Hey hey,

So I thought it would be fun to start a thread and list software you guys use that's free, or fairly cheap (<$100 please), that makes you more efficient when pushing polys or pixels.

Some guidelines...

1. Mention why its useful
2. Mention if its free or what its cost is (over $100 applications need-not-be-posted)
3. Link to its website

I'll start..

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SlickRun LINK

I use this software multiple times a day. Sorry, I use a portion of this software, called "Jot", several times a day.

SlickRun itself is an application that is always open which you type the name of the software in to you wish to run (Re: type "phot" and photoshop will open). I don't use this portion of its software, though.

I use "Jot". Jot is a note taking application within SlickRun. It's basically a super quick way to make notes without the hassle of saving & opening random notepad files or however you make take notes. You simply hit a key (in my case, Windows-J) and the QuickJot window pops up. You make your notes, and hit the key again to make it disappear. It'll be saved there until you delete it.

I use it whenever I need to copy down RGB values, shader parameters, XYZ coordinates, etc.

DropBox LINK

You've likely heard me talk about it more than once on these forums but I really do live by, or is it work by?, this piece of software. It allows me to easily transfer files between home & work. So if I want to bring my work home with me, or vice-versa, I simply save my work to a predetermined folder on my local drive and it sync's it between all my connected computers. It also has revision control.

It's currently in Beta, which is free, so you can sign up on the link I posted and use it freely now, or pay when it comes out of beta.

I posted a lot about it here, which you should read

CGTextures.com LINK

I'm certain most environment artists have used this website at some point in their career, but just in case here it is. In my opinion, its the best resource for high-res photographs of a wide range of material types and objects (Better than Mayang & Merlin if you ask me). I use this website almost exclusively.

It's insanely accessible, easy to use, and the search function rocks.

I recommend you rock an account on that site so you can break away from the measily $15mb/day limit for non-account useage. If you supply it with some pictures you'll even land yourself a free acount with an increased daily bandwidth limit.

CrazyBump LINK

Space age normal maps from the future. $100 for personal licenses.

FileBox Extender LINK

Nice little app to tweak a few basic windows ui things, very usefull.

Xnormal LINK

Xnormal, bitches. Use it, its fucking free and awesome.

Autohotkey - a great program for making macros - LINK

allsnap - makes regular windows snap and align like PS.. works with max windows as well. - LINK

Imageafter: http://www.imageafter.com/

Useful for those times that CGTextures.com doesn't have what you're looking for.



COLOURLovers: http://www.colourlovers.com/

Great place to find a good palette.



Color Schemer: http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

Another good place to throw some color ideas around.
I think area did something like this recently, but I still use this one exclusively.

Meshlab: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/
Someone recommended this over in technical forums and it can basically be used as a free version of Polycruncher. I.e. generate lowpoly models from hipoly ones. It probably has a lot of other functions I don't know about.

IrfanView: www.irfanview.com
A free image viewer program. Cycle through directories of images with spacebar/backspace. Opens nearly anything and it's nicely lightweight. I use it all the time to crop bits of screengrabs to save out. Image browser and batch converter are useful, too.

UltraMon: www.ultramon.com
$40. Extends the taskbar across multiple monitors, adds buttons at the top of windows so you can shunt windows from one monitor to the other or span them. Also handles wallpapers for dual monitors.

TextureDesk: www.spectralogue.com/texturedesk
Free 3D tiling texture viewer. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Pretty handy. The parent website has a half-decent free texture resource, too.

True Launch Bar: www.truelaunchbar.com
$19. It's a replacement for your quicklaunch bar that's customiseable, with submenus and tons of little options. There's a whole host of useless options like weather reports, but the core menu stuff and a few other bits and pieces is nifty. Saves quicklaunch taking up half your taskbar.

Direct Folders: http://www.codesector.com/directfolders.php
Awesome small windows app that allows you to quickly travel between your folders and 'favorite' them for quick access, amongst other stuff. helped me out a bunch.

Crimson Editor
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
My replacement for Notepad when I need to edit script files. I use it mainly for it's tabs, "find in files" search, and because unlike Notepad it shows line numbers.

CKRename
Edit, link was no longer working. Google name for download.
Rename lots of files at once.

XNView
http://www.xnview.com/
I use Irfanview as my image browser, but this has some cool features Irfanview lacks. For instance, it can take animation frames and compile them in order on a single sprite sheet.

Slickrun is cool I guess, but I prefer Launchy:
http://launchy.net/

alt-space and type. win.

Launchy is good if you use it for MagicWord application running. I use SlickRun for its Jot program, as I mentioned :P

(i second launchy)
Roadkill UV Tool:
http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm
uv stuff pelt map style in seconds, reliable and handy

RealVNC ($50 for Enterprise Edition) - Use your computer (well the computer acting as a server) from anywhere you have (decent) internet access. Polypushing potential? Have another of your machines do work, or access its files, without having to leave the machine you're working on. (Probably would work incredibly well with machines that use Brome's suggestion of dropbox). So far I've mainly used it for grunt work. My home desktop is more powerful than my laptop, so if I need to get a render done I make sure that my desktop has all the necessary source files beforehand, transfer a scene over when I'm finished with it on my laptop, set my home machine to render, then get back to work on my laptop.

