List of Freewares
Compiled for the ACAD Students by Daniel
Dugas with contributions from: Alan Dunning, Peter Flemming.,
Valerie LeBlanc, Brett Pawson, Anthony Gasca and Jim Goertz. November
2003 - January 2008
Disclaimer: This site provides links to
Free software. There are inherent dangers in the use of any software
available for download on the Internet. The Alberta College of Arts and
Design is not liable for any damages
that you may suffer in connection with using, modifying or distributing
any of the software listed on this site.
2D / 3D Modeling / Animation
Blender - All Platforms
http://www.blender3d.com/
Blender, the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation
and playback. Available for Windows, Linux, Irix, Sun Solaris, FreeBSD or Mac OS X.
http://www.pol-online.net/pixelshox_technology/index.php
PixelShox Studio's revolutionary new approach in 2D/3D animation creation helps both novice and professional
users in designing complex and interactive video effects through an intuitive Aqua interface.Such animations are
rendered in real-time on the computer's screen thanks to OpenGL and can be used either for personal enjoyment,
or professionally in any project where interactive visuals are required: VJing, multimedia installations, presentations,
concerts...
http://www.alice.org/
Free, Easy, Interactive3D Graphics for the WWW
http://www.artifice.com/free/dw_lite.html
A fast, fun and free tool for creating 3D models, images, and walkthroughs, from sketches to presentations.
http://www.povray.org/
The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics.
http://www.daz3d.com/studio/
DAZ|Studio is a free software application that allows you to easily create beautiful digital art. You can use this
software to load in people, animals, vehicles, buildings, props, and accessories to create digital scenes.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8764/lmuse/lmuse.html
LMUSe interprets 3-d Lindenmayer L-systems as MIDI files, or MIDI generated sound.
http://www.anim8or.com/main/
Anim8or is a 3D modeling and character animation program that I have written over the past couple of years,
not as a commercial endeavor, but because I love 3D graphics, animation, and programming. While it is far
from a complete professional level application like 3DStudio MAX or Lightwave, I believe that it has enough
capability to be of use to others.
http://www.amabilis.com/downloads.htm
3D Canvas is a real-time 3D modeling and animation tool that incorporates an intuitive drag-and-drop approach
to 3D modeling.Complex models can be constructed from simple 3D primitives, or created using 3D Canvas'
Object Building Tools. Modeling tools are provided to deform, sculpt, and paint 3D objects.
http://www.pandromeda.com/page/products/transporter.html
Transporter is a powerful utility and terrific introductory product to the MojoWorld family. Students, space
and sci-fi enthusiasts as well as family users will find countless hours of fun and surprises in store for them.
Transporter is your passport to exploring hundreds of planets in an alternate universe.
PD
- Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
http://www-crca.ucsd.edu/%7Emsp/software.html
Pd is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio and graphical
processing
PD Community Site: http://puredata.info/about/
GEM: "GEM" stands
for Graphics Environment for Multimedia and is an external (plugin) for
the computer-music software PD
Gridflow:
A Multidimensional dataflow processing library for PureData and Ruby,
designed for interactive multimedi
http://www.audiosynth.com/
A real time audio synthesis programming language
http://www.motorhueso.net/midipeng/index.htm
MIDIPoet is a software tool that allows the manipulation of text and image on a computer in real-time. It has
two parts: composer and player, with which you can, respectively, compose and play pieces of interactive
text and image on the computer.
http://freesoftware.ircam.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=14
jMax is a visual programming environment for building interactive real-time music and multimedia applications.
http://www.image-ine.org/
Image/ine is a Macintosh program that allows a user to manipulate visual source material in a live performance
environment. Video sampling and playback, keying, displacement and other effects are available with video
(live and recorded), QuickTime movies, text, scanned images, image files with alpha channels.
http://www.pulsar.org/2k/neattools/
NeatTools is a software application which allows users to create data flow networks. Combined with TNG-3,
NeatTools provides the ability to manipulate any input (a resistance or a voltage of 0-5 volts) and interpret
that input as a command that the computer understands. For example, the system (sensors, TNG-3, and NeatTools)
could monitor muscle activity and use that information to control the mouse, generate text, surf the web, play music, etc...
http://www.gephex.org/
GePhex is a modular video jockey software. The base visuals can be chosen from sources like video files or cameras.
