I have just installed Adobe Illustrator in order to know if that software is actually interesting for game design. I am currently using Corel draw. In general, I want to limit the number of software I use because having more software makes more stuff to learn. At a first glance, illustrator seem very similar to Corel draw.
Now is there some you that know if one of these software is really superior to the other. Maybe some a software is better for doing certain type of things.
I've compared these two on occasion ever since settling on Corel 8 over Illustrator 8 about ten years ago. Since then, Corel versions have gone some odd directions, but Illustrator has stayed essentially the same. Corel x4, the latest version, brings back everything good from older versions that worked better than in 10 and 11 and 12, but adds a lot more in the way of smooth functionality. Adobe Illustrator still seems stuck in 1985, as far as the interface goes.
So, personally, I'd go for Corel. Both programs can do the same things, but Corel is cheaper, and, even more importantly, the interface is more flexible. CS3 or 4 finally woke up to the power of customizable interfaces, but Corel started this in v8, and it's what finally settled it for me. My workspaces are heavily customized, with buttons from all sorts of commands stuck where I'll most easily see them when needed. Illustrator CS3 still thinks it knows best, and that's irritating to me.
It's not perfect, but no program is. But I've never found anything I can do in Illustrator that I can't do more easily in Corel. And there's a ton of stuff that is just more labor-intensive using Illustrator. So, while all of my digital painting and pixel-pushing are done in Photoshop, Corel is where I go for vector work.
Not going to start a feature by feature comparison, as it makes no sense, IMHO. Let's just say that both have strong points and weak ones, and both are capable of getting the job professionally done.
I have both installed, but only use Illustrator to check files I export into AI from Corel, for people working with AI, or to open AI files I get from other people. But that's mainly because I've been working with Corel DRAW since version 1 (that is 18 years ago!), so Corel's way of doing things just feels natural to me.
As a matter of fact, I think Corel might be a better option for hobbyists for three main reasons:
a) You can get the Home edition really cheap ($120 at Amazon). The only limitation is in allowed use, not features. But hobby game design is non-commercial use, so it's ok.
b) The Corel Suite includes Corel PhotoPaint . Though not as powerful as Photoshop, you're getting it as part of the package and is powerful enough for the hobbyist designer. It also inclueds some clipart and fonts, but not the huge collections included in the commercial package. Anyway, it's better than nothing, I guess.
c) I honestly think Corel's user interface and tools are a tad more intuitive than Illustrator's. But as I stated above, I might be biased.
That said, if there's a comparably cheap version of Illustrator available, it's worth trying. You might like it better than Corel.
I use Inkscape. It's free and it's powerfull. It uses a universal format. It may not be as easy to use as some of the expensive ones, but it works for me.
I am a graphic designer by trade and have worked with both programs. recently i have purchased the master suite by adobe. I all it is my opinion that the illustrator program is better equipped to handle design work. yes i know there are those who may disagree but the other thing that i have notice is the in the graphic design field the standard programs use are adobe products. So My Vote Go with the adobe products.
For a hobbyist doing prototyping, you can't beat beat inkscape + gimp combo. Inkscape isn't perfect. Gets a bit buggy with big files, but again for just pure prototyping, can't be beat.
If you need a bit more power, consider moving to Xara. It's relatively cheap and very fast...really fast. The learning curve coming from inkscape is high, but not impossible. Just give yourself a project and play around with it. I'm always curious how Xara fits into the Adobe-Corel opinion spectrum with the pros out there.
linky: http://www.xara.com/us/
I've been using illustrator for a little while, and I love it. It's very intuitive and very powerful. I've never used corel, though, so I can't compare them.
I'd second the statement about GIMP. I prefer Photoshop, but GIMP is an amazing piece of software, and it's free, so I use it for almost all of my work. I dislike Inkscape immensely, however. It bogs down so quickly for me. Probably something about my system, but Inkscape doesn't run.
Hi Larienna,
I am a Graphic Designer (currently only part time) who used to work with the Corel Suite as a hobbyist (from version 7 to 12). After that, I switched to Adobe because it is the industry standard. I have a couple of points to make.
Corel Draw: I enjoyed version 12, and could do some things faster or more easily than I do with Illustrator now. However, I never customized the interface, so cannot comment on such functionality.
