What tools do you use for models/textures?

#1 i for one create my textures in 3d
as in sculpting those in Zbrush and rendering the diffuse map.
For Normal/Spec/HeightMaps i use a Mindtex a cheap tool - it does the job.

for Modelling
Blender

Sculpting zbrush/3dCoat & Blender

i recentlly tried filterforge
it looks pretty nice and delivers quick results that can be easily used in games.
however filterforge might be a bit expensive for some ppl.

#2 I use Blender for models and Gimp for textures and mindtex for the additional maps.

#3 3DS Max is the "industry standard" for 3D (EXPENSIVE)
Photoshop is the "industry standard" for 2D (EXPENSIVE)

Like Duion, I use:
Blender for 3D (FREE!)
Gimp for 2D (FREE!)

... and I'm just about to use a search engine to find out what "mindtex" is ...

#4 oh well

#5 I just noticed I use some other little tools from time to time, these are:

DDS Converter: eliteforce2.filefront.com/file/;29412
but I don't use it very much, since it does not have DXT5nm format and such things, but for batch converting into simple .dds it is enough also for batch converting other image formats. You should have the .dds plugin for gimp as well.

Halo Remover: www.reinerstilesets.de/de/programme/halo-remover/
That is a very important especially for alpha-vegetation textures. Most do not even know of the halo effect, but it is the most important thing in making your plants and other models look nice. With gimp you do not have direct access to the empty alpha channel data, it just stores the last used color in the alpha channel, which can make your models look ugly because of the mip mapping. You can do this with gimp with a trick, but it's complicated.

And if you need a good free normal map generator you can use njob charles.hollemeersch.net/njob I used it before mindtex and even now some times, because it is different in its features, sometimes you may want these. For additional tweaking you may want the normal map plugin for gimp as well, it is not that good, but sometimes useful.

#6 I upvoted MindTex on Greenlight - it looks pretty nifty.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=126396153

#7 3DS MAX, Maya, Sculptris, Blender, Meshlab, GIMP, Creative Suite 2 (Photoshop, Illustrator etc.) and Crazybump and nJob....Think that about covers it. Oh yeah, Poser for Animation.... .BVH files anyway.

Oh yeah... Terragen 1 and 2, L3DT, and of course World Machine.

My desktop is a mess....

Ron

#8 Anyone use xnormal?

#9 oh well tahst what i forgot :D
ye am using xNormal sometimes
to bake high density sculpts - tbh xnormal is probably the best tool when it comes to baking maps

best part about it you can bake your vertex colors aswell,
so for example if you painted your model within zbrush you bake the colors
as a diffuse map in xnormal.

Another great thing about it is how it handles the baking process, so far no other tool or app can beat that from my pov.

#10 Actually someone may be able to help me with this question seeming it's been asked.

I have just downloaded some models from the Smithsonian Museum website which are high detailed 3d scans of items.

The issue is they are in OBJ and I want to see if I can import them into torque all i've tried so far is FBX Converter which does OBJ but cause the model i'm trying is 300mb it just crashes.

What's the best way to convert it into something useable for Torque?

#11 Maybe it has 10 million polys or something like that if it is 300mb big...

#12 @NiN-NiN

If you wish i can take a look at it, could run it thru zbrushs remesh and decimation master.
At the end it should be lowpoly or well usable ingame at least.

or use MeshLab
its free and pretty powerful actually when it comes to solving issues with models
sourceforge.net/projects/meshlab/?source=directory

#13 2D
Lightroom: Manage and edit photos of materials (pay per month)
Photoshop: Create and edit textures (pay per month)
NVIDIA Texture Tools: Generate DDS files (Free Ps plug)
nDO2: Create normal maps (Paid Ps plug)
dDo: Texturing... (still a lot to learn... a lot!)

3D
3ds max: 3d modelling (old licence still working :)
Torque DTS utility: create easy T3D compatible files (Free 3ds max plug for old versions only)

3ds max is good but expensive... recommend Blender when having a small budget.

Never do batch converting if you're taking it seriously and always tweak the parameters with every export to maintain maximum quality!

#14 @J0linar

I would be very interested to see if z-brush helps it be more friendly for torque

Here's the download https://mega.co.nz/#!vEknGb4B!G80pFmLDL68J-mfTbbzyRGlyCfggakriETgu1GCh_kw

I will give meshlab a go soon as well and see how that fares :)

#15 done
do you plan to use it as a static asset in your game?

btw here is a pic of the reduced mesh


i will upload it next time, a bit short on time atm

and btw this is how it looked before


as you can see the points are so dense that its reasonabel that it crashed
T3D

10Million Polycount - that is the polycount of the raw mesh you gave me
that is just to much.

#16 Thanks for that j0linar :)

Yeah I knew it would be a big as it's a 3d scan from the Smithsonian but I'm glad to see the mesh has shrunk that is great. Was that all in Z-Brush?

I was planing to do a short Museum demo in the rift and wanted to grab a few of these from the smithsonian as they just released some 3d scans.

Hoping to make a somewhat educational fun museum demo in the rift so you can get up close to it and see what it looked like.

I will have to look into Z brush it sounds very handy :)

Does it convert as well to DAE? Only thing I was curious about is textures i'm assuming they were inside the original OBJ file so does that get extracted from zbrush or another program?

Thanks for the time testing and converting it j0linar I'll let you know how it all goes :)

#17 well zb is not able to export to gameready formats
but at the end its not even a simple modeler

Its an artistic arm update^^
and costs 700$ - so if i where you i would ask myself if its worth
if you are no artist then there is no reason why you should spent that much on a sculpting software.

Regarding the textures, no they are not there, i might have to look at the model
again - maybe they are hidden as vertex paint and since the raw mesh was that dense it probably got deleted in the proces, no idea tbh.

Anyways if you wish we can do this together as i highly doubt that you will
be efficient into getting all those models lowpoly.
What i would suggest is that you create a list of the models
and additional info - ragrding time (when do you need it)
and this is without pay, just to be clear.
However as am pretty busy, it might take its time till its done
besides that am sure you could do something in return for Greed :)

Now its up to you
choose your poison ;)
or if not just say so and i will upload the flight suit and you can play around with it, however it wont be textured.

#18 2D:

Photoshop
Nvidia tools
CrazyBump
Caustics Generator
After Effects + particular2 - for animated textues - only in file list form for sprites
MindTex
sometimes Blender

3D:
Blender
GMax - free on turbo-squid and almost identical to 3dsMax just a few missing features that people have added in over the years with scripts if you search for them
SpeedTree - very expensive


for Shaders:
RenderMonkey
Nvidias fx tool

Motion Capture:
Movimento
iPi markerless
Blender
OpenCV - created a small app for hand motion capture for reload animations dosnt work too well tho lol