Recently in Software Category

Here's a nice treat to all architects, interior designers, industrial designers, engineers and other professional and technical persons who uses AutoCAD frequently in their line of work.  It's a free AutoCAD application you can use for free!

Yep, you heard it right, it's really free.  Those professionals who have purchased AutoCAD know that the offline product is very expensive and not all people you coordinate your drawings with have access to this costly software.  So Autodesk, the company who is responsible for spreading the use of AutoCAD in the construction world, has made a solution.  They created an online AutoCAD application which anyone can easily access using a computer and an internet connection.

Want a really cool logo design for your company but want to save up on money on high priced logo maker softwares or artists?  Well, here's a really cool software that is accessible online and is very much free to use.

If you are a CG fan or a 3D Visualization and 3D Animation enthusiast just like me, you'll be amazed with this physics simulator Lagao Technologies Inc. is developing.

Autodesk has released a statement on their AREA website that they have been planning to redesign and reconfigure 3ds Max to improve its workflow, interface and overall performance.  They are currently calling it the Excalibur or XBR. 

Apparently, according to their statement, they have accidentally leaked the information out to the public during the AU 2009 in Las Vegas last December, thus their statements on the web.

Having converted my computer to a 64 bits Windows 7 from an old 32-bits Windows XP,  I installed and tried using 3ds max 64 bits version.  I was using the 32 bit 3ds max version before on a 32 bit windows XP and was doing fine until I used a 3ds max 2010 64 bit version installed on my girlfriend's laptop running on windows 7. I immediately noticed a difference between using the 32 bit version and the 64 bit version and it actually amazed me.

I am one of those people who really tried to save up on memory while using 3ds max by constantly checking up on the polygon count and then checking on my rendering settings, which was set to the V-Ray rendering system.  I also look at 3ds max's memory usage on the status window while it renders the scene.

I found another nice free design software that is both interesting and fun to use.  It's called Alchemy.  This design software, unlike the other design software, is used as an initial process in creating ideas, design and artworks.  What you see on the right is an example of what you normally get when you use Alchemy.

Looking for textures for your 3d modeling and graphic design work? 

It's really hard to find good textures to use with your 3d modeling design and graphic design projects that would suit exactly to your needs.  That is why every artist should have a wide range of texture library that he can easily pull out whenever he needs it.  The problem is, not all artists have a full range of textures in his library every time. 

Fortunately, we live in a time where a lot of materials and information can easily be pulled out from the internet.  This includes textures and photos we can integrate with our 3d modeling and graphic design work.

I found these two websites that have a lot of textures to choose from and can be downloaded for free.

This is a follow-up to my last post - GIMP: A Free Image Editing Software, another free graphics software that you can download off the web.  Although, unlike GIMP which is more of an image editing and photo manipulation software, this software creates vector graphics much like the popular Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.