Resource Roundup October 2024 - Art Squirrel

Things have been a bit slow with the Art Squirrel blog lately because I’m busy working on other commitments. It is hard to find much to talk about but here are a few things I could mention in the world of digital art (cheesy I know).

There is a new version of FotoSketcher for anyone into automatic art effects. The new version is 3.96 which has a new modern looking UI with a more compact list of effects for more space for future additions and a new pencil effect. It also has better support for MacOS users if you use a free app called Whisky.

FotoSketcher isn’t generally something I use but occasionally I’ll test things out on a 3D render to see what it does out of curiosity. It was something I just had a bit of fun with but people do use it for commercial use as well. Maybe I’ll do a drawing comparison video to see how the new pencil effect holds up if I have time.

3D texturing and rendering software Marmoset Toolbag 5 has a Beta Testing version available for users of the software.

I spotted this free 3D model resource for 20+ Production-Ready Models with 8K Maps by PixelMentor.

MagicaVoxel has been gaining lots of new developments lately including text tools and an Iso Cone Mode. I don’t have access to those features because I haven’t had time to do much experimentation lately but they are available to Patreon supporters of Ephtracy.

Krita has a call for donation of artworks for a fast line art project. I won’t go into it too much here, you can read about it on their official forum if you are interested.

PD howler has a new 2025 version which they released as a plugin for the last release of the 2024 version instead of a standalone program. New features include Liquid FX, Advanced Feature Removal, Text Object Tool, Halftone Gradient Tool and a Chroma-Key tool.

Other news you might be interested in is there is a new version of ZBrush with a version for iPad users but I don’t own an iPad and I can’t afford a ZBrush subscription (or an iPad) so I’ll just use my old version which still works fine and does everything I need it to do.

I have to admit it is getting harder to feel excitement about digital art developments these days when everything is so much more expensive and seems to be going more and more to subscription models.

In other news that I’ve been sitting on for a while, I experimented a bit with the Microsoft Bing AI art tool last year, got completely obsessed with it for a few months and then completely bored by it like most people and too scared to mention it on the blog.

I’m sure it will all get banned or paywalled at some point and I’ve mentioned its other problems a few times on the blog, but it is good for mad images.