xNormal 3.17.8 released

An update of xNormal was released:

New in Version 3.17.8:

• Solved a problem scaling derivative maps.
• Recompiled using the latest libraries.

More information and download on www.xnormal.net

Mandelbulber 1.10 released

A new version of Mandelbulber was released.
New in version 1.10:

•  added tile rendering (without any image resolution limitations)
•  fixed bug: water animation worked only in flight mode

More info and download at www.mandelbulber.com

Free HDRI´s in the sIBL Archive from HDR Labs

HDR Labs offers free highres HDRI´s in its sIBL archive.

For perfect lighting you can download additional sIBL (ibl)-loader scripts for Lightwave,  3ds MAX,  Maya,  modo,  XSI and Cinema 4D here.

More infos and HDRI (IBL) downloads at www.hdrlabs.com

Free Goodies in the 3D World Advent Calendar

On the website of the 3d world magazine is an advent calendar where you can get many goodies for free.

The 3D gifts until now:

• Day 24 Exclusive free compositing software – Conduit Suite 3D for Macintosh
  
• Day 23 10 free mini Maya tutorials to improve your modelling
• Day 22 offered an exclusive free restaurant model set CG Workshop 
• Day 21 offered two exclusive free tutorials from 3D Total 
• Day 20 offered free textures from IDV 
• Day 19 offered an exclusive free Christmas tree model fromIDV 
• Day 18 offered an exclusive Old Wishing Well model fromDAZ 3D 
• Day 17 offered six exclusive models from Cornucopia3D 
• Day 16 offered two exclusive 3ds Max tutorials from Digital-Tutors 
• Day 15 offered 130 XFrog plant models XFrog 
• Day 14 offered set of metal fences, from Pariah Studios 
• Day 13 offered some video training on Maya’s Transfer Maps, from Escape Studios 
• Day 12 offered an Introduction to SpeedTree, from cmiVFX 
• Day 11 offered DAZ 3D EmotiGuy, from DAZ 3D 
• Day 10 offered the Old Village model for Vue, courtesy of e-on software 
• Day 9 offered a free set of Substances, courtesy of Allegorithmic 
• Day 8 offered the training video Beginner’s Guide to Image Planes in Maya, courtesy of Digital-Tutors 
• Day 7 offered the Anime Star Fighter character model pack, courtesy of DAZ 3D 
• Day 6 offered the training video Beginner’s Guide to 3ds Max, courtesy of Digital-Tutors 
• Day 5 offered an Eames LCW Chair, from Pariah Studios 
• Day 4 offered a Mixamo Animation Sampler Pack for M4 and V4.2, courtesy of DAZ 3D and Mixamo 
• Day 3 offered some fantastic Unity training from Digital-Tutors 
• Day 2 offered an HDRI set from Dutch Skies 360° 
• Day 1 offered an awesome free model pack for Cinema 4D from GreyscaleGorilla

To get the gifts go to www.3dworldmag.com

Meshmixer 07 update released

Autodesk released another free update of Meshmixer.
New in this 07 update:

• Restored main Drag-and-Drop functionality from meshmixer06 
• Mac OSX build available for Lion and Snow Leopard 
• Convert to Part now works with selections 
• vastly improved rendering speed (millions of triangles!) 
• improved brush performance 
• many bugs fixed

More infos and download at www.meshmixer.com

Unity 3.5 Beta available

The Unity Team released a Beta-version of Unity 3.5.

New in this version is a hands-on preview of Unity's upcoming Flash deployment add-on. Experience first-hand how Flash deployment in Unity opens up new publishing options, by enabling you to push your interactive 3D content to the web through Adobe Flash Player.

And there is a contest too:
Create and submit Unity authored Flash platform content by Thursday, January 5, 2012. The best entry will be awarded the Grand Prize of $20,000 USD with more prizes going to the runners-up.

