Links

2d and 3d Art Tutorials

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LINKS- most recent on bottom, I never check them , all may be broken/gone/lead to porno site, not responsible, blah, blah..Last update June 2009


Neighborhood news This now contains new links since 2006.


 Povray Texture Library
 PlanetQuake -lots of good modeling, level building hints.
 3d Cafe - some O.K. textures.
Dr. Bhatty's RPG activities-he can code, also..
Genesis3d - A completely FREE Quake II engine! Imports quake .map files. 14MB.
 Contaminated.net -Get the Half-Life Modeling SDK (12MB) here free. Very enlightening; uses Max and Character Studio.


 Klaus Zerbe's Hoopla Cave - Get the Lightweight Framework for Genesis 3d (very good docs), also TrueGene, converts Truespace to Genesis .act.
Charles Bloom's Genesis Page -Like to see him play tic-tac-toe against Alexey, get his procedural .3dt's and Gbitmap Utils..

 Loonygames - A game magazine, search the archives for ANYTHING by Paul Steed, the Id  3ds Max Modeler, he's the best!
 International Game Developers Network - Haven't really gone here, they say it's nice..
Gamasutra - Ditto..
 Rabidgames -Ed Averill's Genesis wrapper, he's got the moving platforms, the switch-activated doors, the fog, the transporters, the particle systems,
download the source here!
 Garageband - Listen to up-and-coming musicians, you have to review each song to listen to another one.
 On-line-guitar-archive -This was off line because of copyright problems caused by ASCAP, now it's back,
find the chords/lyrics to pop songs.

http://www.lileks.com/institute/index.html -The funniest web page I've ever seen. Be sure to visit the Meat, Fashion, and Art Frahm areas..
 The Onion -pretty funny satire.

http://www.gracelessland.com-Who says programmers can't be funny?

http://www.oldmanmurray.com-An hilarious game review site.

 http://www.woolyloach.com - (live 1/12/2004)Where Ed  lives, he keeps a journal online.
 Michael Brumm's World Editor - The best Genesis 3d level editor, $20 cheap.
  PowerDesk -A free replacement for Windows Explorer. Now I need a free replacement for Windows..
 EditPad Lite -A free replacement for Notepad.

http://www.activeworlds.com/products/download.html (1.8MB)- This is an online bunch of areas where people have made art objects and animations. I can cruise through at a good rate even while downloading files.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010302/oneil_01.htm- Download the 66K  space flight demo of 2 planets, remarkable how detailed they are.

http://www.gimp.org/win32/  Gnu Image Manipulation Program for Windows (10MB).  This paint program appears to have most of the features of Photoshop, and it's FREE! Also a Linux/Unix version.

http://www.subgenius.com/index.html -If I was religious, I'd probably join this one...

http://www.microtopo.com-This $35 program loads DEMs (see below) which you can texture map with Digital Orthophoto Quads.

http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/DEM/7.5min/-These are 3d Digital Elevation Models for the United States.

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/Webglis/glisbin/search.pl?DOQ_QQUAD  -These are the satellite photos, type in say 'groom creek' , 'submit search,'click 'detail/browse?' and 'Show me the Preview', the satellite photo loads, right-click 'save image as..'  'groomcreeknw.jpg'.  Don't forget the .jpg part..

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/ -Go here to find out when Space Station Alpha passes overhead.

http://www.forteantimes.com- News of the Weird

http://adbusters.org-Stop corporate tyranny!

Genesis3d Forum-learn about the engine.

Irfanview- a free bitmap viewer, has the best thumbnail utility I've seen.

http://www.recent-software.com/-a freeware 3d engine, views Quake1, 2, 3, Wolfenstein, Halflife .BSP's

Something Awful-Move over, lileks.com, this is the funniest web site I've ever seen.

Wings3d-(932K) -a freeware Nendo-clone modeler, also requires Erlang (link on site), 23mb.

Dogwaffle- (10MB) a freeware paint program with natural-type watercolor, chalk brushes. 12/2002-there's a new $36 version, haven't tried it..

Blog You!-The many ways to say "Look at me, I'm boring!"

Satirewire-Funny.

Jean-Louis' Genesis Site-Basic tutorials about Genesis 3d.

OpenOffice A freeware Office clone, (50MB), used to be called Star Office, loads all the Evil Empire formats, spreadsheets, does web pages, etc. 