I second realVNC and UltraMon... I've used both to great advantage.

I use Trillian for my chatting needs while I work. I generally don't chat much while I work, but when I do, trillian has features that make it really easy and simple. You can connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN, IRC, and Yahoo (no Gchat though, the only downside). It doesn't use many resources, and the interface is very minimalistic (after a couple preference tweaks). You can shunt chat windows around and dock them into different group windows, easily copy and paste info, transfer files, and generally keep your chatting as unobtrusive and simple as possible, so you don't have to stop what you're doing just to send someone hello.jpg. You can also download skins for it that customize the interface and make it even simpler. (other features I find really useful: flexible timestamp options, global messenger settings, chat logging, spam bot filtering)

Also, can I get a sticky on this thread? what what

Pidgin: Open source Chat Software (includes google chat)
OpenOffice: Open Source Office Software: Opens MSOFFICE files

Originally Posted by Filbot

Pidgin: Open source Chat Software (includes google chat)

yeah I'm going to second pidgin as well, granted I haven't used trillian in quite a while, I still prefer Pidgin, very minimalistic and connects to everything.

chatzilla: A clean, easy to use and highly extensible Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Firefox.

ACME Brick Designer
http://www.acmebrick.com/md/index.htm

Great little program for laying down a base image of bricks and then building up your texture from there after in PS. Possible to set amount of rows of bricks, change mortar colour and brick style.

Some great little apps here people, cheers.

Xfonter

http://www.blacksunsoftware.com/xfonter.html

it's now impossible for me to search for the right font in anything else

oh and Photomatix : http://www.hdrsoft.com/

which is ace, but not a work thing

Miranda IM
http://www.miranda-im.org
Portable enough to not require installation, so you could IM whoever from a usb stick with this very lightweight (it works nice on 486) program.

Synergy
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
Great for using your second computer with, turns it into a desktop which you can move your mosue and keyboard over onto and back

BlenAw forget it you know what it is.

if anyone can find a working link for Quant - the quantiser to end all quantisers - it would be well worth it, it's the most useful possible thing if you ever have to manipulate more than one palettised image at once, or knock loads down into a single palette

yes i've tried, but i'm not going to try too hard - i've got one, and it's ace

GhostIt
http://majorgeeks.com/Ghost-It_d1128.html
Lets you make a window stay in front of all others, make it invisible, and make it unselectable. Very handy if you are using ref for something but don't have a second screen available or want to make your programs window smaller.

colr.org LINK
I use this to extract color schemes from concept art to share with the team as Photoshop swatches. Also loads up nice images from Flickr, which usually do well as inspiration.

Photoshop Freebies LINK
I get my custom texturing brushes here when I can't be arsed to make my own.

TopStyle Lite 3 LINK
Nice tool for mocking up CSS style sheets. With tags classified into standards and browsers, and has a realtime preview window. You need this if you are working on your portfolio site.

Meebo LINK
Multi IM protocols in a straightforward web-based interface. Chat windows and IM list can be broken out into their own windows. Great if you haven't got admin rights on your work computer, or just don't want to install chat software. Its missing IRC though.

Snowfly: mibbit.com will sort you out as far as irc is concerned. Very complete and fast for what it is.

I can only second things that are already in this thread, sadly. Filebox extender, irfanview/xnview, pidgin, err... I'm forgetting so many things. Cgtextures and imageafter....
Xnormal, ofcourse! Launchy, too.

Quick and free way to resize images, for when you don't want to fire up PS/major app, the Image Resizer.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/D...powertoys.mspx

Some semi-usefull other tidbits in there that I never tried

[EDIT] Everything mentioned in this post is free or has a free version. [EDIT]
I saw realVNC mentioned in here a few times to use. Please be very careful using this application and serving your desktop out to the net. RealVNC is a fantastic application and I use it to get back to my desktops at work a lot. However, sharing it over some sort of unsecure connection (SSH, VPN...something) is not the best idea. If you are going to use it, either set up a VPN connection with OpenVPN Link: http://openvpn.net/

OR

Create an SSH tunnel from one machine to another. http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/21/h...etwork-access/

Mind you, this is only if you plan on sharing across the internet. If you are doing this on a LAN with no access to the net or behind a firewall of some sort, you should be OK.


While I am posting... let's add some Mac apps as well.

Adium: LINK: http://www.adiumx.com/ A fantastic free multi-protocol instant messenger client.
Quicksilver: LINK(s): http://blacktree.com/?quicksilver http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilve...is_quicksilver
Growl: LINK(s): http://growl.info/ http://growl.info/about.php


I'm sure I will come up with more later.