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Useful Resources

Michael Porter edited this page Mar 25, 2020 · 7 revisions

Photogrammetry

  • Meshroom by AliceVision. I think it is possible to run without an Nvidia GPU, but to get a good reconstruction you need a CUDA-enabled GPU. Here is a good tutorial.
  • Display.land by Ubiquity6. This is a free and easy to use mobile app that does the reconstruction in the cloud. You record a video using the app, the video gets uploaded, and then you get the resulting model. It is a social media app, but you can keep your models private.

3D Creation

  • Blender is a pretty powerful piece of software. It has historically been sort of an outsider, but now it is being routinely used for TV shows, movies, and video games. If you are just getting started, the donut tutorial is a must watch.
  • Mixamo requires an account to use, but it is free. Mixamo lets you upload a 3D character and then all you have to do is define a few points, choose an animation, and you are good to go!

2D Creation

Vector Graphics

  • Inkscape is pretty powerful, but sometimes tedious to use. However, there is a super great YouTube channel called Logos by Nick with tons of helpful tutorials for learning Inkscape.
  • Affinity Designer is paid software, but it is pretty affordable and subscription free.

Raster Graphics

  • GIMP has been around for a while and lots of active development is going on.
  • Affinity Photo is paid software with a one-time payment.

Assets

Always be sure to check the license of whatever asset you are using.

3D Models

  • TurboSquid is a huge repository of 3D models, both free and paid.
  • Free3D is not as big as TurboSquid, but it still has plenty of models to choose from.
  • Blend Swap is obviously geared towards Blender, but it has the handy option of filtering by CC0 licensed models which require no attribution. Not a huge selection, but there are some gems (this is where the twerking alien model came from).
  • Sketchfab also has a mix of free and paid models.

Textures

  • Texture Haven is a newer library of free to use textures. All the different files are included for realistic looking textures.
  • CG Bookcase also has an excellent library of PBR textures.
  • textures.com has low resolution free versions and high resolution paid versions of textures. Fortunately for us, the low resolution textures usually work just fine because LS limits texture resolution to 2048x2048 anyway. Generally these seem to be just image textures and lack all the various files for a PBR texture.
  • CC0 Textures is yet another excellent source of free PBR textures.

Images

  • Pixabay is the place to go for image assets. They have a large library of images in different sizes, and you can filter by photos, illustrations, vector graphics, or video. The illustrations/vector graphics are super handy when you need to create an icon for your lens.
  • Unsplash is another source for free stock photos.
  • Giphy is great for gifs. Be sure to search in stickers rather than gifs if you want something with a transparent background.

Music

  • Free Music Archive is a good resource of creative commons licensed music. Be sure to check for any additional restrictions on each track depending on your use case.

Fonts

  • Google Fonts has a nice selection of fonts. It is easy to browse and preview fonts.
  • Font Squirrel has a lot of choices with quite a few filters you can use to narrow down the style you are after.
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