Illustrator: There were some things I had to adjust to and learn to do differently (e.g., partially transparent gradients) than with Corel Draw. Overall I now like it better than I ever liked CD12, and find it more robust. But to be fair, I was a hobbyist when using CD12, and a fledgling professional when I started using Illustrator.
Inkscape: This is a nice little program; not nearly as robust as Illustrator or Corel Draw, but it is free and it does the basics just fine. My one grippe with it is that it is comparatively slow.
Photoshop: I used to love Corel Photo-paint back in my hobbyist days. But you would not believe how powerful Photoshop is; every single website I design is done through Photoshop (the artistic mockup, not the coding). As someone who loves Illustrator, what I love about Photoshop is that it can do vector graphics (using the Shape tool), and its effects are easy to change and easy to copy to other objects.
Generally I would say give the Adobe software a try, but is it prohibitively expensive. Its price is quite ridiculous actually. If you plan on using it for prototyping or as a hobby, I cannot recommend a brand-new copy of it. But if you can get an older copy for cheap, that I can recommend.
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As for 3D software, I would say it depends on your level of knowledge of or comfort with 3D editing software. I have not worked with any in quite a while, but know that I could pick it up quickly if I put in the time and effort.
If that applies to you as well, I would recommend Blender; I have used 3D Studio Max and Maya as well, and I am comfortable saying that Blender is the best open-source graphic software available (including the Gimp -- which is a fine program, but does not compare to Photoshop). I am no expert with any of them, so as long as you are not either, Blender will not disappoint.
The main difficulty with Blender is learning its particular interface, but once you do, it proves quite intuitive.
Others may be able to suggest a simpler and more intuitive application if you are looking for something basic (Blender is quite robust).
Hope that helps!
For 3d stuff that is easy to use:
NURBS: www.moi3d.com
Polygons: Google's Sketchup
Moi3D used to be free during beta testing, but now you have to pay for it. It's about $200 and its interface is designed for use with a graphics tablet (though you don't need one--it's a pretty cool and incredibly intuitive interface) AND not a small note: Moi3d is supported and still very actively developed by the gentleman who developed Rhino. This app can handle buildings to blobs!! It is just in its infancy really. Some really good and active forums on the website above.
Sketchup is just plain easy as pie for anything right-angled.
I don't want to be overbearing but Illustrator (and the entire Adobe Creative suite, including and especially Photoshop) are THE industry standard. And that goes for the design and print industries, both.
Learning to use Illustrator is transferable to a wide variety of fields (I used it last night to design a flier for our local Library) and can make you more valuable to a wide variety of employers.
Anything else is a compromise.
Lareinna,
Not sure what you mean when you say that Photoshop is just for editing photos and not to create original art. That is simply not true, especially for the latest versions.
A few years ago, I would have agreed that for pure digital painting from the scratch Painter could be a more powerful tool, but Photoshop CS3 is a very close match on the flexibility and custom brushes areas, and way superior on more technical aspects, so if I had to pick just one, Adobe wins that battle hands down.
It is expensive, though, and it looks more serious and less "fun" than other applications, but that doesn't mean it lacks on the creative tools department.
One note on the "AI is the standard" argument: it certainly IS the standard for professionals in the USA, but it definitely is NOT the standard on other countries. Just as Macs are the standard for design pros in the USA, but not worldwide.
And I want to second Bluesea's vote for Xara. I haven't used it for years, but it was an amazing program back then, and I've read great things about the current version. It uses a unique approach of blending vector and raster images that makes it an amazing tool for illustration.
Back in the day (begining, if I recall correctly, with Illustrator 88) Illustrator was purely for use with VECTOR GRAPHICS while Photoshop was pixel based. And, to further confuse things, pages were built in "Page Assembly" programs like Quark (or Pagemaker).
Today, for a myriad of reasons including computer power and user demand, both programs (Illustrator and Photoshop) offer some features that were once exclusive to the other. However, for the most part, Illustrator is still best for creating vector graphics and typesetting while Photoshop is the premier image manipulation program.
Adobe's Creative Suite(s) bring these (and other) programs together to offer a wide variety of design possibilities.
