The Gimp
GIMP is a 2D graphical application much like Adobe Photoshop or Corel
Photopaint. However, unlike the two program just mentioned, it's free!
You can find information about the GIMP here:
http://www.gimp.org/
For an automated Windows installer, click here:
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
You may also want the following plugins:
http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=4816 for the DDS plugin (Saves
in .dds format, which UT2004/UT3 understands and is useful for a variety of reasons)
http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/%7ecocidius/normalmap/ normal map plugin
(for making normal maps - makes textures look much more realistic at a filesize
cost)
http://www.manucornet.net/Informatique/Texturize.php for making tileable
textures (GIMP includes its own tiling filter, but this one has more useful
options and just generally works better)
For people
who've used photoshop before, GIMP often seems very user-unfriendly. However,
you have two choices for "fixing" the UI to look more like photoshop:
GIMPshop:
http://gimpshopdotnet.blogspot.com/ (direct download:
http://www.computerdefense.org/gimpshop/gimpshop_2.2.8_fix1_setup.exe)
GimPhoto:
http://www.gimphoto.com/2007/08/downloads.html
So, here are some tutorials:
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ - the official GIMP page's tutorial list
http://www.gimp-tutorials.com/ -
supposedly the largest collection of GIMP tutorials on the web
http://tutorialblog.org/gimp-tutorials/ - a list of some other sites with
GIMP tutorials
http://empyrean.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/~nem/gimp/tuts/ - explains some useful
functions of some filters and plugins
http://www.netads.com/~meo/gimp/Tutorial/ - a GIMP walkthrough for beginners
http://gimpology.com/ - random GIMP
tutorials
The best way to learn is just to play around with it, but if you don't have
time, this should get you started.
Thanks to IronMonkey for most of this info. This article is based off
his "Standard
GIMP spiel."
|
