Blender

user interface of Blender showing

multiple views

If any one were to ask me to give a one sentence synopsis of Blender, I would have to say 'I can't believe this is a freeware program.' What a package for 3d modeling, rendering, animating, rigging and game creation. Believe it or not, this is a free program. All you need to do is devote a vast amount of time to get used to the interface (navigation was a bit tricky for me having been trained in 3D Max, but after a while it becomes easier) and location of the myriad drop-down menus. Luckily, Blender has a vast support area online and in downloadable files to train you through the basics, up to the more complex operations Blender can provide.

MODELING

Blender comes loaded with 3d mesh primitives for you to build from, polygon mesh, NURBS, bezier and b-spline curves, metaballs and font support. The process of building objects is similar to most popular/conventional packages.

RIGGING

Fast skeletal creation with interactive 3d paint for vertex weighting, fast auto skinning, bone layering for group organization. Overall I feel the rigging works as well as the high end software packages that sell for thousands of dollars.

Additional features include UV unwrapping, shader construction, particle systems and much more. One of the hardest areas I found to delve into was the 3d real-time game creation. This part of the Blender options is not for the weak at heart. The good news still boils down to the fact that you are not paying for this fantastic program so go ahead and visit their website and ive it a try.

Terragen

(A) Terragen interface

(B) sample Terragen image

Planetside software, providers of Terragen bring us a low cost (because it's no cost) landscape and natural environmental creator/renderer. In no time at all you find yourself wading through a variety of options for terrain, water, atmospherics and lighting to create stunning still images or animations. Written for use on MAC or Windows PC systems this small but professional program let's you edit all the same settings you would find in larger, more expensive packages like Bryce, but with the interface is what I would call user-advanced as opposed to user-friendly. It does have a large amount of drag onscreen component capabilities but from my experience, not as easy to navigate a Bryce. The results are something else that always leaves me shaking my head with disbelief that they offer a freeware program this goos. Terragen has been used in a variety of commercial products by letting the artist create near photo-realistic images. For those feeling adventurous, they can continue on to Terragen 2 which gives a much larger scope of options to create landscapes and animations. With a great forum and a few nice plugins to add nice effects, this program is well worth the effort to sit down and explore. You'll be amazed at how good a picture you can make in a short amount of time.