I really like MyPaint for sketching and concepts, and I’ve fiddled around with Paint Tool SAI a bit as well.
What programs do you use and what for? The more programs you try, the better fit you can find for your needs.
Alchemy, it used by quite a few well known artist as well including but not limited to Scott Robertson. Thing is, they intentionally leave out an undo feature. Once you get used to it, its not so bad.
http://al.chemy.org/
As you saw in the Krita thread, its also quite functional and I can see myself using it for symmetry based concepting.
Photoshop is a must, theres no reason someone shouldnt be using photoshop unless they are doing art strictly as a hobbyist.
For 3d:
Zbrush: Honestly I think every serious 3d artist should be using this, but thats just my opinion. (digital sculpting, painting)
3DCoat: (good for painting, best retopology including auto retopo, voxel sculpting) http://3d-coat.com/what-is-3dcoat/
Mudbox: Mainly just to make sure I know the app. It is one of the best digital painting and texture map generating pieces of software to date in my opinion. Not the best sculpting app. Work flow is one of the best, though best to avoid because you will miss its features in other apps and its still an Autodesk application.
General 3d apps include:
Autodesk Maya: (its a love hate relationship, love the app, hate some parts, cant stand the corp behind it all)
Modo: (Learning atm, not sure if I will make the full transition yet. One of the best modeling apps) http://www.luxology.com/
Blender: Currently transitioning more into blender and lessening the reliance on Maya. Never bad a thing to know some blender at least.
Other:
XNORMAL: For normal map creation (free): http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx
Ndo (photoshop plugin, simply amazing) (free for ndo1, ndo2 paid: http://quixel.se/
Real time:
Game engine: UDK (free for non commercial use, and even “some” commercial use)
http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/
Marmoset toolbag (3D preview and render for real time environments, would love for blender to be able to do this in the same manner)
Link: http://www.marmoset.co/ (Only $50, highly worth buying and supporting.
See:
https://youtu.be/arNmhMAC37M
(For free I would focus on Blender, Wings3d (great modeler), Sculptris, Xnormal, Alchemy/Gimp, Ndo1 (with PS), Meshlab)(UDK for non commercial use)
(For cheap, Marmoset Toolbag) (The rest will put a dent in your wallet)
When it comes to free applications to go along Blender, i use :
-MyPaint 1.0 (sad that 1.1 can’t work on windows) , still my favorite for painting, sketching and texture roughing, and works surprisingly well if you have only a mouse.
-Gimp 2.6.x , i have used it for years, much more stable and solid on windows than the 2.8.x serie, still excellent for texture editing (but not for painting).
-In the last year i have been using XNormals for AO and Normals baking, a -major- advantage it has over Blender baking is that it has antialiasing for the AO/Normals created, while Blender still force you to bake on 4 times bigger texture then resize them into a picture editor to emulate a 4x antialiasing.
-Before Dyntopo went into Blender i have been using a very, very lot Sculptris, and it is still an excellent application for sculpting (but with Dyntopo Blender catched up to it, though it still lacks a few usefull tools that Sculptris has currently) and painting on a sculpt (painting mode in Sculptris works smoother and better than in Blender)
I’ve been toying for some time with the free version of Artweaver, but while more limited than the commercial version, it is very good with a very nice brush system. But i don’t see it replacing one of the tools i use when it comes to texturing.
For 2D art I’m not very picky and use all sorts of stuff depending on what OS I happen to be in. 3D I exclusively use Blender.
GIMP/Photoshop - Image editing, Webpage mockup, and sometimes digital painting
Inkscape - Icons, Logos
MyPaint/Sketchbook Pro - Drawing
Krita/Open Canvas - Digital Painting
Aseprite - Pixel Art
For creating normal maps, I found a free piece of software called nJob: http://charles.hollemeersch.net/njob It seems to do a lot of what Crazy Bump can do, just with a little less control over the results, but hey it’s completely free!
I’ve used Alchemy before, but it’s really only for very raw concepts, and can’t be used for any sort of finished product (unless I’m using it wrong?)
Gimp and Photoshop seem to run very slow, why is that?
Probably not enough RAM. I have 16 gigs and Photoshop is always fast and responsive for me.
Anyways, for 2D art I am experimenting with a lot of software right now (PaintTool SAI, Krita, MyPaint, COREL Painter) but I am mainly using Photoshop or GIMP.
For sculpting I use 3DCoat and sculptris.
For general 3D use (modeling, texturing, rendering) I use 3ds Max, Cinema 4D and (of course) Blender.
I usually bake my maps in Xnormal and I use After Effects for video editing.
MyPaint is a very good piece of software, but it’s missing a few key features I’d like to see, such as an eyedropper that matches the brush size (allowing you to average between colours) and a better line tool. I think if those were included, and they improved their brush layout, they’d have a really top-notch piece of software.
MyPaint 1.1 has improvements to the line tool and a bunch of other stuff but currently only available on Linux. Not sure what the snag is for the Windows version.
When it comes out for Windows, I will definitely be getting it!
I have been using the Tree Sketch app to produce 3D plan models. It is a free app.
Other ones to consider are NodeBox, StructureSynth, Mandelbulber and TopMod (for a mathematical approach).
LOL, yet another project with one of those moronic “ideologies”, eh? I guess when it comes to open-source drawing applications, we’re doomed to scrounge from people’s goofy pet-projects. I have yet to see any offering that actually gives people what they want. Many come close (like GIMP), though each one has some major problem with it. For example:
The snag is that Windows support got ditched and is thus non-existent.
After investigating a bit, it appears that some non-trivial bugs in regards to GTK are blocking MyPaint ports. Links on this page that talk about it.
Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, Photoshop.
Intending to learn, Maya and 3dsMax at least a little.
A pity those window/gtk bugs with MyPaint may not be resolved, as unfortunately window coders/developers in open source are extremely rare, i tested some of TumaGonx releases that kindly try to build windows version, but it’s too broken (your brush stroke progressively lose your focus, breaking completely in comparison to where your cursor is, then breaking the application with crash) .
Hopefully someone will find a way one day, MyPaint 1.0 (and lower) is a very good sketching/painting application , it’s a part of my texture creation, and the 1.1 addition sounds really great.
Alchemy is a very cool application, though it’s not for anything regarding texturing for me, it’s only for fun sketching, but the “only” is not to be seen as a reductive comment because Alchemy is really great fun at what it does.
It is a ‘fast’ concept tool to come up with shapes, ideas, and other things. Use it and get a proper opinion of it.
Apparently there’s a version of Alchemy with an undo :
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?234110-Alchemy-with-undo-function
While it’s fun for quick mindless sketching, the lack of undo in Alchemy is just annoying.
Is Inkscape any good, I’ve used a lot of Adobe Illustrator in courses I’ve taken and I’m pretty comfortable with it, is it worth using Inkscape?
Microsoft Paint of course:
The older versions of MS Paint were actually decent if you wanted to pixel art, but the new version of MS Paint is just garbage.
You can get Paint.NET that originally was made to be some kind of upgrade over MS Paint but ended into much .
It has a lot of plugins for it and is free.
http://www.getpaint.net/