2D and 3D design tools

[Quethas]

I've been reading and thinking a lot lately regarding the Civ5 mod scene and wanted to become involved in some way, shape, or form. I had aspirations of my own fantasy complete conversion mod, or other useful things as far as UI goes, but this doesn't lend itself to my strengths particularly well, and there are many people out there with better ideas/more time on their hands than I. However, what I have noticed a need for is 3D design of new units, and 2D design for icons, tilesets and other essentials to make all the big thinkers' projects around here go a bit faster. So my first task would be to set up a thread with icon requests, another with unit requests, another with tileset requests, etc etc, and along the way generate a large database of assets for modders to use in their projects. The only problems are: a) I haven't done this in a while. I took a few classes here and there in high school and college related to graphic design, always was fond of it, but decided against making a career of it; so, it will take me a while to achieve any level of competency, but hey if any little thing I do can help someone out I guess that will be worth it. And b)...

The crux of the post: I'm not a millionaire and photoshop and 3D Studio Max ain't cheap, therefore can anyone suggest the best FREE alternatives out there?

I just downloaded Blender for 3D design, and Inkscape and GIMP for my 2D design and texture creation. These seem like the popular choices (from google ), but I think it would be valuable for someone with recent experience in the area to make some suggestions on freeware that might be useful for those of us wanting to help out in the mod scene!

 

[Jaythekiller]

With GIMP and Blender you re' done
These are the best free software
The point is at the moment you can't do nothing with blender (excepting learning to use it )
because the 3D importing tool from firaxis is buggy.
Anyway you can have some fun with GIMP modding icons for your civilization or whatever you want (you ll need a DDS plugin wich is available on the Gimp site)

 

[MerakSpielman]

Being a computer sciences student has perks. They throw all kinds of free software at us in the hopes that we'll go on to use it professionally.

 

[Galacticat42]

Being a computer sciences student has perks. They throw all kinds of free software at us in the hopes that we'll go on to use it professionally.

Same here, my 3D animation professor set up a deal with Autodesk to give us students any of their software free for one whole year. Not trial, no limits. Just a one year time limit. This of course lets me make units and buildings with Maya (it is a godly program in comparison to blender or 3DS Max).

 

[Quethas]

Color me jealous. What is the bug with the 3D design? Does that mean we can't import our own units yet? I saw that others had re-skinned some units with different color palettes and had them working, but I guess entering a new unit, applying animations, etc is a different animal altogether.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Last I heard, they figured out how to re-skin, but it involved writing over the existing models in the core directories.

Nobody has managed to actually import new, custom-made 3d models into the game yet (to my knowledge).