Solomani666
Mongoose
Can anyone recommend a drawing program for towns/cities and another one for starship deckplans?
Pay is good, free is better.
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Pay is good, free is better.
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Looking For 2 Good Drawing Programs - Any Recommendations
- Thread starter Solomani666
- Start date
I use Paint.Net, a free program which is based upon Paint, but adds a lot
of effects and features. It is certainly not as elaborate as, for example,
Gimp and similar programs, but it has all I need, and especially a rather
low learning curve - if you can handle Paint, you already know the basics
of Paint.Net.
If you want to take a look at the program:
http://www.getpaint.net/
Please note that the website advertises the program as a kind of poor per-
son's Photoshop, but its actual strengths are more in drawing than in wor-
king with photos.
of effects and features. It is certainly not as elaborate as, for example,
Gimp and similar programs, but it has all I need, and especially a rather
low learning curve - if you can handle Paint, you already know the basics
of Paint.Net.
If you want to take a look at the program:
http://www.getpaint.net/
Please note that the website advertises the program as a kind of poor per-
son's Photoshop, but its actual strengths are more in drawing than in wor-
king with photos.
middenface
Cosmic Mongoose
Sketchup can do plans quite well...
http://biomassart.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/deck-plan-wip-the-maw/
http://biomassart.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/deck-plan-wip-the-maw/
Solomani666
Mongoose
middenface said:
Thanks.
Can Sketchup do a flat (non iso) deskplan suitable for printing out and playing on?
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Yep - just change the view (top). I believe middenface had some plans on one of the threads showing that.
For miniatures, playing with the scale and framing the view is quite doable (scenes make this easy to setup for printing independent of design).
As mentioned before, Inkscape is also great and free.
For miniatures, playing with the scale and framing the view is quite doable (scenes make this easy to setup for printing independent of design).
As mentioned before, Inkscape is also great and free.
I use ArcMap, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. All of these can be extortionately expensive, unless you're a student or an educator, then they can be affordable.
I've also had good luck with their open source analogues:
QGIS, Inkscape and the GIMP. However, if you're planning on publishing, the commercial programs usually have a variety of options which are more suitable for output, such as control of separations, etc.
I've also heard good things about Pixelmator, if you want an image editor that's significantly less expensive than Photoshop.
The GIS programs make Campaign Cartographer's learning curve look like a flat line, but once you've got the basic skills down, you can do just about anything, including calculating distances, creating custom map projections and working with raster imagery to produce contour maps, hillshaded views, etc.
If I had to pick only one thing out of the whole list, I would choose Illustrator. You can make both deckplans and cities in Illustrator, and just about anything else.
I've also had good luck with their open source analogues:
QGIS, Inkscape and the GIMP. However, if you're planning on publishing, the commercial programs usually have a variety of options which are more suitable for output, such as control of separations, etc.
I've also heard good things about Pixelmator, if you want an image editor that's significantly less expensive than Photoshop.
The GIS programs make Campaign Cartographer's learning curve look like a flat line, but once you've got the basic skills down, you can do just about anything, including calculating distances, creating custom map projections and working with raster imagery to produce contour maps, hillshaded views, etc.
If I had to pick only one thing out of the whole list, I would choose Illustrator. You can make both deckplans and cities in Illustrator, and just about anything else.
QGIS looks very interesting - have you used it on a Mac? I'm wondering how solid it is. I don't care for GIMP because I crash it too easily - and barely tolerate Sketchup on Mac because of that. Inkscape is less frequent.
It should be mentioned that Pixelmator is a Mac only app - it looks interesting, especially as it supports (again) Quartz Composer filters. It doesn't support Adobe or other plugins, though, IIRC.
Like many of the Mac products, one must have a version that supports it (most require 10.5/10.6 and above due to Apple's architecture and OS changes when Job's returned and brought the NeXT technology with him).
Adobe Elements is a lower end product from Adobe - I haven't used it myself, so can't say how good it is for actual creations.
Blender should also be tossed out there - its free and its powerful. But its learning curve is even steeper than the rest, IMO.
Inkscape, Sketchup, GIMP, QGIS are all multi-platform (Windows, Mac and all but Sketchup also support other UNIX platforms, I believe).
For Windows - http://www.irfanview.com/ is free and supports numerous plugins. It is an awesome viewer and really good at converting and manipulating images - its Lancoz scaling method is generally better than what Adobe offered (at least in older versions). It even has a limited Paint feature built right in.
Not only that - I don't think I've EVER crashed that program (been using for ~ 15 years!). I can't say that of ANY commercial product I've ever bought.*
Also for Windows - Paint.NET is useful and free. It supports transparency, filters, and layers, etc.
I should also mention, on any platform, from virtually any text editor (even EDLIN or VI):
*The free programs do, generally, accept donations!
It should be mentioned that Pixelmator is a Mac only app - it looks interesting, especially as it supports (again) Quartz Composer filters. It doesn't support Adobe or other plugins, though, IIRC.
Like many of the Mac products, one must have a version that supports it (most require 10.5/10.6 and above due to Apple's architecture and OS changes when Job's returned and brought the NeXT technology with him).
Adobe Elements is a lower end product from Adobe - I haven't used it myself, so can't say how good it is for actual creations.
Blender should also be tossed out there - its free and its powerful. But its learning curve is even steeper than the rest, IMO.
Inkscape, Sketchup, GIMP, QGIS are all multi-platform (Windows, Mac and all but Sketchup also support other UNIX platforms, I believe).
For Windows - http://www.irfanview.com/ is free and supports numerous plugins. It is an awesome viewer and really good at converting and manipulating images - its Lancoz scaling method is generally better than what Adobe offered (at least in older versions). It even has a limited Paint feature built right in.
Not only that - I don't think I've EVER crashed that program (been using for ~ 15 years!). I can't say that of ANY commercial product I've ever bought.*
Also for Windows - Paint.NET is useful and free. It supports transparency, filters, and layers, etc.
I should also mention, on any platform, from virtually any text editor (even EDLIN or VI):
- One can write postscript and make PDFs. PDFs are fundamentally just pre-processed postscript. Postscript can be send direct to a printer or opened and converted with the free Ghostscript or, expensive though older versions can be found cheap, Adobe Acrobat distiller. On Macs, one can also distill for free from the command line (though, I think PDFMark support may be limited).
For images (i.e. not PDF vector files) www.povray.org scene descriptions can also be written - yielding awesome results with the right patience and skills with this free raytracer+ that has been around for probably 20+ years.
If you can find it, there is also the older free BMRT which was ILM RenderMan compatible and actually used by ILM before PRMan incorporated ray-tracing... several free projects are around, though I haven't found any feature complete.
*The free programs do, generally, accept donations!
Solomani666
Mongoose
Gee4orce said:
I am neither a communist nor a tree hugging socialist hippy, so I am not a Mac user. Thanks for the suggestion anyway
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