Table of Contents
Editing Tools
See also PMC Editing Wiki: Tools.
Editing Tools
This page is about editing tools, which are NOT specifically for the game titles we feature in our site. They are just the backbone of any good developers arsenal.
Check out PMC Tactical forum General Editing (tools) area.
3D Modeling
3DS Max
The heavy hardcore industry standard 3d modeling and animation program.
Homepage here.
Gmax
Gmax is a light version of 3DS Max, aimed for gaming community, its free of charge but is not supported anymore.
Homepage here.
Blender
Quite popular free of charge program.
Homepage here.
LightWave
Another well known, big bulky modeling program.
Homepage here.
ZBrush 3
Homepage here.
Cinema 4D
Homepage here.
SketchUp
Homepage here.
MilkShape
Homepage here.
MudBox
Homepage here.
Polygon Cruncher (3DS Max Plugin)
3DS Max Plugin that will remove polygons from your objects, can easily help by creating lower poly resolution LODs.
Homepage here.
Modo
Model, paint, render, animate, sculpt. Their homepage also has nice coverage of video tutorials. Modo is becoming (if not already) industry standard for 3D modeling.
Homepage here.
Wings-3D
Free 3D modeling software.
Homepage here.
Anim8or
Freeware 3D modeling software.
Homepage here.
UVMapper
UV Mapping software.
Homepage here.
UVLayout
UV mapping software.
Homepage here.
Tree, bush, plant, vegetation generator software.
ngPlant, powerPlant, treeD and arbaro.
Archivers
7-Zip
The best archive / packing software today, both for Linux and Windows. Only use 7-Zip. Its archive util which has more powerful packing capabilities than RAR, however its not scene accepted at 2021 yet (being reason for Linux support or whatever, its just not there yet). RAR and 7-Zip are compatible between each other.
7-Zip has command line version available for both Linux and Windows, this is very useful packing backups and addons/mods.
When you use 7-Zip makes sure to have enabled archive format: 7z, compression level: Ultra and compression method: LZMA2. These options create extremely small file size .7z archive packets.
Homepage here.
RAR
RAR was good and still is scene accepted archive program, both for Linux and Windows. It will make the packets much smaller than zip, maybe even 25-50mb on large files, its amazing difference. RAR can also open zips and many other archive formats. DO NOT USE RAR anymore, you should use 7-Zip instead.
Homepage here.
Zip
ZIP was hardcore the good old times, now it has died. DO NOT USE ZIP anymore, just use 7-Zip nowadays as its better in all areas.
Homepage here.
Image Editing
GIMP
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Free and open source software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
Homepage here.
GraphicsMagick
Free open source command line image converter. GraphicsMagick Image Processing System. Must have for all serious addon/mod developers.
Homepage here.
ImageMagick
Free open source command line image converter. Use GraphicsMagick instead, its more advanced.
Homepage here.
Adobe PhotoShop
Commercial garbage image editing proprietary program, somewhat difficult to learn for beginners but this tool really is feature rich and good to use (once you master it).
Homepage here.
Crazy Bump
Crazy Bump is nice tool to create normal/specular maps. Its command line driven and has free and commercial versions.
Homepage here
Jasc Paint Shop Pro
PSP is much lighter and easier to use than Photoshop. Jasc was purchased by Corel, so now they say PSP is located in their web page, go figure if its the same tool anymore.
Homepage (Corel) here.
ImageSynth
Discontinued. Luxology's seamless texture generator, stand alone and Photoshop plugin. ImageSynth v2.0 is the last version released before they discontinued it due bugs and lack of support.
IrfanView
Image viewer mostly, but can also batch convert images to other formats. Excellent image viewer.
here.
Genetica
Seamless texture generator.
Homepage here
Substance Designer and Substance Painter 2
3D Painter and Seamless texture generator.
Homepage here
Quixel
3D Painter, Normals toolkit etc.
Homepage quixel.se
The Foundry MARI
3D Painter, Texture Mapping etc.
Homepage www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari
PixPlant
Normal map and seamless texture generator.
Homepage here
ShaderMap
Normal map generator.
Homepage here
Njob
Normal map generator.
Homepage here
Misc
Perl
Used for lots of stuff. Check out Active Perl for Windows (Linux has Perl built in or easy to get etc).
Homepage here.
PowerGrep
PowerGREP is a powerful Windows grep tool, its very useful to search, replace/modify several text files with simple to complex regexp search phrases.
Homepage here.
RegExpBuddy
RegExpBuddy is powerful regexp software for all your regular expressions needs. It can be linked to other editors like EditPadPro. Learn, Create, Understand, Test, Use and Save Regular Expressions.
Homepage here.
TortoiseSVN
TortoiseSVN is an SVN client, used to version control a source codes etc. Check out tutorial how to install this client here.
Homepage here.
Sound Editing
Cool Edit Pro / Adobe Audition
Cool Edit Pro changed its name to Adobe Audition. Integrated audio recording, mixing, editing, and mastering. Record, mix, edit, and master digital audio files with powerful tools that bring flexibility and control to your desktop studio.
Homepage https://www.adobe.com/products/audition.html
GoldWave
GoldWave is a top rated, professional digital audio editor.
Homepage http://www.goldwave.com
Steinberg WaveLab 6
WaveLab 6 - Audio Editing and Mastering Suite. WaveLab 6 is the all-in-one solution for professional mastering, high resolution multi-channel audio editing, audio restoration, sample design and radio broadcast work right through to complete CD/DVD-A production.
Homepage http://www.steinberg.net/128_1.html
Sound Forge
Some sort of audio editing tool by ex Sony nowadays Magix
Homepage https://www.magix.com/us/music/sound-forge/
Audacity
The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor. Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
Homepage https://www.audacityteam.org
Terrain Editors
L3DT
Its a terrain generator which uses all sorts of “advanced” stuff to create the terrain in steps.
L3DT.
Wilbur
Wilbur is a free terrain editor, this is very easy to use and even has some terrain erosion features.
Text Editing
You never ever should use windows notepad or wordpad to edit OFP/ArmA configs or rvmat etc scripts. So here is few much better text editing utilities which include syntax highlighting and such.
EditPad Pro
Excellent text editor with syntax highlighting and other features.
Homepage here.
Notepad++
Its a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.
Homepage here.
UltraEdit
Powerful Text and Hex editor, can search and replace text in multiple files / directories.
Homepage here.
