Ever wanted to become a professional graphics artists ? Cannot afford to buy photoshop etc. or want a lighter solution.
Linux offers good quality software for the graphics artists be it painting , 3D content generation and even video.
For this tutorial we will be using OpenSUSE 13.1 with KDE (K Desktop Environment):
I will show you how to convert a fresh install fo OpenSUSE 13.1 KDE into a full fledged studio with all the bells and whistles needed for a professional graphics artist.
Things to do after a fresh install of SUSE:
1. Add the Packman repository to you SUSE distribution so that you can get the latest software packages.
- Go to Yast -> Software Repositiories and add the repository whose URL is posted below
- http://packman.inode.at/suse/13.1/ and call it "Packman-FULL"
- Or Add the repository directly from terminal using the commands below (please close Yast if it is open before doing so)
- zypper ar http://packman.inode.at/suse/13.1/ Packman-FULL
- General Notes: (1) if the links above do not work then it is likely that, that particular mirror is down please visit http://packman.links2linux.org/mirrors for additional mirrors. (2) the "http://ftp." is intentional here and not an error it seems to make repositories fetch a lot faster than if the pure "ftp." is used. This is because these repos receive less traffic than the "ftp://ftp" ones.
- Once you have added the repositories by either of the 2 methods. Go into terminal (konsole) type "su" and enter the root password to go into the root shell and type the command "zypper dup" to initiate a vendor change to packman. Then type "exit" to leave the root shell.
2. Now that your repository is up and running. Install codecs. OpenSUSE normally does not provide all the codecs (only open source ones) for several reasons. THe packman repositories that you added above provided these extra packages.
If you are using the GUI then go to Yast-> Software Management and install the following packages
"ffmpeg", "vlc-qt" "vlc-codecs" (if you don't like VLC then you can install "mplayer" and its graphical frontend "smplayer" )
Installing graphics drivers:
For the graphics artists depending upon application open source drivers which are provided by OpenSUSE may either be sufficient or insufficient. If you are doing things like painting and video editing open source drivers may suffice. However if you are going to use 3D applications such as blender etc. you may have trouble with open source drivers as they do not provide full shder support and may cause artifacts in the render.
General instructions"
- First find out details about your graphics card.
- In the terminal type "/sbin/lspci |grep VGA" and look at the output this will typically list the grpahics card as detected by the kernel and its model number. Sample output is shown below
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT216M [GeForce GT 330M] (rev a2)
Installing Nvidia drivers:
To install Nvidia drivers on OpenSUSE please visit this link. https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers
Installing ATI/AMD drivers:
To install ATI/AMD graphics drivers on OpenSUSE please visit this link. https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:AMD_fglrx
Congratulations ! You have now configured a solid base to put your graphics applications of choice on. Since the applications and needs will vary depending upon what your needs are I will group applications by category below and you can choose to install apps from a few categories or all. Mix and match as you please each artists has their own style and work-flow.
3D Content
For 3D content the most popular 3D Modelling application is Blender. (www.blender.org) SUSE does not provide blender in its repositories as a general guideline in all distributions it is best to download the blender tarball and extract it in your home folder and run it from there. When distributions do have blender it is often extremely outdated.
Apart from this there are several other open source 3D applications for the artists such as Makehuman (www,makehuman.org) , Seamless3d (http://www.seamless3d.com/) and so on. GO ahead and experiment and pick what suites your style.
Painting
For painting there are 2 fantastic open source alternatives. I would recommend using Krita (www.Krita.org) this application is a very high quality application designed for painters and digital artist it is much more focused on painting though so it has several brush engines and supports various sensors available for your graphics tablet. (E.g the tilt etc.)
For a more general purpose application "Gimp" is provided. It is installed by default in SUSE 13.1 KDE
If you are feeling adventurous since the Krita development branch is pretty stable and regressions are fixed quickly. You can build krita straight from sources and use the latest development release. Below is a guide which tells you how to build Krita or the whole Calligra suite(krita, kexi, karbon etc.).
http://community.kde.org/Calligra/Building
Vector Graphics
For vector graphics the best application available is Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/en/) the latest stable version is already available in the SUSE repositories and ready to install.
Photography
On and off the graphics artist needs to manipulate photographs from digital camera's. E.g to erxtract texture etc. One of the most powerful formats for capturing data is the RAW format (E.g. .nef, .cr2 etc.) this is because raw unprocessed sensor data is being stored which is almost equivalent to a digital negative offering ability to process a lot more. E.g adjust exposure without banding etc.
There are many open source alternatives available for processing RAW data before it is used in gimp.
Examples of good software for RAW processing are darktable (www.darktable.org), RawTherapee for more advanced RAW editing. Though you can usually get away with using Digikam for basic raw editing.