Then they can be modified by filters and mixers. Each modifier has several parameters, that can be controlled by
signal-generators, input devices like joysticks, sound cards, or midi-devices.
http://vvvv.meso.net/tiki-index.php
vvvv is a toolkit for real time video synthesis and physical devices. It is designed to facilitate the handling of
large media environments with physical interfaces, real-time motion graphics, audio and video that can interact
with many users simultaneously.
http://www.ixi-software.net/
ixi software is a network of experimentalists in the field of computer music and computer music software.
includes: videoBat, Grainbox, polyMachine, SpinOSC, Shell, Picker, Slicer, Connector, Aurora, StockSynth,
auki, micWorld, spindrum, Sound Crystals, Viruses, Snd, Tree and Autocrap.
http://share.dj/downloads/KeyWorx0.9.zip
Get yer current version of the free audiovisual synthesis application KeyWorx for Mac OS X; includes the
hard-to-find 'googler' module for realtime scans of google's image archives. More info on the project at Keyworx.org...
http://processing.org/download/index.html
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images,
animation, and sound.
http://jklabs.net/maxlink/?page=about
The MaxLink java libraries enable communication between Processing and Max/MSP 4.5 on both Mac and Windows.
http://www.nullmedium.de/dev/flashserver/
The flashserver external for Max/MSP allows for bidirectional communication between Max/MSP 4.3 and Macromedia Flash 5.0 or later.
falshserver was written by Olaf Matthes.
aka.objects external objects for Max developed by Masayuki Akamatsu.
Lobjects- Max objects for manipulation of lists by Peter Elsea
OpenDragon.com by Norman Jaffe Look under Software for Max objects that are available
c74/share MAX/MSP file and media exchange c74/share provides a space for pooling resources related to max/msp
Max/MSP Annotated Resource Guide from Cycling74
cv.jit by Jean-Marc Pelletier-motion tracking for Jitter
jasch objects
Bill Orcutt's
Litter- random number generator- the starter package is free
CNMAT Downloads from the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies
Datareader from Andrea Polli
Gary Lee Nelson
Peter Swinnen look under Software
Max Objects Database
Nathan Wolek (under software)
Tristan Jehan Pitch tracker, Loudness estimator etc
tl.objects by Trond Lossius at BEK
C sound~
Teleo Max Externals This is the place to download all the parts that you'll need to permit Max to work with Teleo Modules and Accessories
http://www.sics.se/dive/
The Distributed Interactive Virtual Environment (DIVE) is an internet-based multi-user VR system where
participants navigate in 3D space and see, meet and interact with other users and applications. The DIVE
software is a research prototype covered by licenses. Binaries for non-commercial use, however,
are freely available for a number of platforms. The first DIVE version appeared in 1991.
http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk/maverik/
MAVERIK is a publicly available virtual reality (VR) system, which has been under development by the
Advanced Interfaces Group since 1995. MAVERIK enables rapid production of complex virtual environments
as well as providing many functions that are valuable to anyone developing applications with 3D graphics or
using 3D peripherals. MAVERIK deals primarily with graphical and spatial management, and integrates
with our other VR system, Deva, which extends MAVERIK abilities to multi user and multi application virtual reality.
http://www.kpovmodeler.org/
KPovModeler is a modeling and composition program for creating POV-Ray (TM) scenes in KDE. KPovModeler
supports now almost all functionality of POV-Ray 3.1.
Linux and other Unix.
http://www.wings3d.com/
Wings 3D is a subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware.
It is possible to assign materials, vertex color, UV coordinates and textures, but there will be improvements
in those features before Wings goes 1.0.
http://www.gimp.org/
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software
suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
http://www.inkscape.org/
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Picassa2
- Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
http://www.picasa.com/index.php
Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the
pictures on your PC. Every time
you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones
you forgot you had) and sorts them
into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize
http://www.phixr.com/
Phixr is an online photo editor, a free photo editor or picture editor that lives within your web browser.
You don't need to install any software. ...
http://www.irfanview.com/
Free for non-commercial use, 32-Bit graphic viewer
http://snipshot.com/
Snipshot lets you crop, rotate, resize, enhance, or recolor any of your digital pictures within your browser for free—no download necessary.
ResizR
- online
http://resizr.lord-lance.com/
ResizR is a nifty, free and very useful little helper. ResizR allows you
to resize an image from your local computer or the web.
http://preloadr.com/
Preloadr is a free service providing image manipulation functions linked with your Flickr account. It is designed to pre-process photos uploaded to Flickr.
http://www.shrinkpictures.com/
Online image resize utility to resize pictures or photos and images quickly for free. Resize jpg, png or gif pictures and Digital Photos.
http://databaseaudio.co.uk/
freeware resources for electronic musicians :
the most accurate and complete directory of freeware audio software available anywhere ...