George Pirvu's ACK demo  -(32MB) a set of movies demoing the Conitec A5 engine (www.conitec.com)

Texture Maker-(5.2MB) This is pretty essential if you're going to make game textures.  Go here for beginner tutorials, and  this place for advanced tutorials. Price $70.  Update 2006, this is $140 now, $62 upgrade.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/blender/index_eng.htm  A particle systems editor, get Fraps (fraps.com) and capture some movies for your game explosions.
http://www.fourwinds10.com/- What kind of nuts are running around out there?

3dem digital mapping software -Lucky you, I paid $35 for this, it's free now. Get the DEMS (maps) at www.gisdatadepot.com,  also free, if you don't mind registering and waiting a while..

http://foundmagazine.com

People send in notes they find here and there, hilarious.

http://www.internet-soft.com/ftpcomm.htm

Free FTP software ftp commander, how I upload this file.

Update 2005: I use Filezilla now, also free.

http://www.caseytime.com/

Interesting guy, just started a game company.

Philip's House of Stock Photography- Philip Greenspun's sort of free photos (must give credit). His books are very good, honest

evaluations of the internet age.

16 best freeware utilities

Tons of Useful Game Development Links

Free Avi to MPG converter-this is tmpgenc, it reduced a 39 MB .avi to 1.4MB .mpg, windows media

player will play them.

How I Model Bodies (14MB) -tutorial on human torso modeling in wings 3d in .avi format, you need the

Divx player to see it, tip: space bar pauses.

Foxit PDF reader This free PDF reader loads huge PDF files in 2 seconds, they also have a pay-for

PDF editor, PDF's are valuable because no one can edit them!

Divx Player (7.6MB)-there's a also a Divx converter for free trial, Player is included in it.

Cam Studio (1.3MB)- records your screen actions, good for doing tutorials.

Sega Animanium (11mb demo)- interesting Japanese animation program, supposed to import/export Max 4.2, 5, 6,

Maya, don't have those though.

NVU html editor  

Free Html editor, only one I use..  There's a new version here 

called "Kompozer"

Ripoff Report - This link is about Rent-a-Center, but Ripoff covers just about anything. What the Internet is for.

outpost free firewall

Might have to search for this, the last version they gave away was 1.08.

free avg anti-virus

    works for me!

Except it scans your computer every day at 8 A.M. or whenever you turn it on ." YOU CAN"T DELETE THIS" it says, (Made by Germans).

New 2006, all free.

Sketchup 

Free building modeler (20MB) Very easy to use.

Virtual Dub-

 video capture program, doesn't do digital video

vlc
video and mp3 player-this actually does play DVDs I recorded off the satellite, sound is choppy though.

pdf creator

makes pdf files, haven't tried this yet

Jahshaka

A video editor/capture program, haven't tried

What's on your computer? 

This will tell you your hardware, software licenses and versions, and what kind of motherboard you have.

ProgeCAD LT 2006  This is the best free CAD program I could find (61 MB)

Gutenberg Project  search google for it, lots of free public domain books, 'The devil's dictionary' by Ambrose Bierce is good.
http://www.thefreecountry.com  Bunch of free stuff (added Feb 2007)
The Site Wizard Also by the 'freecountry' guy, many free web
page building utilities.

Astronomer  Something called Digital Universe DUv3pview.zip, 64MB, nice star viewer.

ad-astra Apparently a model/simulation of the entire universe!
http://www.gamedev.net The prettiest pictures on the internet are in 'image of the day'.

http://slug.ceca.utc.edu/all.php
News page, mostly geek stuff, but some general interest. "
Gliese 581 the first exoplanet (a planet orbiting a star other than our own Sun) that is anything like our Earth'. It orbits at 6 million miles from its sun (Earth is 93 million away), but its sun
is 50 times cooler.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/GAO.shtml This is a blog, but it's intelligent. "In particular, we has done put the schools in the hands of women with low IQs and little interest in education
". From K through Master's Degrees!

http://www.prairietumbleweedfarm.com/
Apparently they make $40K per year doing this, according to http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
Pine needles, anybody? Seth Godin is the guy who sold 1 hour videos of fish in an aquarium for $20.