More infos and download at www.unity3d.com

Autodesk 123D Beta 8 Released

Autodesk has released the Betaversion 8 of 123D.
New in Beta 8:

• Sketching and drafting enhancements
• My Corner and My Gallery – direct access to online storage and gallery
• Improved tools for laser cutting and 3D printing
• 3D printing directly from within 123D

More infos & Download at www.123dapp.com

Blender 2.61 released

The Blender Foundation has released Blender 2.61, the first update to Blender 2.6.

New in Version 2.61:

• Cycles Render Engine
• Motion Tracking
• Dynamic Paint
• Ocean Simulation
• More features
• Python API
• Add-ons
• Bug Fixes

More info and download at www.blender.org

6 free HDRI´s on ITC Graphics Lab

The ITC Graphics Lab offers 6 HDRI images in different resolutions for free.
The 360 degree panoramas are available in HDR and EXR format.

Download at www.gl.ict.usc.edu

3D Lapidary gemstone models

If you need 3d models of diamonds, brilliants or other gems for free, 3D Lapidary is the right place to go.
They have more than 100 different cuts of gemstone models available for download. The models are available in dxf, 3ds, obj and lwo formats.

More info and downloads at www.3dlapidary.com

TopMod 3D 2.223

TopMod 3D is a freely available topological mesh modeler.
TopMod 3D is based on a new paradigm that allows dynamically changing the topology of 2-manifold polygonal meshes. The new paradigm always guarantees topological consistency of polygonal meshes.

More infos at www.sites.google.com/site/topmod3d
Download at www.code.google.com/p/topmod

cgtextures

cgtextures is a texture website that offers thousands of free textures.
Marcel Vijfwinkel, being a 3D artist himself, knows how difficult it is to create textures without good photo materials. Users can download an amount of 15 MB every day after registering for the free account.

The site also offers some great tutorials for working with textures and making them look better.

Texture-categories include:
Animals, Bones, Brick, Buildings, Concrete, Decals, Doors, Fabric, Fire, Food, Ground, Grunge, Ink, Landscapes, Manmade, Marble, Metal, Nature, Ornaments, Paper, Plaster, Plastic, Roads, Rock, Roofing, Rust, Scrap, Signs, Skies 360, Skies Partial, Soil, Splatter, Tiles, Various, Water, Windows, Wood, Wrinkles, X-Rays

More info on www.cgtextures.com

Mandelbulber 1.09

Mandelbulber is an experimental application that helps to make rendering 3D Mandelbrot fractals much more accessible.
A few of the supported 3D fractals: Mandelbulb, Mandelbox, BulbBox, JuliaBulb, Menger Sponge, Quaternion, Trigonometric, Hypercomplex, and Iterated Function Systems (IFS). All of these can be combined into infinite variations with the ability to hybridize different formulas together.

Mandelbulber is released under an Open Source Licence (GNU GPL license) , and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

More info and download at www.mandelbulber.com

openfootage.net

You have a 3d object, but now you need just the right background to put it in?

openfootage.net offers background ressources for free. These include HDRI, panorama, textures and time-lapse animations.

More information on www.openfootage.net

TreeSketch 2.0

TreeSketch is a interactive tree modeler for the iPad from Steven Longay.
You can paint a tree, define contours, grow trees, manipulate branches  and adjust global branch-parameters of the tree later.
TreeSketch exports 3D models to .FBX so they can be used by all major rendering applications or viewed using Quicktime.

TreeSketch is, of course, free and available at the App Store here.


TreeSketch 2.0 - Promo Video from Steven Longay on Vimeo.

Texturecase

Texturecase is a website that offers free textures in many categories.
You can download 15 MB of textures for free every day and if you upload textures to the portal you can extend your download traffic.
Categories are:
Waste,Concrete, Ground, Roof, Food, Colour, Rock, Window, Tiles, Building, Glass, Heaven, Wood, Artificially, Marble, Masonry, Man, Metal, Nature, Paper, Paving Stone, Plastic, Shine, X-ray image, Shield, Other, Stone, Street, Textiles, Animal, Door, Ornaments, Water, Fence

More infos on www.texturecase.com

SketchUp 8 M2

Google has released the second maintenance release M2 for SketchUp 8.

