Listed below are the software packages that we are going to use in each of the courses featured on this page
- 3d Animation Software
- Programming and Video game Software
- Video and Graphics Software
3d Software
Autodesk Maya
Maya
Clicking on the image above will take you to the download area of Autodesk so that you can get this software.
Maya is single handedly the most widely used 3d Animation program in the world. Autodesk offers other programs as well and in the future ParaTutor has plans on featuring some of their other programs as well.
Video Game Engines
Unity 3d
Unity 3d
This video game engine is the second most commonly used in the world. Once again it is free to use for students and educational institutions. The largest and most popularly used video game engine in Unreal. For beginners Unity is much easier to start with. Once you have learned Unity, Unreal is the next obvious step up. Unity is a robust engine and is used by many many Video Game companies.
UNREAL Engine
UNREAL Engine
As mentioned before, this is the number one video game engine in the world. It has so many amazing features in it, a list would bore you to tears. It is sooo huge that almost anything that you can imagine cane be accomplished in this program. ParaTutor is slowly making the switch over to UNREAL. It has too many features to be ignored. At thyis time we are still presenting Unity game engine for our students to learn. This gives our staff the opportunity to delve into UNREAL ourselves and become well versed in it before we attempt to offer training in it here on the page. Thank you for your patience.
Coloring and Texturing
3d Coat
This program is a neat little package. First off it is available for FREE to educational institutions and as soon as a school starts using it, they will pleasantly find themselves listed on the corporate web site. Its larger and more amazing brother is named Zbrush. Zbrush is widely used throughout the industries but sadly they have not put out an Educational version that would be free for students to learn with. 3d Coat comes with many of the same features that Zbrush offers but happily it is free to use.
Graphics
Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe....
Truth be told ParaTutor has had a long love affair with Adobe products. They are the industry standard application in so many different fields. They know that they have the industry by the jugular and they love holding their software hostage with quite a hefty little price tag. Most educational institutions have access to thier products irregardless and so we here at ParaTutor will continue to teach and instruct with what Adobe has to offer.
Photoshop
The blue logo in the center of the graphic above is for Photoshop. Photoshop has been the go to application to make, enhance, and edit 2d images for a very long time. There are a number of Photoshop clones and challengers out there but there is only the one true original that continues to dominate multiple industries. If one of Photoshop’s competitors evers become popular enough to warrant notice ParaTutor will consider offering training for it. But many have come and gone and Photoshop still remains.
Premiere Pro
The blue colored logo in the upper right hand corner of the graphic above is for Premiere Pro. premiere pro is Adobe’s video editing software. While Premiere pro is not the dominant video editing force in the industry, it could easily be considered one of the first packages most editors learned on. Premiere pro is really the program that originally set the standard for all other video editing programs to reach up to. Until a student reaches a certain level in the industry or in their training Premiere Pro remains one of the easily accessed video editors around.
Illustrator
The yellow logo in the graphic above represents Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is to clip art and logo’s, what Photoshop is to photography and graphics. Illustrator is a program that speaks specifically to “Drawn/Vector” based images, whereas Photoshop speaks to “Paint/Raster” based graphics. The first deals with Points, Vectors, Strokes, and fills. The second deals with pixels. Both are incredibly valuable and powerful in their own way but operate divergently different from each other.
In-Design
The reddish logo in the graphic above is for In-Design. this program is all about putting your graphics together in a layout. This program allows you to produce a composition combining all of the individual elements together to create something for print or the web.
Other Adobe products
Adobe offers man other programs in their suite. They have programs for we, animation, and many more. the one listed above are the most popularly used applications in their bundle and are currently only ones that ParaTutor offers training for.
Programming IDE's
Microsoft Visual Studios
This program is by far one of the only Microsoft products that we offer training for at this time. It is also one of the only Microsoft products that we would go out of our way to actually download. It is the software package that we will use to do all of our video game programming in. C# is the programming language that many of the Video Game Engines use to create games with. once you get used to the layout and how Visual Studios works it will become a welcome friend as we build some amazing things together through the coursework.