Celestia (16MB) Free star and planet viewer.

http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/ They have old DOS games here.


game projects
game projects

flv player if you can't play Flash files in streaming mode, you can
download them and play them (at least the one I tried) with this, free.

music converter This plays/converts the .flac files found at freesounds
and also rips CD's to .wav or .mp3, free

You'll also need the flac plugin I think it's here

rezenative
Russell Welsh, web designer/programmer, links to local Prescott Arizona stuff also.

theory of fun  in Games, bythe guy in charge of Sony console games

http://www.theoryoffun.com/tfall.shtml His website

qgis A free Geographic Info Systems map viewer/editor. Check the 'about/contributors' everybody has pix, interesting
bunch. So far I looked at San Francisco and a map of my county with every road but no names. ArcGis is
the industry standard, only $900..

10 funniest internet sites  according to PC world (Sept. 2007) Apparently #1 steals content from elsewhere.

James Lileks (see link above from the 90's) is in the top 10.

Reference Desk All the news, and Carl Haaisen too!

David Gurrea's Textures   (added Nov. '07)These are all hand painted, free for non-commercial use, never seen better.

Activeworlds This has been around forever, I think I tried it in 1998, a virtual 3d chat world like second
life. No textures if you're on dialup though.  Costs $7 per month for full privileges.

Steve Abbott's Celtic Knotwork - a free program that ties knots and saves them as 3d files.

Best Freeware I've tried the jkdefrag, it took 24 hours to do a 114 GB hard drive, you're supposed to
disable your antivirus to make it go faster, but I couldn't do that. Anyway it apparently works.  So does cdburnerxp
at least on CD's, couldn't get it to burn a DVD, it said I had 8 GB to burn when I didn't.

Corel Draw Tutorials by suzannahacker, bite-sized and well written. Actually she copied some from other sites..

Wowio free ebooks
Yes, they're good books and they have comics, too.

Free Camtasia, Snagit This is Foster Coburn's Corel Draw Site, you can get Camtasia (a video capture tool) and
Snagit (a screen capture tool) for free, you must register to activate them.

cgtextures Free textures

http://3d-uroki.org/component/option,com_datsogallery/Itemid,67/func,detail/catid,2/id,37/

Really nice computer art from Russia.

war is boring  David Axe goes to war so we don't have to.

Ben Mathis  The best 3d characters I've seen in a long time.

Weird Universe -This is why the internet was m ade, also look at 'news of the weird' on that page.

Catch 'em being bad -list of people who've been arrested for crimes in Arizona. Colorado doesn't have this,
except for $$$$....




facepunch studios people sharing art.
Freeware list List of freeware
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/684 <

Book Picks
Red Dust, Pasquale's Angel, Books 1, 2 and 3 of the Confluence Trilogy,  By Paul J. McCauley. Science Fiction is not dead!

Books of the Long ,Short,New  Sun, (each one has 3 volumes, read them in order) by Gene Wolfe. Also the trilogy that contains "Claw of

the Conciliator" (may be one of the above).

Tales of Dying Earth- by Jack Vance.  Magick, magick, and more magick, by a guy who knows all the words.

Rainbow Mars- by Larry Niven. There's this tree, you see..

One King's Way- By Harry Harrison and another guy. Alternate history of the Middle Ages, 1 of a  2 or 3 book series.

Spaceland-By Rudy Rucker. Everything else he does is good also.

Empire of the Ants-Bernard Werber. This was made into a computer game that wasn't too good, I hear, the book is very good.

Timeline- by Michael Crichton. Life in the 14th Century; you might not want to even visit there, let alone live. I heard the movie sucked.

Street Hungry- Bill Kent.   About Philadelphia and food and a mysterious disease.

The Bear Went over the Mountain  William Kotzwinkle. Very funny.

Bloodsucking Fiends-  Christopher Moore  A funny vampire love story set in modern San Francisco.

Thank You For Smoking- Christopher Buckley  Political Satire from Bill's kid.

(Can't remember the title), but it's Scott Spencer's latest, about Daniel and Iris. You should have named it "Marvin Moist", Scott!

 Moving Pictures- By Terry Pratchett. Just 'disc'overed him, really funny. Has written about 30 books. Lots of Magick.

Sourcery-Terry Pratchett. Update – I've read about 10 so far, all pretty good.

A short history of nearly everything- Bill Bryson. Science for the non-geek, did you know the guy (Midgley) who invented

leaded gasoline also introduced chloroflourocarbons into refrigeration? He died before he could kill the rest of us.