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity is a free multi-track sound editor for MacOS, Windows, and Linux. It can record directly or import
WAV, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AIFF, and many other formats. Features include built in effects, VST plugin
loading, fast editing, and unlimited undo.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
http://whamb.com/?heading=home&?lang=en
Whamb is a Digital Audio Player for Mac OS X. For now, it supports Audio CDs, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files
and Internet streams. Please take the time to read the following information before trying it.
see: oggvorbis
http://www.jazzware.com/zope
JAZZ++ is a full featured, audio capable midi sequencer for Linux and Windows. JAZZ++ offers a lot of
functions normally only found in expensive sequencer software, and is used by professionals and
hobby musicians all over the world.
http://www.finalemusic.com/
Finale® NotePad™ 2003 is FREE introductory notation software that lets you create, play, print and post your music.
http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?&key=/products/details.cfm&template=download&itemid=2040&langid=1
Pro Tools FREE offers up to 8 tracks of audio and 48 tracks of MIDI, real-time plug-ins, and many of
the same editing and mixing features the pros use.
http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
ChucK is a new audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance
see: TOPLAP
http://www.speech.kth.se/wavesurfer/index.html
WaveSurfer is an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation. It has been designed to
suit both novice and advanced users. WaveSurfer has a simple and logical user interface that provides
functionality in an intuitive way and which can be adapted to different tasks.
http://www.jackosx.com/
Jack (the Jack Audio Connection Kit) is a low-latency audio server, written originally for the GNU/Linux
operating system, and now with Mac OS X support. It can connect any number of different applications to
a single hardware audio device; it also allows applications to send and receive audio to and from each other.
http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/
Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis
SPEAR is an application for audio analysis, editing and synthesis.
http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Free/FreeMain.html
Free Granular synthesis without having to think at all.
http://www.akirarabelais.com/software/software.html
A set of audio, video and text filters and generators
for the Macintosh.
http://www.kvraudio.com/
KVR Audio is the Internet's number one news and information resource for open standard audio plugins.
http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=AboutAviSynth
AviSynth is a very very powerful tool for video post-production. It provides almost unlimited ways of editing
and processing videos. AviSynth works as a frameserver, providing instant and very fast editing without the
need for temporary files.
http://ivideo.sourceforge.net/
iVideo is multitrack video editing software, created in Cocoa (Objective-C) and using QuickTime. It was
developed for all general video purposes, and to include all of the features of QuickTime Pro and iMovie.
It is almost complete; you can import video from digital cameras (using FireWire) or from any QuickTime
format supported file, then edit, modify, and mix them, and apply any video effect on or between them.
You can then export them to any QuickTime supported format.
http://homepage.mac.com/major4/
The power of 20 Unix Tools in a single application to quickly encode and author video in any format
http://www.squared5.com/
MPEG Streamclip is a powerful high-quality video converter, player, editor for MPEG, QuickTime,
transport streams, iPod. And now it is a DivX editor and encoding machine, and even a stream downloader.
http://www.onyx-vj.com/
Onyx: an open source, flash-based video mixing software
http://www.koffice.org/
KOffice is a free, integrated office suite for KDE, the K Desktop Environment. KDE is a powerful Open Source
graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality,
and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
http://www.openoffice.org/
description: OpenOffice.org 1.1 gives you everything you'd expect in office software. You can create
dynamic documents, analyse data, design eye-catching presentations, produce dramatic illustrations,
and open up your databases.
http://www.gnome.org/
GNOME runs on a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux (commonly called Linux), Solaris, HP-UX,
BSD and Apple's Darwin.The GNOME Project is an effort to create a complete, free and easy-to-use
desktop environment for users, as well as a powerful application development framework for software developers.
http://www.pgpi.org/
PGP (short for Pretty Good Privacy) is a public key encryption program originally written by Phil Zimmerman in 1991.
http://rhizome.org/carnivore/
Carnivore is a surveillance tool for data networks. At the heart of the project is CarnivorePE, a software
application that listens to all Internet traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network. Next,
CarnivorePE serves this data stream to interfaces called "clients." These clients are designed to animate,
diagnose, or interpret the network traffic in various ways. Use CarnivorePE to run Carnivore clients from
your own desktop, or use it to make your own clients.
http://www.acme.com/software/factor/
The program will compute the prime factors of each number you give it as an argument. If no arguments are given,
it will read numbers from standard input, one per line. In addition to simple integers, you can also specify a range
of integers as "int-int", or you can use up to 3 trailing wildcards.
ASCII
http://www.network-science.de/ascii/
Generate a ASCII graphic from a word or text. Over 130 fonts.
http://www.figlet.org/
FIGlet is a program for making large letters out of ordinary text.
http://jpg2asc.hierklikken.com/
JPG to ASCII converter
http://www.jave.de/
Java ASCII Versatile Editor
JavE is a free Ascii Editor. Rather than for editing texts, it is intended for drawing simple diagrams by using Ascii characters.
It is like a graphics editor for editing texts instead of images.
http://www.cadstd.com/
CadStd (pronounced "CAD Standard") is a simple and easy to use 2D computer aided design (CAD) program.
