Web 2.0 gradients for GIMP

Thanks to BitBox for this one. Some sweet preset gradients for making sleek looking logos.

Get them from here:
http://gimp-tutorials.net/30-Ultimate-Web-20+Layer-Styles-for+-Gimp

Great Icon Tutorial

Ah, the anatomy of an icon. Luckily this sneaky little webpage squirmed through the web filter at work. Yes - that's right in this tutorial you get to see naked icons, built from the canvas up. There are no holds barred - its a great tutorial for all front end developers, graphic designers and all sorts of icon admirers. Great stuff. Great tut.

http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/08/23/anatomy.html

Itchy Animation's Light Tutorial

Lighting in 3D animation makes the biggest difference. That's my opinion. You can model the greatest looking Chinabean in the world but lighting is what really makes it magic. The best looking scenes in movies, 3D and otherwise, look that way because of the lighting. Getting great lighting is difficult though, especially if you don't know what you're doing. When it comes to lighting, I don't have a clue. That's probably why I found this lighting tutorial (http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm)
) so interesting.

Itchy (or whoever the dude is who wrote the tutorial) really goes into the technical detail - getting you to think about all the light that makes up a scene. Its really in depth, I even learnt quite a bit about lighting in photography. Parts 5, 6 and 7 didn't exist when I wrote this, but I hope he will be adding them soon. It is a great read for any 3D artists, and maybe even photographers and artists could get something out of it.

Deweirdifyer Plug-In for Gimp on Windows

If there's a software application worth paying for its Adobe Photoshop, but at around R4,500 its a staunch price to pay. If you're not going to be making money from it, its an even bigger burden to take on.

A much better option is to use The Gimp. It has all the most useful features of Photoshop, and is surprisingly powerful. All the graphics on this site was made with it and it is my free editor of choice. A really nifty portable version has also be made here. Unfortunately the interface does take quite a bit of getting used to and turns a lot of people away. Thats where the Deweirdifier
plug-in comes in. I found it whilst stumbling (surprise) and tried it out on my portable version. There was some tweaking necessary, so if you get stuck then let me know and I'll help you get it working. For all the simplicity of what it does (just adds a background window and groups all the windows together), it makes Gimp a whole lot easier to use.

I can really recommend this plug in to new Gimp users. 9 bananas. It'll get 10 when the bugs are worked out. Also its only for Windows users - I haven't yet found a Mac or Linux equivalent :(

Themed Fonts at TypeNow

Yes, I finally managed to update the logo on the page, and it only took three days to blog about it. If you're wondering, I got the Lego font from TypeNow. There's a whole bunch of really cool movie, game and band themed fonts there. Great for any purpose, especially themed events. I would read up carefully on the license before using it for anything commercial - They are free, but I would still be careful. Eight bananas.

SketchUp and Google Earth

Wow. I was honestly blown away when I discovered this combo. I have to take my beanie off to the guys at Google, they come up with some fantastic ideas. I'm talking about SketchUp and Google Earth. At some point SketchUp was obviously taken over by Google because its now toting their flag and much like their other products, is available for free download.

For those of you unfamiliar with SketchUp, it is a simple yet really powerful 3D modelling tool, mainly for use architectural design but can be used for anything really. Getting a good looking building together literally takes seconds, but here's the really cool part: Google's version allows you to place your building anywhere on Google Earth. This allows you to see your building right over the satellite image of your home, with all the contours and everything.

If you're really a contributing sort of person, you can upload your creation to Google's database, which I am assuming will one day replace the blandish looking, poke-your-eyes-out grey buildings they currently have in the program. I'll give this one 8 bananas, but only because it's not everyone's slice of pizza.

neatfonts.com

I found this catch on blendernation.com. Neatfonts.com is a free online font library. I always find it hard to find a good font and usually end up going with something plain, so I am always looking for good font sites. Neatfonts.com is nice and easy with a ton of really nice looking fonts and quick and easy download.

www.brick.com

Yes, this is the site of Acme brick company, which naturally sells bricks. Not too exciting at all, but also on the site is an architectural tool which allows you to choose the exact brick, brick laying style and even cement colour. The final image can be saved in a number of image formats making it the greatest tool I have come across for generating realistic brick textures.

A fantastic tool for anyone doing 3D architectural models. For more details see the latest blenderart magazine (http://www.blenderart.org/).

Cons:

• Textures are non-repeating - however you can make the textures really large.


• Bandwidth heavy - downloads textures from the net as you need them, so you will need a fairly good connection