Well from what I have heard and by asking to some people, illustrator is for creating stuff and Photoshop is for modifying stuff. I will still give it a try.
I have just learn that there is "Photoshop CS4 extended" that does a bit of 3D stuff into it. I am curious how it works.
Explained this before, but what the hey:
There are two primary types of graphics formats, vector and raster.
Vector graphics are mathematical descriptions of lines and shapes. Thus if the graphic is a circle, the file says "draw a line with curves shaped like this, at this location, with this width and height," effectively. If you take that graphic and make it four times as large, the only real change is "with this width and height," so it looks exactly the same but bigger. Because it's all math, even if the image is huge, the file size tends to be pretty small. Illustrator's basic format is vector.
Raster graphics are a series of dots (pixels) of different colors. That same circle in a raster file would effectively say "7 white dots, 2 black dots, 7 white dots, next row, 6 white dots, one black dot, two white dots, one black dot, 6 white dots, next row, etc." until every dot is described. If you take that graphic and make it four times as large, effectively it just makes those dots four times as large, so it looks all chunky and jagged. Because every single dot has to be described, the file size tends to be pretty large. Photoshop's basic format (along with the gif and jpg formats) is raster.
One might be inclined to then think that vector graphics are then therefore superior to raster graphics, but the reality is that to make something look photographic -- richly full of details, shading, etc. -- it takes a hell of a lot of math, and the results still rarely match up. Anything your screen or printer can display, raster graphics can faithfully store. Not so with vector graphics.
So, vector graphics tend to be great for things that are easily described with math, like logos, type (fonts, these days, are vector descriptions of the shapes of the letters), and other things with clear mathematical descriptions. Raster graphics are essential for photographs and any other image that's richly complex.
Now the caveats and clarifications:
Caveat 1: You can make some incredibly complex stuff with vector graphics, but it tends to be way, way, way more work.
Caveat 2: Modern graphics programs, including Illustrator, Photoshop, and Corel Draw all have some ability to mix the two formats. In Illustrator, for example, there's the math of the main image and some more math that can say "put this raster graphic here, at this angle, distorted just so," and even "here's a description of the vectors, and some additional instructions for how to rasterize it," so you can apply raster filters and effects to vector stuff. And vice versa. So there's more gray area than what I described, but the basic concept is true: Illustrator and Corel Draw and Inkscape are for vector graphics, Photoshop and Corel PhotoPaint and the Gimp are for raster graphics.
Caveat 3: When resizing raster graphics, good programs use more complicated mathematics than "just make each dot 4 times bigger," using things like bicubic interpolation to create little gray dots in between the black dots, smoothing things out. Still, though, vector graphics can be scaled as much as you like in any way without losing quality, while raster graphics will always look at least somewhat worse when making them larger.
And the last caveat: this explanation is quite simplified from reality. The base concepts are all still true, though.
SO, both vector and raster graphics programs are perfect for creating new art, just different kinds of art. Photographs can only be modified in raster graphics programs like Photoshop, which is probably what you're actually reading/hearing.
I understand the difference between vectorial and raster graphics and the fact that software are starting to integrate both features. The problem is that if you want to create something, 90% of the time, you will start as a vectorial drawing. The is really few situations where there could be an advantage to start as a raster picture. Maybe to create textures or world maps.
I've been a graphic designer for 23 years, so I'm pretty sure that my experience is at least as valuable as whatever you've read elsewhere. You've come to a conclusion already that I don't think is merited.
Indie video game developer here (I like all games, see?)
For 3D work, I stand by Blender. It's not industry standard (That'd be 3DS Max, followed by Maya) but it's better. (Theoretically, I haven't used the others. Broke student and all...) Blender was created by an animation studio as an in-house program, because they found Max too slow and clunky. When they went bankrupt they released the source. The result of this is that an industry program is now available free. It's got a very dedicated team working on updating it, and it's quite good. It has a reputation for being very user-unfriendly, but that's simply not true. It just makes use of a lot of keyboard shortcuts, which you pretty much need to memorize. It's much faster than navigating the menus, although most stuff is there. It's always worth using keyboard shortcuts in any professional program, but with Blender it's really essential. That's really the only drawback. If you use blender, I'd try to get Yafray to work. (It's a raytracer plugin that produces much better-looking results than the internal rendering engine, although it is slow, and I'm having trouble getting it work.
