A ton of the companies making design software for the entertainment business let students get their software for free so that they can learn how to use this software, with the caveat that no money is ever made. I'm looking for a broad range of software for my laptop, because I need to be something of a digital entertainment jack of all trades. Game design, music, digital drawing, animation, and other things along those lines are all useful to me. So far, I have downloaded the Unity Engine, the Unreal Engine, and am currently downloading 3DS Max. On my list to download are 3DS Max Design, Maya, Smoke, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, Inventor Professional (Yes, I am getting quite a bit of Autodesk stuff), Gimp, Audacity, and Blender. There are certainly more student versions of professional software and excellent freeware software floating around out there that would be of use to me, but I'm strapped right now. What do you guys reckon I need to add to my list? ---------- Post added 29th Oct 2013 at 12:29 AM ---------- Add Softimage to my list. Had a wee problem with 3DS Max. My network connection kept failing. I switched to Mudbox, and will come back for 3DS Max later. Working on Softimage now.
Have you tried Google's Sketchup - its free and is great for designing objects, or buildings etc in 3D
I second what bingostring said, although SU is now owned by Trimble. In the realm of 2D art/design, you might try Artweaver; which is a decent SAI replacement; Inkscape; which is like illustrator, but stripped down and open source; and Paint.net which is like an upgraded version of MS Paint (layers! )
She already mentioned 3DS Max and Maya, which are the industry standard 3d modeling and animation programs. *OP, Mudbox is not the same kind of thing. It still works with 3d models, but is more used for delicate refinements rather than cranking out the rough model from a cube. Both of those 3d programs do UV cutting/mapping as well, but for that you might want to try Headus UVLayout. It's easy to use with a few hotkeys, and saves you some headache later on when it comes to defining UV shells for your texture. It's still best to untangle overlapped vertices on the UV map first in whatever design tool you use, but then just export your model as a .obj file and import it into UVLayout. ^^All you've got to do then is point to which edges you want to separate, hit C, and then when you're all done, hit Enter. At that point your selections will become splits, and it allows you to hide completed sections with D. When you've hidden (dropped) all sections, it'll show you your UV shells, which you can then resize and arrange however you'd like for texture mapping. It's actually been over a year since I've had to do it, and the fact that I can remember it is a testament to its simplicity.
Music wise... If you've got a Macbook : Logic Pro 9/ Ableton / Pro tools (expensive.very expensive) If you've got a PC : Ableton (I would go with ableton)/ FL Studio
Thanks for all the advice, but my requirements changed with my major. As it turns out, I hate computer programming.
Flash, and Ableton Live/FL Studio. Also, as an Adobe fanboy, I would say PS, but you are getting Gimp so really that's down to preference.
I've never seen a top music artist make a number one hit/amazing song with garageband It's just a really downgraded version of Logic Pro 9.