Some of the creative software I use!

Hey again floofs!!

Someone asked what software I use for my art, and it's a great opportunity to make a list!! Here you go. :}}


-- 2d art --

Photoshop CS5
This is my favorite art program! (Mostly because I grew up with it.) I'm lucky enough to have the CS version as a perpetual license, since the Creative Cloud (CC) subscription can get expensive without a student discount. Photoshop works great for painting with stamp brushes, and pressure sensitivity if you have a drawing tablet. IMO it doesn't simulate real media well (like dripping and wet paints, smearing, watercolors), though it's still possible to get results with that visual aesthetic if you know how to cheese it. A good all around paint program. Nice for post processing since correction layers are nondestructive, so effects can be dialed up or down without changing the underlying art. Terrible for animation and pixel work. Tablet recommended, but I can actually draw with a mouse in this app.



Clip Studio Paint EX - https://www.clipstudio.net/en/
This is a very close second for favorite art program! This can do stamps, real media, inking, perspective rulers, and even basic 3d models import and posing. It's the best tool for frame-by-frame animation and the best tool for comics. A little janky, but worth buying and taking the time to learn for any kind of 2d art. Tablet recommended.



Aseprite - https://www.aseprite.org/
Hands down the best pixel art and pixel animation tool. Pretty janky interface but not a steep learning curve. I only use a mouse to draw in it, but a tablet works too.



Moho Pro 13 - https://moho.lostmarble.com/
I haven't used this in awhile, but it's a very powerful tool for bone-based 2d animation. (Rig vector or raster art with a custom skeleton, and then animate the skeleton.) The animation power comes from being able to create drivers, which are bones that animate other bones - so you can do stuff like make an expression dial that animates a bunch of other bones to reshape the whole face, and then just animate the expression on or off, or mix it halfway with another expression dial. This tool is janky and I recommend finding a course on Udemy or some free Youtube tutorials to learn it. I'd also recommend starting with Clip Studio or Aseprite first if you want to learn 2d animation.


Luminar 4 - https://skylum.com/luminar-4
I got this through Humble Bundle. The latest version is called Luminar AI now. It's basically an Adobe Lightroom clone. I loooove this tool for photo and artwork retouching. It presents a bunch of filters with sliders that you can dial up or down to work on lighting, color, and fx. It's a little janky but good enough for my workflow, and unlike Lightroom, Luminar is a perpetual license which is always preferable.




-- 3d art --

Blender - https://www.blender.org/
100% free and the most flexible all around 3d modeling app I've ever used. It can do modeling, texturing, rigging, sculpting, animation, compositing, shaders, and tons more. Blender's been around so long and the community is so huge, there are plenty of free tutorials to make it no cost to learn as well. If you're interested in jumping into anything 3d, I recommend starting with Blender! You'll be using it in all your workflows for sure! :V

Blender can import a variety of 3d models, so you can use CG Trader, Smutbase, the Unity Asset Store, and pretty much anything you can think of as a source for free models. You can even get the extension "BlenderKit" (squeeeehehee >w>) which gives you a search box to download models for free and auto-import them into your scene.



Daz 3d - https://www.daz3d.com
I discovered this while trying to find the best looking humans and an attachable clothing solution that'd work for Unity games. Daz 3d lets you drop virtual dolls into a scene, pose them, and dress them with interchangeable clothes, hair, skin and makeup. It's great for making still frames for comics or visual novels, and the best tool I've found for making photorealistic humans.

Daz 3d is quirky and crashes a lot, but it's versatile for character creation using premade bodies, posing, and set dressing (ie arranging props). It actually beats Blender for these niche cases, and is my tool of choice for kitbashing (ie rapidly experimenting with combinations of props, character shapes and clothing) and for making physically realistic renders. For animation and all other 3d workflows, I recommend Blender instead.

Fair warning: Daz 3d is a deeeeeeeeep and expensive rabbit hole. The base software is free and comes with a few human characters and some clothing, so I recommend playing with that first to see what you think. You'll want a strong budget and some focused buying strategies to navigate the insanity of their asset store. I'm happy to give recommendations if you poke me on Discord.



Zbrush - https://zbrushcore.com/
Industry standard and the best sculpting tool for Windows. Janky as heck and expensive as well, though you can snag the Zbrush Core perpetual version for a lower price or use it even cheaper on subscription. I've used this a little for posing some of their base models, but I ended up switching to Blender for most of my 3d sculpting since Blender's tools easily accomplish everything I've wanted to do so far. (I haven't done hyper detailed sculpting yet and Zbrush will be better than Blender for that.)

Substance Painter - https://www.adobe.com/products/substance3d-painter.html
Unfortunately Adobe got their hands on this one, so now it's an expensive subscription. But it's one of the best tools for detailed hand-painting 3d models. I'll be tinkering with this more the second half of this year.

Marmoset Toolbag - https://marmoset.co/toolbag/
This one is a specialty tool helping to make snazzy presentational renders and "bake" textures onto 3d models (ie merge lighting information into textures for better performance in video games). I'll be tinkering with this more the second half of this year.

Marvelous Designer - https://marvelousdesigner.com/
With this tool it's possible to craft 3d clothes, stitch the materials together and shrinkwrap them onto your 3d characters. The process is similar to making garments in real life. It's possible to make clothing for any creature, even ferals or aliens. I'm planning to use this later in the year.



-- Game design and misc --

Unity - https://unity.com/
This is a free, very robust and capable game design tool with a pretty huge learning curve. I use it because it can do 2d and 3d games, I already know C# (the programming language for it) and because it lets me write code just once to publish games to PC/Mac/Linux, web, mobile phones, game consoles and more.

If you've never worked in Unity and you're starting fresh, definitely take it steady and be patient since there's a LOT to learn. Despite how overwhelming it might feel at first, you can access top quality learning for free at https://learn.unity.com/ I recommend checking out Brackeys legendary Unity tutorials as well https://www.youtube.com/c/Brackeys If you use Telegram and want to use Unity to make video games, I also know of a large furry gamedev group.

Unlike the Unreal Marketplace, the Unity Asset Store is actually navigable. There's a zillion third party assets that help solve all kinds of problems or expand Unity's core functionality in useful ways. You can find a ton of free assets as well. There are efficient workflows to make game assets in Blender and bring them into Unity to quickly prototype a game. It's possible to build commercial games completely for free, publish them on Steam, and not have to pay Unity any royalties - so it's worth checking out if you're interested in gamedev.

Well known alternatives to Unity include GameMaker on Steam (best for 2d platformer or top down casual games), open source Godot (fully capable but community is still small), and Unreal Engine (state of the art but the biggest learning curve).


Obsidian - https://obsidian.md/
This free tool lets you do everything from editing basic text files to building a portable, offline Wiki with all the files linked together! Insanely useful for organizing stuff, in particular game design notes, world building lore, character descriptions, stories and anything else really.


Sublime - https://www.sublimetext.com/
A great basic text editor that works kind of like Obsidian, letting you have Projects with subfolders and text files. It doesn't do cross-file linking, it's purely to have a bunch of text documents open at the same time in tabs with autosave. The evaluation version nags occasionally but never actually expires, so you can use it for free.



Whew! This is a small subset of the creative software I use and recommend! There's also music composition, sound design, writing tools, productivity apps, video editing, web-based apps, and even more niche software within all categories. I have some promising new tools to try as well that might eventually make their way onto a future list. Boop me on Discord if you'd like any more info about any of these apps, or if YOU know some cool apps not listed here! ^w^