New in SketchUp 8 M2:

• About 150 performance tweaks and bug fixes
• Better Ruby Script Installation
• Mac OS 10.7 Compatibility

More info about the M2 release on www.sketchupdate.blogspot.com

SketchUp 8 M2 is available for download in 12 languages on sketchup.google.com

Unity 3.4.2

Unity 3D is a game development tool that is also available in an free version.
Unity consists of both an editor for developing/designing content and a game engine.

You can develop games for PC & Mac, iOS, Android, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, web players and flash from one source.
Unity Spring 2010 Highlight Reel from Unity3D on Vimeo.

For more information visit: http://unity3d.com

Virtual 3D insects

Alexei Sharov has a website with 16 free 3D models of insects in VRML format.
You can get 3d ants, flies, mosquito and more

More information and download on http://home.comcast.net/~sharov/3d/virtual.html

Moviemation Facial Motion Capture Software 2.0

With Moviemation Facial Motion Capture Software 2.0 you can transfer movements of a real person face to a 3D model. To achieve this markers are glued on the face of the real person. These are recorded by a helmet camera. The software can track the movements of these markers and transfer them to a 3D face.

With new features and redesigned interface:

• 2D images can be converted into 3D movements. 
• With animated textures and facial expressions are more realistic. 
• The video and the 3D face can be zoomed and rotated.

(The free version is limited to 15 points, 250 frames and 640 x 640 resolution)

More infos and download on www.moviemation.de

Two HDR files from Dutch Skies 360 free until 31 December 2011

On the website of www.3dworldmag.com you can get two HDR files from Dutch Skies 360 for free until 31 December 2011 from Bob Groothuis, the photographer behind the popular Dutch Skies 360° series. Each set includes an 8K spherical background, a 4K spherical HDR for reflections, a spherical lightmap and a reference document to link everything together using the popular sIBL system. You also get a sequence of 11K exposures for post-production work.

These sets work with any 3D package capable of reading HDR files, including 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage, LightWave 3D and modo. To celebrate the release of his newest DVD, Dutch Skies 360° Volume 4, Bob is offering a prize selection including all four Dutch Skies 360° DVDs in his annual rendering competition. For your chance to win, all you need to do is create a render with the free HDR set created specially for the competition. The closing date is 31 January 2012.

More infos and download on www.3dworldmag.com

130 free Xfrog plants

Xfrog inc.,  the 3d Plantmaker, is giving away 130 plants for free
XfrogPlants are realistic, highly detailed, fully textured 3D trees, shrubs, and flowers, carefully modeled with Xfrog procedural software. They have 600 species available in libraries or as individual species!

The plants are available in the following formats: Maya, Max, obj, lwo, c4d, 3ds

They have free samples from 31 plant libraries available at www.xfrog.com

xNormal 3.17.7 released

An update of xNormal was released:

New in Version 3.17.7:

• Added support to import/export WebP images ( which is aimed to replace JPG/JPG2K/GIF/PNG images ). 
• Now it's possible to write image importers/exporters using Java. 
• The FBX mesh importer has been completely rewritten. Now it can load the tangent basis from the files which is specially good if you use the Unity engine. 
• Fixed several bugs ( CS5 filters, problem closing the SBM exporter in 3dsmax, use shortest diagonal, dilation in the OS2TS tool, Optix error message with some GPUs, etc... ).
• Added a new experimental renderer based on the Caustic Graphics / Imagination Technologies's OpenRL ray tracing API. 
• Added a new map type: the derivative normal maps ( which are aimed to replace old-school problematic tangent-space normal maps ). 

