Links

Various free to reasonably priced online resources that I return to again and again. I felt like paying it forward and to make sure these resources are listed on my site to help them with their development and work. Part of my thanks to the community by spreading the word.

3D Software

	Blender is open source software built to compete with more professional suites such as Autodesk's Maya or SolidWorks. Since it's built by a community it has the issue that many open source projects do in that it's never quite finished. However, more and more projects are utilizing Blender and it's now a competing software.
	Daz 3D is built by a company in Utah that is using the add-on business model. They give you the basics but to do anything in depth you need to buy the rest. In the end however it's still easier and much cheaper than the professional suites such as Maya.
	Google Sketchup is free 3D modeling software that can be used for a multitude of projects and also already has a large collection of models created by other people available for use. It makes it simple for those who aren't 3D modeling gurus to build cities,houses or even plans for smaller projects like chairs or engineering work. Plus, it's at the fabulous price of free.

Fonts

	1001 Fonts is a great place to find decorative, hand-written or movie type fonts.
	Dafont is also another place to pick up a lot of interesting fonts for free.

IDE

	Eclipse is an all purpose open source IDE meant to be your one stop shopping when it comes to helping you write code. This is a good go to source for anything that Netbeans doesn't cover like HTML.
	Netbeans is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that can help write Java, Javascript, PHP, Ruby, C, C++ and more.

Image Editing Software

	GIMP is an image editing program designed a lot like Adobe's Photoshop. It works in conjunction with a lot of other open source software so if you're going to go the free route, this is a good way to do it.
	Inkscape is an image editing program that works roughly like Adobe Illustrator. It's a good open-source software for vector graphics.
	MyPaint is a computer painting program for those who are more artistically inclined. As with pretty much every painting program I would say it's a necessity to have a drawing tablet for your computer. The files are interchangeable with GIMP and there have been some amazing pictures created using this software.

Stock Photography

	The-Blueprints.com is a great resource for 3D modeling. When you need to have the structural composition of a building, car, ship or what not, they've got a giant database available.
	CG Textures is a no-holds-barred sort of web-site. They don't try and woo you with a lot of extras or flashy web design. Designers of all types frequent their site anyway for textures, something I've found invaluable for 3D modeling and it's come in very handy for other projects. A must have in any designer's arsenal.
	Photo Express is a great stock photography site offering high quality free photos but also giving a great range of photos for purchase as well with the standard licensing for a fraction of the price as other high end stock photo sites.
	Planet Pixel Emporium has planet textures for the planets in our solar system. It's awesome to have a resource to help your 3D modeling pipeline like this.
	Stock Exchange is a free stock photography database website with tons of photos to choose from. Since the site is not as picky about quality of the photography it can be difficult sometimes to find exactly what you need but they're adding photographs daily. Working with the poorer quality photography can be good practice in design and photo manipulation.

Tutorials

	Blender Cookie is a video tutorial site and one of the best I've found. The site is very professional and they care about their teaching material. One of the best places to get into Blender, the 3D modeling program. They're constantly updating their site and even offer mentoring options at a cost.
	Blender Guru is another great resource for Blender tutorials on 3D modeling.
	Blender Nerd is another site full of great Blender specific tutorials. They and their compatriots are constantly uploading new videos weekly.
	W3 Schools is a great site for basic tutorials on HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, XML, ASP, PHP and more. It even comes along with a "do it yourself" editor so you can see changes as you try things out. They set the industry standards for CSS as well.

Video Game Engines

	Maratis is an open source video game engine that can be used with Windows, MacOS and the iPhone.
	Unity 3D is a game engine available for free but has the benefits of being a commercial game engine. There's tons of support and you don't have to purchase a license until you start making a significant amount of money.
	Unreal Engine is probably a physics engine you've heard of, with triple A titles such as the Gears of War series, Bioshock, Mass Effect series, Borderlands and more. Much like Unity, you're only beholden to pay them once you start racking in the dollars yourself so it's definitely worth a look.

Miscellaneous

	Open Office is a competing suite with Microsoft Office. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft Office is great, but when it comes to affordability with the same functionality, Open Office can't be beat.
	Spacescape developed by Alex C Peterson is a very cool and robust program. It comes with a few free files which helped me to see how the layers interact. Some of the naming conventions are rough and not helpful but overall a great program for making fast spacescapes.
	VLC is an open source project that makes enoying your media files easy and manageable. There are a lot of programs you can pay for, but I have yet to find one that holds a flame to VLC. It works with most every file (I haven't encountered one it doesn't work with yet) and is light weight so it keeps from hogging your processor space.