http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/free/index.html
“project dogwaffle”
I actually bought the full version it was worth it… great paints, materials, canvas settings, pressure sensitive tablet support, image export, etc… and that’s all in the freeware version. awesome for textures.
full version has animation direct .avi export, onion skinning, particle effects (like maya brushes) .
Another good one is ArtRage2. They have a free version and a paid version at something like $20. Appears it’s made by some of the people that originally developed Painter.
edit I’ve also heard favorable stuff about Artweaver
Artweaver… looks a lot like Corel Paint, and behaves a lot like it. It actually works quite nicely. Right now, it’s replaced my previous sketch/painting program.
I’ve heard of these…does anyone know how they compare with Sketchbook Pro?
PIXIA is also a great free “painter” software:
http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/download.htm
It also features “stroke enhancements”…meaning that if you are a bit “jittery” and can’t draw a straight line then it can “clean up” the lines for you. It’s averaging is one of the best I’ve ever seen or used.
Personally, I rate Artweaver pretty highly. It has photoshop’s full layer functionality, and a lot of good features from Painter. In my opinion, the major omission is the ability (in Painter) to rotate the canvas.
Although this thread really should be in the other software section there is a good program worth mentioning. Deep Paint has been turned into freeware. It is probably one of the best paint programs for free(sorry windows only).