Fluke, The Stupidest Angel- Christopher Moore. Move over Carl Haaisen, he's now the funniest writer alive.

Anything by Carl Haaisen, he writes hilarious mysteries about Florida.

Kings of Infinite Space- James Hynes. Paul Trilby's 2 weeks at the Texas Dept. of General Services.

Wigfield- Amy Sidaris, Paul Dinello, Stephen Colbert. I guess this is a written as well as an audio book, it's hilarious! WARNING:

contains filthy thoughts.

Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. The 'geeks' are the carnival performers who bite off chicken heads. 

America the book, by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Funny. He has a show on Comedy Central.

Possible Side Effects, by Augusten Burroughs. Funny.

Anything by Philip K. Dick, I'm reading about 15 I got from the library, 2 points for the Yavapai Library Network! He wrote 10 novels in 2 years ('63-'64), heard he was he a tweaker. Hilarious/frightening/surreal 
psychological stuff, only science fiction by accident.  

Anything by Brian W. Aldiss.

A Brief History of the World, by Patrick Cook.  Just grabbed this at random at the library, it actually is brief, and he
is way smart about these things.

James Joyce's Dubliners. The only Joyce I could understand.

Movie Picks

The Original Kings of Comedy- Celebrate America's Diversity..

Naked Prey (1966) Cornell Wilde. This would really make a great computer game.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1964) Taylor and Burton. This is really scary, because I've seen it happen in real life. In case your movie savvy doesn't predate 1975, these are 'actors' 'acting'.

The Thin Man-William Powell, Myrna Loy (1934)- the first comedy-mystery, never been topped. Shot in 2 weeks.

Shrek-(2001) Quality from Hollywood, wow.

Choclat-(199-something) Don't watch this without chocolate.

Space Cowboys (2000?) Clint, Tommy Lee, Jim, and Don win one for the Gipper.

Monsters, Inc. -More quality from Hollywood, wow.

As Good As It Gets-Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear. Dysfunctionals try to get well, funny.

Finding Nemo(2003)- Another good one from Pixar.

Levity B.B Thornton, Holly Hunter. B.B. Tries to atone for a 21 year old murder.

Strictly Ballroom (Australian) Ballroom dancing soap opera played for laughs, how did Hollywood has lost

the knack of making movies with a light touch like this.

Everybody's Fine- Marcello Mastroanni. A Sicilian decides to visit his 5 children in Italy.

The Bicycle Thief (1953?) Vittorio da Sica "A masterpiece of Italian neo-realism" but it's actually good, too.

Hidalgo (2004) Viggo ("Aragorn") Mortensen races his mustang against some Bedouins in Iraq in 1880-something.

In and Out- Kevin Kline is gay? Tom Selleck?

Mixed Nuts- Steve Martin. funny. Only time Adam Sandler is good.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003?) Sean Connery, a cast of 1000 computer animators. The computer

stuff actually blends in with the 'real' bits for a change.

Master and Commander...(forget the rest of the title) (2003) Russell Crowe as an 1804 British Navy captain.

8 1/2 (1960ish)  An odd movie by Federico Fellini

TV Picks

Tough Crowd, The Man Show, Chapelle Show-

Larry David- HBO, got this at the library, why wasn't HE

'Seinfeld'? I would have watched that.


3 funny Comedy Central shows.

Sponge Bob Squarepants- Nick, not just for kids...

Six Feet Under- Best show on TV 3 years and counting.

Link TV- Kind of Short Wave Television, home video of other countries. The World Music videos are far better than MTV's.


 NOTE: Some of these sites you might have to leave out the 'www' part of their address to reach them.

Radio Picks

Nothing on the AM (except Dr. Dean Edell and Dr. Laura (what would Dr. Laura do? RIP YOU A NEW ONE) or FM (except Car Talk and Wait Wait don't tell me) band these days, but shortwave has Radio Netherlands, the BBC, and China Radio International, the Chinese have a soothing way of talking. Once in a while I'll hear a language that is completely unrecognizable.  There are also internet radio stations in the United Kingdom
that broadcast at 10k 20k, dialup speeds, "different bad music".

Marty Bee Gets Hit By Hurricane Rita -

This is by a Reality Factory user, you won't see hurricane coverage like this anywhere else!

Wiki How-To List "How to invite a cloud indoors"? (#401) Added June 2009


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