Musthave Tools

- OpenOffice or MS Office for document solutions
- A PDF creator for distributing documents (OO has a build in converter)
- A code-editor other than SED for various reasons. I own Visual Studio but I kept on my personal favorite: ConTEXT. I stay on VS for DLL and C++ programming.
- Tortoise SVN if you rely on Revision Control (SVN is the successor of CVS; but it depends on personal needs - artists would choose AlienBrain or such)
- A 2D graphics program of your choice (arguing which program is better is senseless when a user is able to make stunning graphics with a program which is dismissed by others )
- DDS converters: NVidia Texture Tool and ATI Compressonator
- Wings3D
- Milkshape 3D
- one prominent commercial modeling package or blender. If you are a student, you get stunning discount prices, e.g. on Cinema4D R10
- Tattoo for skinning. This is the only freeware tool the features paint-on-UV-map-by-painting-on-the-model. DeepPaint3D and BodyPaint are commercial solutions which are far better and feature rich.
- LithUnwrap for skinning. I prefer the skinning feature of WIngs3D over LithUnwrap, but it has also its strengths.
- Audacity
- VirtualDub and any other video software of your choice. In combination with FRAPS for taking ingame videos. Or Taksi, which is a bit slower, though - but free.
- FolderShare - a p2p client which makes it easy to share folders between teammembers (if you dont have a FTP or a SVN server)
- Harry's FontGenerator
- if you are into OOP or are used to plan your software before you program it , try FUJABA as UML modeling suite (free)
- for JAVA apps (tools, etc.), use Eclipse
- HelpNDoc for documentations and manuals
- DDS and TGA thumbnails previews for the Windows Explorer shell

there are a lot of other tools, but I guess most in my list are not listed above

[EDIT] and COFFEE!

Hiya.

-Corel Painter / Adobe Photoshop
-[graphics tablet; Intuous]
-UltimateUnwrap3D
-Softimage|XSI
-Hexagon 2.1
-regular ol' paper and pens/pencils, of course!

...and a few "nice to haves"...

--Bodypaint3D
--some type of terrain tool like "PnP Terrain Creator", "TED" (http://www.d-grafix.com/?page=ted), etc.

have a look at my mega gamedev linklist wich is meant as a "must have" starting point for indipendent game developers. feel free to comment if you think its missing something. iam still working on it.

I was thinking about

- Blender ( I finally realise it was a good engine)/ 3dgs
- Lightwave / xsi
- Photoshop /gimp
- reason /audition
- combustion/ after effects ( not necessary but usefull for a good presentation using avi )

cheers

Here's my list. Note that some of this I haven't had a chance to use yet but I would consider them necessary for their particular specialty. My list is designed mostly around quality cheap or freeware applications:

Modeling and/or animation: Blender, Milkshape, Wings3D, Ultimate Unwrap3D, and fragMotion
(Wings3D should take a more prominent place in a 3DGS developer's toolbox given it features FBX import/export and new beta versions of 3DGS feature this as well. The fact that our FBX allows up to 4 bones per vertex is great. fragMotion will soon feature FBX, too)

2D: Paint.NET (with DDS plugin), Inkscape (for vector graphics and PDF creation), Wood Workshop
{These two free programs continue to amaze and grow in power with each successive update. They also use a traditional Windows UI, so none of that esoteric GIMP nonsense. However, GIMP is a nice program, as well and should also be considered. Wood Workshop is a freeware texture creator esp made for wood textures, although it can be used to make just about anything if you use your imagination)

Audio and video: Kristal Audio Engine, Audacity, Exact Audio Copy, burnatonce, dbPowerAmp (with OGG encoder), Virtualdub, and appropriate video encoders

Misc: Pencil/pen, paper, lots of caffeine, and a good selection of music with headphones, FontGenerator, Easy Particles 3, CRED tool, SMEE, Dan's Arch-E 3DGS arch/stairs generator, Inno Setup with ISTool, OpenOffice or Atlantis Nova word processor, Adobe Reader, and of course 3DGS

Lately i'm working with:

- Photoshop
- Pen and Paper
- Cinema 4D 9 (non-commercial use)
- ATIs The Compressonator
- MED, SED, WED
- MS Word
- Camtasia Single License


i guess that was all.

+ google.com image search, turboSquid texture and art resource

Edit: i realized i was slightly off-topic and a little incorrect.

so, my musthave's:
blender
+
paint shop pro 5
+
gs

but blender's my biggest one. if i didn't have gs, i'd find something else (probably irrlicht, coz atm i wouldn't want to spend money on something besides gs), but blender is fantastic for heaps of things. it destroys windows movie maker when it comes to home-movie editing, and so i'm using it with a few of my mates to make a fight movie during my free periods at school. and of course, it's a fantastic modeling tool.

julz

All of these lists don't have PC/Mac listed in them

All you need is computer + paper + pen

For sound/sample creation, editing, recording, mastering, effects and atmo:
NI-Reaktor
http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?reaktor_us&ftu=397ca2c98c3459d&flash=9
It´s the best and powerful software synth/sampler/effect if you ask me. You are able to construct any possible and impossible sound machines.

For bones animation and seamless export to mdl7:
Fragmotion
http://www.fragmosoft.com/

i use 3DGS with:

Microsoft Picture it- skinning, bitmap creation,a fantastic all in one tool for graphics.
milkshape/fragmotion/MED- for modelling(low poly with a great skinning tool is awesome if you know what to do).
Cool Edit Pro 2.1- for in-game music production, sound effect editing, various other options for audio.
Pencil and Pad for concept drawing, character design.