There are a couple of other programs to mention here.
If you're using landscapes, I would point you toward Terragen. It's not very well-known, but it's a personal favorite. L3DT (the large 3d terrain generator) is also worthy of some note. Both are free for non-commercial use, with some limitations, and both have cheapish licenses, at most a few hundred dollars.
If you're doing really detailed model work, there really is nothing that stands up to the industry standard Zbrush. Blender can do some of what it can, but it's really not the same. (ZBrush is a 3d sculpting program that can also be used for texturing.)
I have also used KeyCreator for CAD stuff, which I am about a hundred times better at than 3D modeling. It's fast, and you can do mathematically accurate models, which is nice for someone as obsessive as I am. You get no details at all, but that's something you use other 3d programs for.
For traditional texturing (not what Zbrush does) the best bet is Photoshop, I think. (That's what the 3D support means, I think.)
For material creation, there is MapZone (free, not so great) and Filter Forge, which I haven't used, but someone on here likes. (I don't remember who gave me the link, but thanks, man. It looks like a nice piece of work.)
For shader creations (useful only for real-time rendering, and this means that I'm just dropping links) Nvidia has a decent-looking free tool.
I'm with Matthew on this one. It's a lot easier to either scan a hand drawing and apply color, or make a sketch from scratch on Photoshop, than to draw in a vector program; so a lot of things are easier to do as raster than as vector images.
Text in the latest versions of Photoshop is handled as vector elements, so you can edit and resize, etc as much as you need with no loss of quality, and it's more or less the same to set up text in Corel, Illustrator or Photoshop.
You can also create Bézier curves in Photoshop if you want, with the added benefit of being able to combine them with PS's raster content and masks.
I fail to see why you think there's such unbalance on raster/vector use. The first thing I do every morning when I turn on my computer is to launch both Photoshop and Corel, and I keep switching among both all day as I work. 50/50 sounds about right, probably even 60 raster / 40 vector. I've spent the last 20 years as freelance graphic designer, working 6 or 7 days a week, from 8am to 10pm, sometimes even longer, and it's always been more or less that ratio.
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Inkscape feels like a downgraded version of corel draw, so I did not want to re-learn another software. The only reason I would install it is if I ever build up an linux machine since corel draw is windows only.
I am currently corel draw 12, is corel x3 and x4 really superior that it is a must get right away.
For raster graphics, I am using the gimp and paint shop pro. I was not sure about getting photoshop because it seem that i'ts is mostly modifying photos. It does not allow you to create anything.
One of the issue with various software is that some software offer some feature or effect that another software does not have. For example, paint shop pro has various ways to generate a beleved 3d effect compared to corel photo pain which only has one. So one thing I was doing is to switch my image from a software to another as .psd format to make sure it's readable by Gimp and pain shop pro.
I don't know if this can also be done from corel draw to illustrator. If both software has unique effect of their own that is worth switching back and forth from a software to another, it could be interesting. But I don't know what file format I could use to do this.
In general I have 2 needs:
- A vectorial graphic software to create the technical aspect of the components of the game.
- Graphic software to create artistic content that will be used as picture or textures by the vectorial graphic software.
I am not very good at drawing, but if I could create interesting drawings with a certain software, that could be interesting. I know I can do a lot with corel draw with node editing and tracing which could probably allow me to do my own drawings. I have not explored this yet. I could probably come in with a decent picture especially if it's only 1 color, I would need to do some test.
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Are there simple to use 3D graphic software for creating buildings, landscape, etc.
When I was younger, I did a lot of map editing for video games especially Hexen and Unreal Tournament. I already thought about unreal tournament. but I realised that I could create a building or corridor in hexen, make s screen shot, enhance the picture and finally get something interesting enought to be placed as a picture in a board game. The only thing I am not sure is the copyrighting of the result considering that at least the textures and items are copyrighted (I know hexen is now open source, but there might still be copyrights on pictures).
So I was wondering if there could be an easy to use 3D software that could do the job. It reminds me of a board game I have called battlemist where the pictures on the tile where 3D landscape generated by computer. Being able to do that would be interesting.
battlemist : http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25
the expansion: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4350
Thanks for any input.