static objects. No animation tools  included.

Nimbus Basic edition
Create amazing 3D scenes in less time with Nimbus software.

Make Human

An easy way to make fastly but at the same time realistic human body mesh in 3d.

DeleD

3D modeling and level designing editor that is focused at the game industry. Specifically good for static objects. Easy to learn user interface.

FreeForm
Fast organic modeling tool

EQUINOX-3D
The 3D modeler with the fastest, fully integrated ray-tracer.
No windows version awailable.

My3DEngine
My3DEngine is a simple application for creating, editing and viewing 3D objects.



3D icon editor
RealWorld Icon Editor is a complete solution for icons and does not depend on other software to create icons with professional look and feel.

Terrain view lite
TerrainView-Lite is a Virtual Reality-based 3D GIS software solution which facilitates the interactive visualization of high-resolution 3D terrain and model data.

Draw3D
Draw3D is a freeware 3D modeller, for creating or modifying 3D objects using a mesh of 3D points.

Innovation3D
Innovation3D is a 3D modeling program for Linux. It's primarily a mesh based modeler with preliminary support for NURBS.

Ztools
We are the developer of 3d modeling and animation packages - like those used for special effects and movies today. There is one drawback, however, these tools can cost up to ,000. So what happens if you are bored one day and decide to make the next Shrek? Well here is where we come in, our tools are completely free, but just as good as the ones pros use. So it can't hurt to download our programs...

Gmax

Based on the very popular 3D studio max. Modeling tool for the game developers.

3DS Max 6.0 (Discreet)
Commercial link.

SmoothTeddy
SmoothTeddy is a simple 3D sketch-based modeling and painting software application. You can make rotund 3D models such as teddy bears quickly, and paint them in an integrated environment.

Pictomod3D
Hi-Speed Mesh Creation using Photographs!
3D Scanning Software, Model from Images.

Moray
An interactive shareware wireframe modeller for the PC platform, supporting POV-Ray 3.5.

4D Blue

Even 4D blue is under developement it sill is one of the good choices for modeling, animating and photorealistic rendering.

Terragen

Terragen 2 is a powerful solution for rendering and animating realistic natural environments.

CB Model Pro

Another nice sculpting tool like sculptris.

Tree generators

Dryad
Dryad lets you intuitively create beautiful trees for your virtual world or game.

Ivy Generator
Really good tree and plant generator. Must check!

tree[d]
The tree generator

Plant studio
PlantStudio Botanical Illustration Software is a tool for creating 3D plant models and 2D illustrations. PlantStudio simulates herbaceous (non-woody) plants like wildflowers and cut flowers, vegetables, weeds, grasses, and herbs using a parameter-driven simulation of plant growth and structure.

ngPlant
ngPlant is a plant modeling software suite. Designers can use interactive tool to create 3D models of different plants and trees. Software developers can use 3D API-independent library to use generated plant models in their 3D applications, or to create plant modeling plugins for different 3D modeling tools.

Virtual Bonsai
Virtual Bonsai allows you to grow virtual bonsai trees from the comfort of your personal computer.

Virtual Gardening
allows you to design your own personal virtual garden in stunning 3D graphics and then to simulate the growth of the trees in your garden with the passing of time.

Arbaro
Arbaro is an implementation of the tree generating algorithm described in Jason Weber & Joseph Penn: "Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees".

OpenAlea
OpenAlea is an open source project primarily aimed at the plant research community. It is a distributed collaborative effort to develop Python libraries and tools that address the needs of current and future works in Plant Architecture modeling. OpenAlea includes modules to analyse, visualize and model the functioning and growth of plant architecture.

CanTree
2D tree generator. Easy and fast to use, but the results are sometimes amusing.

Texture and normal map tools

MaPZone

Amazing material genarating tool.

Nvidia melody

NVIDIA Melody creates high quality normal maps that make a low-poly model look like a high-poly model.

Xnormal

xNormal is an application to generate normal / ambient occlusion / displacement maps. It can also project the texture of the highpoly model into the lowpoly mesh ( complete texture transfer, even with different topologies

Light Map Maker

Light Map Maker is a power software tool that helps you to create compelling lighting effects.

AMD GPU MeshMapper

GPU MeshMapper re-invents the process of generating maps (including normal, displacement, and ambient occlusion maps) for a low-resolution mesh based on the details from a high-resolution mesh.

