(Mostly) free stuff for drawing, animation and video production
Antimony is a computer-aided design (CAD) tool from a parallel universe in which CAD software evolved from Lisp machines rather than drafting tables.
There’s an impressive screencast that shows Antimony in action.
Unfortunately, only available for Mac & Linux.
With Audacity you can; record live audio; convert tapes and records into digital recordings; Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files; cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together; change the speed or pitch of a recording.
Blender is an integrated application that enables the creation of a diverse range of 2D and 3D content. Blender provides a broad spectrum of modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing functionality in one package.
The fonts presented on this website are their authors’ property, and are either freeware, shareware, demo versions or public domain.
Free version no longer available.
Very capable AutoCAD compatible 2D CAD package. Only available via a subscription service (~£100/year is the cheapest).
Dxtory is a video capture tool for DirectX and OpenGL applications. It is very high-speed and works with small load. Dxtory can work with different codecs, including lossy and lossless.
Here’s a video link to setting up dxtory.
Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. Amongst other, minor tasks, Fraps can perform realtime video capture. Fraps can capture audio and video up to 7680×4800 with custom frame rates from 1 to 120 frames per second!
FreeCAD is a general purpose 3D CAD modeler. The development is completely Open Source (GPL & LGPL License). FreeCAD is aimed directly at mechanical engineering and product design but also fits in a wider range of uses around engineering, such as architecture or other engineering specialties.
HandBrake is a multi-platform, open-source tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.
Free (as in beer), full-featured video editor. Available for Windows and Mac. 64-bit only.
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Krita is an OSS digital painting and illustration application. Available for Windows & Linux.
Lightworks
MakeHuman is the free and open source software to create realistic 3d humans. The virtual human is ready to export in external 3d software (Blender, XSI, Max,…) or to quick render with the internal engine.
Microsoft Movie Maker is a very basic video editor, but at least it’s free.
Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. OBS uses a plugin system and both 32 and 64 bit versions are available.
A large collection of public domain clipart
Linux only video editor. Looks nice. As of August 2014 it seems (very) crashy, as can be seen here.
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
QCAD is a free, open source application for 2D CAD. With QCAD you can create technical drawings such as plans for buildings, interiors, mechanical parts or schematics and diagrams. QCAD works on Windows, macOS and Linux. The source code of QCAD is released under GPLv3. Also available as a “Pro” version [£££].
OpenSCAD – The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller
OpenSCAD is software for creating solid 3D CAD models. It is free software and available for Linux/UNIX, Windows and Mac OS X. Unlike most free software for creating 3D models (such as Blender) it does not focus on the artistic aspects of 3D modelling but instead on the CAD aspects. Thus it might be the application you are looking for when you are planning to create 3D models of machine parts but pretty sure is not what you are looking for when you are more interested in creating computer-animated movies.
OpenSCAD is not an interactive modeller. Instead it is something like a 3D-compiler that reads in a script file that describes the object and renders the 3D model from this script file. This gives you (the designer) full control over the modelling process and enables you to easily change any step in the modelling process or make designs that are defined by configurable parameters.
OpenShot looks like a simple, rather than feature-full, video editor. It is still being developed (having just successfully completing a kick-starter), however it is Linux only.
Pencil is a 2D animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.
Hobbyists, kids and backyard spaceship builders all agree that SketchUp Make is the easiest, most fun, entirely free 3D drawing tool in the world. We think you will, too.
Virtualdub