Forums and galleries
Digial Media Forums
VFX Talk : Visual Effects and Compositing
3D Total : tutorials, forums, and texture libraries
Highend 3D : News, plugins, scripts, shaders, and incredibly helpful forums
CG Society : News, forums, wiki, challenges and galleries
11 second club : animation club, provides monthly 11 second animation challenges
CG India : online magazine with info on 3d, Animation, Computer Graphics and VFX
fx guide : industry news, features, podcasts, application tips and tricks, and online forums
Software Specific
Maya
Expertrating : Lots of maya tutorials
World of Maya : tutorials, mel scripts, gallery
Duncan's Corner : Area blog by the creator of
Maya Hair, PFX, Toon, Fluids, and nCloth
CG Arena : forums, tutorials, textures, galleries
The Area : All things Audodesk...blogs, downloads, forums, etc
Michael O'Rourke : lots of tutorials, free for students once
you create an account
Learning Maya : maya tutorial database, excellent collection
Zoorender Tutorials : maya tutorials, zoorender makes rendering
widgets for Mac users
MEL wiki : Eric Pavey created this tiddlywiki for all things maya scripting
MEL and API : Bryan Ewert's MEL and API how-to's
Pelting Tools : super mel script to enable model pelting
in 3D within Maya
rigging 101 : a rare website devoted solely to rigging
Jan sandstrom : lots of shaders and a few tutorials
3DM : lots of free video tutorials on a broad range of
subjects and programs
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Houdini
3DAET : lots of tutorials and impressive animation examples
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Houdini Tools : widgets and gadgets for Houdini
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od[force] : community knowledge-base for Houdini, great wiki
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Houdini Exchange : Community
database with assets, hip files, etc
Houdini Home : Official houdini homesite, links to tutorials, demo reels,
news and forums
houdini learning : database of houdini based sites and tutorials
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Blender
zBrush
photoshop
Xero Graphics : freeware plugins for photoshop, also
GIMP compatible
CG Arena : Photoshop project
walkthroughs and tutorials
Deviant art : tons of resources, mainly 2d, excellent user galleries as well
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gimp
gimp tutorials : many many tutorials on the free image editing app, The Gimp
Gimp brushes
: deviant art collection of gimp brushes
gimp tutorials : huge collection of gimp tutorials and snippets
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Gimp talk : tutorials, forums and galleries about gimp
Resynthesizer : free gimp plugin to aid in creating tiling textures
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Commercial Tools
apps
Color Wheel Pro : an excellent program that allows color
scheme generation, preview, and export
PFHoe Pro : an affordable camera tracking program with a sense of humor
filter forge : program to generate photoshop filters and procedurally generate
tiling textures
DarkTree : procedural texture and shader authoring
Find Sounds : browse a massive library of sound effects and
build a collection of your own
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headus : standalone UV creation and editing tool
Flix Pro : two pass, vp6 .flv encoder, makes amazingly small video
files of very high quality
crazy bump : tool for generating bump, normal, and displacement maps,
educational discouts
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training
Digital Tutors : lots of training videos,
good for basics
Gnomon workshop : broad range of training videos, expensive but
high quality
3D buzz : training videos on Houdini and Maya among
others, good free ones too
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Open Source Tools
2D
Gimp : raster graphics editor, alot like photoshop
inkscape : vector graphics editor, alot like illustrator
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3D
Blender : the infamous. built in game engine, compositor and excellent
particle system
DAZ studio : free character posing and animation program
Wings3D : sub-d surface modelling tool
terragen : near photo real scenery generator,
free for personal use
scenomics : 3d environment builder, very powerful
world-machine : complete terrain generator for visualization professionals
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Rendering
aqsis : RenderMan compliant renderer, getting MUCH better
since 1.4 was released
Pixie : renderman compliant renderer, some people love it
3delight : renderman compliant, not open source but first license
is free, professional
YafRay : excellent raytracer, integrates seamlessly with blender
Dr queue : renderfarm manager, ILM uses it
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audio/video
audacity : audio recorder, mixer and editor
ardour : recording, editing, mixing
VLC player : multimedia player that supports a slew of codecs
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coding/dev
anjuta : c/c++ ide, debugger, project manager
crimson editor : free source code editor, rsl and mel custom
syntax files available
python : powerful language, easy to learn, very useful to know
eclipse : java based development environment
xemacs : text editor, hard to learn, but brilliant once you get the keys down
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utilities
Voodoo : a free non-commercial camera tracking program for Windows, OSX, and Linux
Infra Recorder : free disc and iso burning utility
xnormal : generates normal, displacement and relief maps
cygwin : linux like environment for windows, provides access to a
ton of open-source apps
font viewer : displays your
installed fonts nicely
Colorjack : color theory visualizer, nice little widget for OSX users
riva tuner : GPU modder, trick your geforce card into
thinking it's a quadra
open office : office suite, sort of a pain to use but still better than microsoft
truecrypt : high quality data encryption
7-zip : archive packer/unpacker, supports many formats
subversion : version control system
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Rendering/shading
pixar's renderman
3Delight
Mental ray
My mental ray : tools, videos, materials, gallery, shaders, forums etc.
mental images : homesite for all the mental products
LAMURG : LA Mental Ray Users Group, excellent resource
digiteck3d : Miguel Santiago's mental site, lots of
tools and shaders
zDof shader : zdepth dof shader
for menatl ray
3dbuzz : mental ray sticky thread, hasn't been updated in
a while, but still useful
mental ray tips : master zap's blog, he works
for mental images
djx : great blog on using mental ray for maya, among other things
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Texture sources
portfolios
instruction
Software Specific
commercial tools
open source tools
render/shader
