Tools we use to make games with Torque3D?

#1 Free/Open Source:
www.blender.org Blender - 3D Modeling
www.gimp.org Gnu Image Manipulation Program - 2D Images/Textures
audacity.sourceforge.net - Audacity - Audio Creation/Editing
makeHuman.org - Character Creator

Indie Commercial:
www.hptware.co.uk/forester.php Forester Pro - T3D Compatible Tree Model Generator
www.hptware.co.uk/medusa.php Medusa Pro - T3D Compatible Rock Model Generator

#2 Don't make the mistake and try to cheat your way around learning a real modeling program like blender.

#3 The only way to cheat your way around learning Blender is to have a friend who is a master at Blender - and will work for sandwiches....

#4

#5 I personally love Blender, and have had a great deal of success with it. The only irritating part is making LOD for the models. Does anyone know of a product that will generate a level of detail automatically that they have had success with. I am looking for something that I can export to Blender and back when needed.

#6 Sadly, not a free tool to help with LODs - but ZBrush has some very cool features that are spot on for that.

#7 @DreamPharaoh
You have the decimate modifier in blender, it is sufficient for the job. When I started 2 years ago blender did not have that, so it was almost impossible to do LOD levels, but now blender has all the basic features you will need.

@All
I just remember that I already started making a link-list with all tools I use and can recommend, here it is: www.duion.com/links/art
I will add more later, at the moment there is only the basics.

#8 Making a wiki page for this seems like a great idea.

#9 I assume this list is just for free tools, in which case Daz3D is good for cutscenes. The current version is easier to use. Anthing rendered has no royalty clause, can produce video or sequences of images, comes weith a variety of free assets. Only much use for videos and 2D, there is a lip syncing plugin (may be free now), quite useful if making adventure or hidden object games.

#10 Yes, my list is only for tools I really use and that are free (or cheap but this is an exception then), since my goal is to develop everything with free software.

#11 I don't use many free tools, although Daz3D is free. Of course, all the versions of the pre-MIT software for these engines were not free and TGEA was around $1000 at one time, so making games 'free' was not the original ethos of these engines, far from it.

#12 I've still got this on the top of my bookmarks.
www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/
While its not Torque 3D specific, the only real Torque 3D compatibility you need is the 3D format (DAE) which is Blender/3dsMax/Maya/Collada support. Everything is standard formats everyone uses anyway.

#13 Thanks for the tools shared and the link...

Not necessarily have to be free, whatever you used to make the game. Sometime we need to pay...

Nor has to be just tools for design hahaha can be libraries (AI, Network racknet, etc) or editors, river editor, editor clouds, level editor, tool for music, sound... Editor faces? like elder scroll, sims :) you name it!

I am going to collect and upload to the wiki in an orderly manner.

#14 Well if we're not limited to free asset creation tools then I use all the stuff below, some I mention because set dressing requires filling rooms etc with 2D images for posters and other stuff:

ShaderMap 2 http://shadermap.com/home/
Ultimate Unwrap 3 http://www.unwrap3d.com/u3d/index.aspx This has a pretty good decimator, one can usually get most models down to 50% with very little effort. Any lower and one has to remap the UV.

Voice Bunny is a good resource for getting voice actors, more or less a one stop shop http://voicebunny.com/

TimelineFX editor is pretty good for particles http://www.rigzsoft.co.uk/timelinefx-particle-effects-editor/

This is a design tool for mapping conversations and there is a free version chatmapper http://www.chatmapper.com/

The APM music store on the Unity asset store also gives access to a music library at about $37 a track that was previously only available to AAA studios or those with a music budget in the thousands (I know, done that) and that's a really big deal given the problems of getting a decent soundtrack together.

Everyplay is good as well. Don't be put off by the Unity logo, it is available for cocos2D, iOS and Android and in-house game engines, and will integrate with Torque as well, and it's free. https://developers.everyplay.com/

For cutscenes and as a cheap alternative to FaceFX (given that the latter is a subscription), the Reallusion stuff is quite good and is industry proven, tools such as - iClone and Crazytalk. Reallusion now offer a TTS service with numerous different voices and costs about 1/7 th of Voice Bunny. It works quite well but one has to construct the spoken language very carefully and get it working reasonably well in the windows TTS first. Once that is done, whilst not a perfect solution, the Reallusion TTS is pretty good.

http://www.reallusion.com

Not having FBX support does limit Torque in a lot of ways, almost every third party tool such as Reallusion or Daz or Poser all have game engine plugins that will only export FBX and these can be pretty good resources for access to custom made characters and cheap animation libraries.

For a cheap 3D model library I use digimation to fill my scenes - http://digimation.com/3d-libraries/the-archive/

This is used in the advertising world and TV and by a number of AAA companies, costs around $700 but has nearly 20,000 models of mixed resolution, many too high for game engines unless being used as a 2D render.
However, these are only OBJ or 3DS so need conversion, one also has to guarantee that the meshes cannot be lifted from the game engine, but they can be used in 2D games by putting them into marmoset toolbag and capturing good high res images, although additional work needs to be done using a variety of photoshop tools.

FastTrak 800,000 clipart collection is the only true royalty free clipart collection available. Really useful for decorating posters etc in scenes. This is still available from a guy in the UK but has to be ordered direct and costs around 40 GBP. Set decoration can be time consuming and I've always found this to be an invaluable asset even if one has an artist or two. Most clipart collections on the web are published by a German company and none of them allow Royalty free usage, there are always clauses in the license. This is the only clipart pack in twenty years of doing this stuff I've ever come across that really is royalty free. However, it's old software so definitely caveat emptor.

#15 I made a wiki page and will start to copy over suggestions from here sometime in the next couple of weeks, unless someone else does it before I get to it.

#16 Hi Thanks Daniel, I was unable to edit the wiki.. I will post a few tools that I used.

#17 I've been using blender, inkscape, gimp, substance painter, and torquedev.

#18 some tools I used: tinyxml2, tiled, L3DT, DeleD, Blender, Winds3d, gimp, inkscape, krita, myPaint, audacity...

#19 Pixlogic have some crackin photoshop plugins. http://quixel.se/3do

Though not exactly 'indie' considering overall price for photoshop combined with the plugins but i believe an indie license on the plugins is at $99 still or 250 for the suite

#20 feckit... not pixlogic, I meant quixel