Animation

Daz studio

DAZ Studio is a free, feature rich 3D figure design and 3D animation tool that enables anyone to create stunning digital imagery. Easy to use.

Figures, Characters and Avatars: The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio to Create Beautiful Art
Commercial link

fragMOTION

powerful 3D modeler used for the creation and animation of characters. fragMOTION is intuitive and easy to use and contains many features that are only found in top of the line modelers. And if that's not enough for you, the event driven scripting system makes it a breeze for you to add your own features.

Miscellaneous

3D Object Converter

This program supports 586 different 3d-formats. If you can't convert it with this, then maybe you can't convert it.

DrQueue
DrQueue is a powerful open source distributed render farm manager, used for a range of applications across the visual effects industry and for general batch processing jobs in science, engineering and finance. DrQueue is licensed under GNU GPL Version 3.

OpenEXR
OpenEXR is a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by Industrial Light & Magic for use in computer imaging applications.
OpenEXR is used by ILM on all motion pictures currently in production. The first movies to employ OpenEXR were Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs. Since then, OpenEXR has become ILM's main image file format.

Pulldownit
is a brand new dynamics solver which allows for the creation of fractures as well as massive rigid bodies simulations. By using its technology digital artists are able to simulate fast and easily scenes made of thousands of objects and collapse buildings, bridges or any kind of brittle material.

Voodoo
Camera tracking program

Icarus
Camera tracking program

Sweet homeSweet Home 3D is a free interior design application that helps you place your furniture on a house 2D plan, with a 3D preview.

PoseRay

PoseRay is an utility to convert 3D model meshes into POV-Ray scenes, Moray UDO files or Kerkythea meshes.
PoseRay can also edit the materials and act as a simple transformation tool for the geometry. PoseRay can also export the modified model to wavefront (OBJ) format for use in other 3D programs.

GLC-player
GLC_Player is an Open Source software used to view 3d models (COLLADA 3DXML OBJ 3DS STL OFF COFF Format) and to navigate easily in these models. With the album management, capture and multi-capture capabilities

Fractal tools
 
Fractint
Fractint is a freeware fractal generator created for IBMPC's and compatible computers. It is the most versatile and extensive fractal program available for any price.

Mandelbulber
Really amazing 3d fractals can be animated with this program.

Apophysis
Apophysis is a cool freeware fractal flame editor for windows.

Chaoscope
Chaoscope is a freeware 3D strange attractors rendering software for windows operating system.

Video tools

Wax
Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease everytime.

Zwei-Stein
Zwei-Stein 3.01 is a freeware non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features unavailable elsewhere.




ZS4
ZS4 Video Editor can be used like an object oriented photo-manipulation program with a timeline: things that can be manipulated in a photo (workshop) program can be manipulated in ZS4 using parameters which alter over time.

Virtualdub
VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.

AVIedit
It is a great tool to work with .AVI files. Regardless of small executable size, this avi editor offers you unlimited power of digital video processing. Some high-tech tricks included into AVIedit allows you to perform with ease and fun the many interesting things, like video warping, color restore, noise reduction and so on...

Avidemux
Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.

DDClip free
Free version of DDClip pro

Open movie editor
Open Movie Editor is a free and open source video editing program, designed for basic movie making capabilities. It aims to be powerful enough for the amateur movie artist, yet easy to use.

2d tools


Alchemy
Alchemy is an open drawing project aimed at exploring how we can sketch, draw, and create on computers in new ways. Alchemy isn’t software for creating finished artwork, but rather a sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of the creation process.

Greenshot
Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with the following key features:

Create complete or partial screenshots quickly. Easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot. Send the screenshot to a file, the clipboard, a printer or as e-mail attachment.

MyPaint
MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. You work on your canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the interface only when you need it.

DraftSight
Free CAD software* available for Windows®, Mac® and Linux®**. A new 2D CAD product that provides professional CAD users, students and educators with a better way to create, edit and view DWG files.

Heekscad
Heekscad is a free open source CAD program.

Aviary
Package of eight free online based applications.  Package contains: Image editor, screen capturing tool, that helps you to take full screenshots from the web pages, vector editor, image markup, effects editor, color swatch editor, music creator and audio editor.
Jcad
2d easy to use cad tool.

Qcad
QCAD is an application for computer aided drafting in two dimensions (2d). With QCAD you can create technical drawings such as plans for buildings, interiors, mechanical parts or schemas and diagrams.

