What's Your Programming/Editing Poison???

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Finue on March 18, 2008 at 4:44am

For me, I'm completely in love with Photoshop. I've been using it for years, and I really like how it allows me to do everything and anything I want, in so many different ways. As for 3D, I've just started SketchUp and would like to upgrade to Blender soon, but I'll stick with SketchUp for the time being, since it seems easier for learning the ropes.

Permalink Reply by sinsual on March 18, 2008 at 10:39am

I'm an avid Paintshop Pro user. I love the seemingly unlimited creative capabilities that I can apply with it's functionality. I'm currently teaching myself blender and sketch up and I tell you, I'm finding it a real bear to learn, lol.

Permalink Reply by Nightfahl on March 19, 2008 at 9:31am

When I first joined IMVU two years ago, I was using PSP7..sort of. It's what I used, but I really had no idea what it's limits were as I was still very much learning it. Shortly after joining, however, I finally got Photoshop CS2. For a while I used both, as I knew where things were on one, but not the other. Now though...photoshop all the way and well...yummmm. I love it!
I downloaded sketch-up a year ago, and did it's initial tutorial. Then I tried to do imvu's tutorial on it and it lost me. I'm itching to get back in there and play, as it's driving me batty not being able to mesh the items I want. But now I'm trying to decide whether to go through sketch-up again, try blender, or possibly look into one of the other 3D programs out there.

I've also been known to use ultrafractal for a few of my textures.(which I then modify in PS)

Permalink Reply by Bruce Lehmann on May 14, 2008 at 12:03am

I use AC3D and Daz Hexagon for modeling. Also Cinema 4D due to its animating and lightmapping. I use Photoshop 7 for my texturing an image manipulation. I have useed PSP but I am more familiar with Photoshop because I use it at work too.

Permalink Reply by Nicholas Ernst on May 24, 2008 at 12:31pm

When it comes to the 3d programs out there, Blender is great...because its free. Everyone loves free, especially if (free == good). The only real problem with Blender is that it isn't terribly user friendly or easy for beginners to learn. If you're willing to put the time and effort into it, you can do anything with it that you could with some of the insanely expensive 3d programs out there.
Here is a link to the Blender Tutorials section of the blender home site.

Blender Tutorials

Alternatively, you could go for something like 3ds Max, which could cost in the realm of $3500 US. 3ds Max is slightly more user friendly than Blender. I'll refrain from offering my opinion as to whether this minor advantage is worth the hefty price tag.
Another advantage of 3ds Max is that almost any program that deals with 3d models will support its files. Most also support Blender, but I can't really think of any off the top of my head that doesn't support Max.

Permalink Reply by Alto Xeno on July 18, 2008 at 5:42pm

A long-time PSP user, I stopped upgrading when Corel took it over. Had been through the Corel experience once too often. Blender and the GIMP are my main graphics tools now, plus some experimenting with Wings3D. My son is a Maya expert (learned it in film school a while back) and has been promising to give me some training. For some odd reason I suspect his lady friends have priority on his time, because the Maya sessions keep getting deferred . Other graphic work with Xara and for things like signs and floorplans I mostly use SmartDraw. I have a couple of Wacom tablets to avoid mouse/trackball drawing pain.

Nvu on Linux and NoteTab Pro on Windoze for scripting and other coding (html, php, xml). I generally prefer hand-coding; don't care for Dreamweaver and similar where I can't immediately see exactly what code is being generated, but I confess I am taking a close look at Adobe AIR for Flash and AJAX projects. Oh, and I also just began trying out Scratch.