I’ve had several graphics freeware packages recommended to me by friends. This is my attempt to list them all, but I think I forgot one or two.
3D FREEWARE
- Blender — an all-purpose 3D and compositing package
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, Irix - POV-Ray — a free render engine
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux - Wings 3D — a 3D modeler
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux - DAZ Studio — a Poser competitor
Windows, Mac OS X - Google Sketchup — another 3D modeler
Windows, Mac OS X
2D FREEWARE
- Irfanview — an image browser
Windows - GIMP — an image editor
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux - Inkscape — a vector graphics editor
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux - Scribus — desktop publishing
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, OS/2 (!!!) - Bullzip — a PDF printer
Windows - Project Dogwaffle 1.2 — a paint program
Windows - ImageMagick — a commandline image editor
Windows, Mac OS X, Unix - Pencil — a traditional 2D animation software package
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux - ArtRage 2.5 Starter Edition — another paint program
Windows, Mac OS X - HDR Shop v1 — free if used for non-commercial purposes
Windows - CinePaint — HDR image editor
Mac OS X, Linux, BSD
Hey Jen, you need to add Terragen and Terragen 2 in the free-for-non-commercial-use area. http://www.planetside.co.uk/content/view/21/36/
B
Also, for generating PDF files from the command line, nothing beats sam2p (http://www.inf.bme.hu/~pts/sam2p/). The syntax can be screwy, but the PDFs it generates are perfect.