Computer aided design replaced what used to be called drafting.
http://mootools.net/
mootools, a super lightweight web2.0 javascript framework.
http://www.bloodshed.net/
Providing Free Software to the internet community
C, Pascal environment and compilers. Programmers ressources: Delphi, C, Pascal.
http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php
iPodder is a program that allows you to select and download audio files from anywhere on the Internet to your desktop.
iPodder makes the process easy by helping you select audio files from among the thousands of audio sources on
the web and downloading those files to your computer.
see also: http://www.ipodder.org/
Tcl/Tk
http://www.tcl.tk/
Tcl (Tool Command Language) is used by over half a million developers
worldwide and has become a critical
component in thousands of corporations. It has a simple and programmable
syntax and can be either used as a
standalone application or embedded in application programs. Best of all,
Tcl is open source so it's completely free.
Tk is a graphical user interface toolkit that makes it possible to create
powerful GUIs incredibly quickly. It proved
so popular that it now ships with all distributions of Tcl.
http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/
NetNewsWire is an easy-to-use RSS Web news reader for Mac OS X. Its familiar three-paned interface—similar to
Apple Mail and Outlook Express—can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs,
making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news.
More: list of RSS aggregators:http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information_
Science/Technical_Services/Cataloguing/Metadata/RDF/Applications/RSS/News_Readers/
http://www.flickr.com/
Flickr - almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world - has two main goals:
1. We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos.
http://www.blogger.com/start
Blogger was started by a tiny company in San Francisco called Pyra Labs in August of 1999.
http://www.ourmedia.org/
Ourmedia is a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We'll host your media forever — for free.
Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children's tales, Flash animations, student films, mash-ups
http://www.flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/voodoopadlite.html
VoodooPad Lite is the free version of VoodooPad. While not as powerful as the real thing, it still gets the job done.
VoodooPad is a new kind of notepad. It's like having your own personal hypertext library, where you can jot
down notes, web addresses, to-do lists...
http://www.tag-board.com/
Tag-Board.com is the original free Tag Board service that allows you to provide your visitors with real-time
discussionwithout the complexity of forums.
http://www.peercast.org/
PeerCast is a simple, free way to listen to radio and watch video on the Internet.
http://code.google.com/p/wormhole2/
a cross-platform Audio Unit and VST plugin. It can be used on a single machine to send audio between applications or to send audio between multiple computers
http://www.celtx.com/
Celtx is a free, open source screenwriting software for writing and formatting a screenplay to meet the screenplay submission standards set by the theater and film industries.
Celtx is an acronym for: Crew, Equipment, Location, Talent and XML.
http://www.movieclip.biz/prompt.html
Prompt! is a simple teleprompter application for public speakers used by CEO's of banks, heads of religious organizations, radio dejays and alike either on camera or in front of a live audience.
http://www.freesmug.org/
Tutorial, info, news, help on end-users Free and OpenSource Mac software
http://sourceforge.net/
SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source software development website,
with the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet. SourceForge.net
provides free services to Open Source developers
http://www.pricelessware.org/
The Pricelessware List reflects the programs favored by participants in the alt.comp.freeware newsgroup ;
it is not an exhaustive list of the best available Freeware. Most of the listings are well-known programs, but
there are some hard-to-find goodies to be discovered. Although most categories will list only 1 or 2 selections,
a few will list 3-4 programs.
http://www.harmony-central.com/Software/
A wealth of MIDI resources - documentation, articles, interfaces, writing software, free classifieds
free software by artists
Compiled by Alexandre Castonguay at the Centro de la Imagen, Mexico 2001
http://artengine.ca/jmax/open_source/
Open Source Open Centres
http://www.artengine.ca/acastonguay/open/logiciel_centres_libres.html
http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools/
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/qtss/
Whether your website delivers product information, entertainment, corporate communications or distance-learning,
you can make it stand out by serving up video and audio streams. Featuring QuickTime Streaming Server 5,
Mac OS X Server v10.3 lets you accomplish this task with ease, power and flexibility — without additional licensing fees
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/broadcaster/
QuickTime Broadcaster is Apple’s live encoding software that lets you produce professional-quality live events for
online delivery.
http://www.gnu.org/
Self-referentially, short for GNU's not UNIX, a UNIX-compatible software system developed by the Free
Software Foundation (FSF). The philosophy behind GNU is to produce software that is non-proprietary.
Anyone can download, modify and redistribute GNU software. The only restriction is that they cannot
limit further redistribution. The GNU project was started in 1983 by Richard Stallman at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
http://fink.sourceforge.net/index.php
The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X.
We modify Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X ("port" it) and make it available for
download as a coherent distribution.
http://creativecommons.org/
Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. We have built
upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright.
We're a nonprofit. All of our tools are free.
http://www.opensource.org/
Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition
http://www.archive.org/
The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/