More information and download on www.xnormal.net 

Voodoo Camera Tracker 1.1.0

The Voodoo Camera Tracker is freeware and it estimates camera parameters and reconstructs a 3D scene from image sequences. The estimation algorithm offers a full automatic and robust solution to estimate camera parameters for video sequences. The results are useful for many applications like film production, 3D reconstruction, or video coding.

The estimated parameters can be exported to the following 3d formats:

• 3D MAX Script 
• Blender Python Script 
• Lightwave 3D 
• Maya Script 
• Softimage 3.9 | XSI 
• Textfile 
• CAHV 
• Cameras Feature Points 
• User Primitives

More Information about Voodoo Camera Tracker 1.1.0 can be found at www.digilab.uni-hannover.de

Digital Cut Out

Digital Cut Out is a free cut out site for architectural, landscape architectural, and planning graphics.  The entire site is free to student and professional designers. 

It offers cut out images in the following categories:

Home, people, plants, animals, furnishings, sky, perspective, vehicles.

More info at www.digitalcutout.com

MakeHuman 1.0 alpha6

MakeHuman(TM) is an open source, innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters. Features that make this software unique include a new, highly intuitive GUI and a high quality mesh, optimized to work in subdivision surface mode (for example, Zbrush). Using MakeHuman, a photorealistic character can be modeled in less than 2 minutes.

MakeHuman is released under an Open Source Licence (GPL3.0) , and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

 More info & download at www.makehuman.org

Free Cutout Textures from Vyonyx

On the vyonyx website (in the download section) you can get 150 cutout people, 200 cutout trees, many ressource photos and textures that are perfect for architectural visualizations.

More info & download on www.vyonyx.com

Ivy Generator 1.3

Ivy Generator is an open source program that generates ivy around objects.
The ivy grows from one single root following different forces: a primary growth direction (the weighted average of previous growth directions), a random influence, an adhesion force towards other objects, an up-vector imitating the phototropy of plants, and finally gravity. This simple scheme reveals that the goal was not to provide a biological simulation of growing ivy but rather a simple approach to producing complex and convincing vegetation that adapts to an existing scene. The ivy generator imports and exports obj+mtl files.

Ivy Generator is available for Windows, OS X and Linux at http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/

Free HDRI Studio packs

On www.deviantart.com you can get 3 HDRI Studio packs for free from user zbyg.
(in total 34 files)

More info and download:
HDRI Studio Pack 1 
HDRI Studio Pack 2 
HDRI Studio Pack 3

Edit: 
And there exists Highres version of some of the HDRI´s of the Studio packs downloadable on the 3dtotal forums.

Sculptris Alpha 6

From the maker of ZBrush, Pixologic, comes a free sculting program that is an elegant, powerful and yet easy to use 3D sculpting software, allowing the artist in you to simply focus on creating amazing 3D artwork. Gone are the technical and often tedious constraints typically associated with digital art.

Sculptris frees you from the need to worry about your model's geometry. As you model, Sculptris is constantly analyzing the surface to ensure that there are enough triangles to display the details that you're creating. If there aren't, Sculptris automatically divides the area under the brush while leaving the rest of the model unchanged. This also allows Sculptris to make better use of your computer's resources, since polygons are only added where they are needed.

More information & download on www.pixologic.com

xNormal

xNormal from Santiago Orgaz is a free application to generate normal / ambient occlusion / displacement maps. It can also project the texture of the highpoly model into the lowpoly mesh ( complete texture transfer, even with different topologies ).
It includes an interactive 3D viewer with multiple mesh and textures format support, shaders and realtime soft shadows / glow effect.
xNormal comes with some useful tools like height map - normal map - cavity map - occlusion - tangent/object space and spherical harmonics tools. All these computations are done using multicore/multithreading, distributed/parallel rendering, ray tracing and advanced GPGPU techniques.

xNormal is available for Windows.
More information & download at www.xnormal.net 

Free NASA 3D Models

The NASA has its own collection of 3d models related to its spacemissions.
The are almost 100 3D models free for download in LWO, FBX or OBJ formats.

