Useful graphic apps
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Visual Color Picker does exactly what it says
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Thanks James, impressive list!
I already use some of them but there's indeed a bunch to discover... -
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sure this is very helpful if you work with a lot of files:
http://www.mootools.com/plugins/us/index.asp
You can see all files as small tumbnails. It reads different files and you can also save them as different. Also convert files with batch command or polygon reduce with batch command and much more is possilbe. I could not be without it!
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http://www.artweaver.de/ is ignored.... simple and powerfull painting application for free
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Found this free photoshop plugin for normal map creation: http://cgted.com/
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Nice find Pixero.
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Plugin for Gimp for normal map creation:
(Only free software, as always
)By the way, do you know how to turn a normal map into a bump map? I want to use Bitmap to Mesh with a normal map, but first I have to turn it into a bump map...
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@pichuneke said:
By the way, do you know how to turn a normal map into a bump map? I want to use Bitmap to Mesh with a normal map, but first I have to turn it into a bump map...
Converting a normal map to a bumpmap/heightmap/displacementmap isnt so easy.
You can maybe fake it either by converting the normalmap to grayscale or using the blue channel as a base.
There are some programs that can do it rather well:http://www.crazybump.com/
Commercial, good but kind of expensive.http://www.xnormal.net/Downloads.aspx
Free? Can convert normalmap to cavity map but that isnt really a heightmap more like a occlusion map.http://shadermap.com/
Free command line version or commercial (19.95) pro version with UI.
Here is some examples with Shadermap:
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Thanks Pixero. It seems that Shadermap is what I am looking for (as I do my work for free, with free tools).
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@unknownuser said:
By the way, do you know how to turn a normal map into a bump map? I want to use Bitmap to Mesh with a normal map, but first I have to turn it into a bump map...
[Edit - I presumed you wanted to turn a mesh into a bump map - I may have answered the wrong question.]
We wrote a (not free) app to turn a mesh into a bump-map. The trick is to look at the mesh from head on and make the closer faces either brighter or darker. A bump map does not have colors, but uses intensity of gray scale to represent Z-distance offsets.
We did this by extracting all the faces and running them through an OpenGL renderer which turned the distance from the camera into shading intensity. This worked well, but it was hard to find a good application for it.
You might be able to get a similar effect by making the object white, using a parallel projection, turning off all lighting, turning off edges, and adding fog. Then the amount of fog should represent the distance from the camera plane, and product the bump map.
Al Hart
IRender nXt from Render Plus -
Thanks for sharing Pilou, Chaoscope is really beautiful!
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@al hart said:
You might be able to get a similar effect by making the object white, using a parallel projection, turning off all lighting, turning off edges, and adding fog. Then the amount of fog should represent the distance from the camera plane, and product the bump map.
I have made reasonable displacement maps like this actually. Best is to use hidden line face style (to get rid of face shading completely) and hide all edges in the style panel.
You may want to exaggerate the geometry a little bit to get the desired effect with the fog but grouping the whole thing and scaling along the Z axis makes it easy.
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Chaoscope
The more easiest program : 3 keys F3,F4 ESCAPE
Maybe a day it will gives the 3D Export
Usefull for make crazzy background
Click image if scroll bar
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@unknownuser said:
What is MeshMan?
MeshMan is a 3D modeling tool. It loads and manipulates 3D mesh geometry in a few useful ways. It supports multiple subdivision schemes for smoothing a mesh, decimation for thinning a mesh, transforms for rotating, scaling, or translating a mesh, can tessellate a mesh into triangles, and supports a few other minor manipulations.
The primary file format MeshMan works with is the OFF format, a simple format for storing 3D data. For more information on the OFF format, see the pages for my RoffView OFF viewing program and the related OFF Tools page. MeshMan works only with the most basic type of OFF files and does not load the texture coordinates that RoffView can handle. This is because handling that extra data is beyond the scope of MeshMan's manipulations. MeshMan can also open simple OBJ files, and can export to several other formats, including STL and PLY.
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@zacchia said:
sure this is very helpful if you work with a lot of files:
http://www.mootools.com/plugins/us/index.asp
You can see all files as small tumbnails. It reads different files and you can also save them as different. Also convert files with batch command or polygon reduce with batch command and much more is possilbe. I could not be without it!Skp files are only for 32 bit available
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http://www.artrage.com/Hands down one of the best 'painting' programs out there. The Ipad app is amazing and super cheap and the desktop versions are much much cheaper than Corel Painter and Artrage has all of the same functionalities.
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Thanks for the headsup on Artrage. I did not know it was now available for the iPad. Must check it out AND yes the iPad Apps are great value for money. This seems to be a GOOD trend. I imagine an app like Artrage would rock on the rumoured iPadHD
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A program I've been using for many years, but still not often mentioned is Xara http://xara.com
It comes in different versions, and is a very fast and nice vector drawing program as well as capable of doing a lot of bitmap editing as well. Great for materials as well as all kinds of images, brochures, pdfs, Flash animations etc.
And it is also excellent for making great web sites, which looks pretty much identical in all browsers - which is not an easy task to do by hand -
Don't know if this has been mentioned already:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/algoakekcdmbbikdjgjdahbfihboglmi?hl=en-US
For Chrome. 3DTin.
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