Tools (Software)

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Permalink Reply by Tang Mu on February 9, 2008 at 6:12am

Metasequoia LE - a more conventional basic 3d program than Sketchup and compatible with pepakura. Ooh and its japanese so the help docs can be a bit squiffy at times.

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Permalink Reply by Tephlon on February 9, 2008 at 2:29pm

MS paint comes with Windows and is not actually free.
Mac and Linux users have no access to it.

Besides, it sucks. Hard.

Please install GIMP and play around with it. It will make your life so much easier.

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Permalink Reply by Anubis on February 10, 2008 at 3:16am

seriously man, paint blows. its HELL to use. Gimp has similar functions but it has more customizable options and results in a much cleaner finished product. I only use paint for a very limited number of things. But i have come to love GIMPshop and learned how to use its functions well. You should too. I provides a smooth transition from paint to photoshop. thnx tephlon for reccomending it. :)

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Permalink Reply by Jerom on February 10, 2008 at 3:30am

And I think paint.Net could be a transition from Paint to Gimp. It's a free software that only runs on Windows (...but not on Mac and Linux systems).

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Permalink Reply by Neurogami on April 28, 2010 at 7:09pm

Paint.net should run on mono, so Linux should handle it, and maybe OSX

http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/

http://www.webupd8.org/2009/09/paintnet-for-linux-paintmono.html

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Permalink Reply by Jerom on February 9, 2008 at 6:30pm

Don't forget a basic tool: the pen! I do many sketches before using this softwares. I think you too.

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Permalink Reply by Tephlon on February 9, 2008 at 7:52pm

True. Very true. I should have called this thread Software, probably... :-)

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Permalink Reply by Cubeecraft on April 9, 2008 at 8:14pm

Agreed! Sketching is so important! A cintiq would be nice.

First I sketch out what I want, then I sketch out how I imagine I can put it together.

After that I mainly use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator so sorry I'm not much help in the free tools dept.

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Permalink Reply by Chad Bonanno on April 11, 2008 at 1:58pm

I cant WAIT to try a Cintiq!!! Just havnt seen one yet in person, but my industrial designer friend Mitchel Naquin RAVES about them!

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Permalink Reply by Mike P on April 27, 2010 at 4:07pm

my friend bought a 12" cintique...and once the initial awe wore off, it's pretty much just another wacom. Plus you really gotta have the skill to use it...if not, it's just a waste of money.

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Permalink Reply by Tephlon on February 9, 2008 at 8:21pm

http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?en_version

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Permalink Reply by Matthijs Kamstra aka [mck] on February 10, 2008 at 10:25am

The list you started with, is probably a very good (paperToy) design suit if you don't want to use illegal software. And there are really good opensource/freeware alternatives.

But I'm a spoilt little boy: for the design task I use the commercial programs we all know.

For some task I use freeware/opensource:

For image viewing I use XnView (Windows, OsX, Linux).
For creating and extracting archives I use 7-zip (Windows, OsX, Linux) and filzip (Windows)
For creating .PDF I use PDFCreator (Windows) and for viewing .PDF I use sumatrapdf (Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows) or Adobe Reader (Window, OsX, Linux)



The next link is a collection of freeware design software:
http://lifehacker.biz/articles/best-freeware-design-software/

And the next link is high quality open source alternatives to well-known commercial products:
http://www.osalt.com/graphic-applications

I hope this helps

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