More infos & download on www.nasa.gov

Autodesk 123D Beta 7

Autodesk 123D is a free 3D CAD software to help you quickly give shape to your idea, explore it, and most importantly, make it. Design precise and make-able objects using smart tools that let you start with simple shapes and then edit and then tweak them into more complex designs.

123D is available for Windows at www.123dapp.com/123D

Pixel Flakes Teaser Pack

A while ago xoio released a pack of some cutout people. Pixel Flakes found these extremely useful and as a result of this, they were inspired to create some of their own…

This is a small teaser for the upcoming 'Goodie Pack' which will include a variety of royalty free 2D imagery such as cutout people and trees. As well as this it will also include some top of the line HDRI’s which they have created especially for their renderings.

So until that time comes here's a little teaser of what you can expect:
www.pixelflakes.com

MeshMixer 07

MeshMixer is a free tool for combining 3D-models and sculpting. MeshMixer´s official name changed to "Autodesk MeshMixer" with version 07, so possibly the software gets a redesign in the future. Get it as long as it is free!

The software is available for OS X and Windows

More information at www.meshmixer.com

OpenFlipper 1.1

OpenFlipper is an OpenSource multi-platform application and programming framework designed for processing, modeling and rendering of geometric 3D data.

Currently supported platforms are Windows, MacOS X and Linux.

More information on www.openflipper.org

Wings 3D 1.4.1

Wings 3D is an advanced subdivision modeler that is both powerful and easy to use.
It is Open Source and available for Windows, OS X and Linux

More Information on www.wings3d.com

TextureKing

On the TextureKing website you get material textures for free.
Categories are: Concrete, Grunge, Wood, Stone/Rock, Metals, Fabric, Paint, Rust, Plastic, Dirt/Sand, Liquids, Plaster, Glass.

No registration required.

More Info on www.textureking.com

Google 3D Warehouse

The 3D Warehouse from Google is the storage place for models uploaded from Google Sketchup to the internet.
These, all free if downloadable, 3D Models are possible to download directly into Sketchup or are available in Collada file format.

More Info at http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse

Blender 2.60

Blender is a free Open Source 3D suite that is the very complete.
Modeling, sculpting, texturing, animating, particles, fluids, rendering and compositing is possible.
It is Open Source and available for Windows, OS X and Linux.
More infos and download at www.blender.org

See work that is done in Blender in the Blender Siggraph 2011 reel:

Texturepilot

Texturepilot is a website with thousands of free available textures and modelling references .
Categories include:
Animals, Fabric, Fences, Food, Ground, GrungeSplatter, Lamps, Landscapes, Metal, Objects, Ornaments, Plants, Plastic, Posters, Roofs, Rubbish, Seamless, Sequences, Signage, Skies, Snow, Stones, Tiles, Vehicles, Walls, Wood.

A free registration on the website is required for a free daily dose of 20MB of images.

More information on www.texturepilot.com

Meshlab 1.3.1

The free opens source software Meshlab is a great tool for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes (3D scan data). But because it has the ability to open a variety of formats and is multiplatform it serves nice as a 3D viewer or 3D converter too.
It is Open Source and available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

More infos and download at www.meshlab.sourceforge.net

Google SketchUp 8

First free 3D program is Google SketchUp 8:
SketchUp is a lot of fun. You can freely sketch nonorganic forms very fast.
The free Version is almost the same as the Pro version besides some exporters, printing and the Layout-program. You can export as Collada what should be ok. (in later posts i will show how you can convert this into other 3D formats)

Google SketchUp is Freeware and available for Windows and OS X.
More information on www.sketchup.google.com

Free 3D News start!

Lets bring this thing to live!
The news blog about free 3D tools, programs, textures, webservices etc. is here.
To have all tools listed on this site in the end, i will begin with existing tools even if they have no news at the moment.

Lets begin!