How to Draw What You See (Practical Art Books)
Commercial link

Harry Storbacka's Digital Artist
Program that helps you to draw in correct perspective your drawings.

Gimp
If you dont know Gimp, you have a life, or you must get a life. I don't know which one is better. Gimp is good open source 2d photo retouching and manipulation tool.

Scetch-paint
Cool online drawing program

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector drawing tool. And a really good one.

Pixlr
Online Photo editor

Muro
Another web-based drawing tool

PaintNET
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows.

Sumo paint
Its like photoshop, but you can use it with your internet browser.

Harmony
Innovative online html5 sketching program.

Image analyzer
Photo analyzing and editing program with some really serious features. Like
Deconvolution for out-of-focus and motion blur compensation

Rendering

Kerkythea rendering system
Kerkythea is a standalone renderer, using physically accurate materials and lights, aiming for the best quality rendering in the most efficient timeframe. The target of Kerkythea is to simplify the task of quality rendering by providing the necessary tools to automate scene setup, such as staging using the GL real-time viewer, material editor, general/render settings editors, etc., under a common interface.

Freestyle
Freestyle is a software for Non-Photorealistic Line Drawing rendering from 3D scenes.

SunFlow
Sunflow is an open source rendering system for photo-realistic image synthesis. It is written in Java and built around a flexible ray tracing core and an extensible object-oriented design.

3Delight
3Delight is a fast, high quality, RenderMan®-compliant renderer designed to produce photo-realistic images in demanding production environments. The renderer was introduced to the public in the year 2000 after being used for more than a year as the sole renderer in a sister production company. It is now widely used and earning a reputation as a benchmark in rendering technology.

Virtual Light
new, free rendering tool. It supports radiosity, caustics and sky sphere lighting. It is a "global illumination renderer".

Aqsis Renderer
Open source 3D rendering solution adhering to the RenderMan standard

POV-ray
high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics.

Yasrt
YASRT is a stochastic raytracer. It stands for Yet Another Simple RayTracer.



Yafaray
free open-source raytracing engine. Raytracing is a rendering technique for generating realistic images by tracing the path of light through a 3D scene


LuxRender
LuxRender is a physically based and unbiased rendering engine. Based on state of the art algorithms, LuxRender simulates the flow of light according to physical equations, thus producing realistic images of photographic quality.

RenderPark
RenderPark is a test-bed system for physically based photo-realistic image synthesis. It's a free software package providing a solid implementation of a wide variety of state-of-the-art ray-tracing and radiosity algorithms.

Plugins

Suicidator city generator

With it, you can automatically create entire, three-dimensional modern cities in a matter of seconds by adjusting various parameters, such as city size and complexity, rather than creating each building, each street, and each texture manually.

Blender plugins
Huge collection of python scripts.

List of Blender importers/exporters

Here is nice collection of blender importer / exporter blugins.

Warp Plugin

A sequence plugin to create a 'warped air' effect. Very useful for things like The Matrix style bullet trails or heat waves.

Pixelize plugin
A sequence plugin to pixelize the image. You can control both pixel width and height. Pixel size can also be animated.

Cloud generator

This script could make realistic fake volumetric clouds.

Random level generator

The script that could make randomly huge dungeon levels.

The mushroom generator

Generate mushrooms.

Simcloth
Plugin for max that could simulate cloths.

Tutorials

Tutorialized

Great collection of tutorials about nearly everything.

Good-tutorials

Another nice collection.

Blender.org tutorials

Check it out.

CG tuts

Tutorials for various 3d-programs.

Weather tutorials for Blender

rain, snow, lighting, buddles, heat distortion

Architectural tutorials

High rise building and kitchen.

Blendercookie

Big collection of Blender tutorials.

MiikaHweb

Few really good tutorials.

Video copilot

Really good after effects tutorials. Actually I hope that all of the video tutorials would be like their. So check it out.

Creative Cow

Tutorials for video software

CGtutorials

Tutorials for various 3d programs.

Blender Guru

Some really nice ones for blender.

Blenderartists
The users can themself write and add the tutorials to this huge blender community forum.

Comment: If you know some of programs or tutorials that are not listed on here and you think that they should be, then please just tell me and I will add them.

Or if you dont somehow like that your program is in this list, you can ask me to remove it and i will do it as fast I can.