Game Engines

Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine

A bit more complex than Unity but still approachable. Great for beginners due to its documentations and Blueprint system, allowing visual scripting for game logic.

Godot

Godot

Similar to Unity and Unreal but slightly less beginner-friendly. Good for those with some game development experience looking for more control.

Unity

Unity

Excellent for beginners due to its user-friendly interface and extensive documentation. It's used for game development, handling assets, and scripting interactions.

Texture Creation/3D Modeling and Animation

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop

It's not exclusively for beginners, but it's relatively easier to grasp for basic image editing and texturing.

Blender

Blender

Perfect for newcomers as it's a free, open-source software that covers modeling, animation, texturing, and rendering. Great for asset creation

krita

Krita

A free painting software suitable for concept art and digital painting.

Maya

Maya

Ideal for those familiar with 3D concepts. Widely used for modeling, animation, and rigging. It has a steeper learning curve but is powerful once mastered.

XMLID

3Ds Max

Offers extensive modeling and animation tools but might have a steeper learning curve compared to Maya for beginners.

Substance Design

Substance Designer

Used for creating materials and textures procedurally. Requires some understanding of texturing principles but highly valuable.

Simulation

Houdini 3D icon

Houdini

Known for its node-based procedural workflow. It's complex and used for creating complex simulations, VFX, and procedural content generation.

EmberGen icon

EmberGen

Advanced fluid simulation software used for creating realistic fire and smoke effects. Requires knowledge of simulation and rendering.

Plugins

Axiom

Axiom

is a sparse GPU-accelerated volumetric fluid solver for computer graphics and visual effects. What sets it apart is the ability to run true sparse simulations fully on a GPU.

FluidNinja VFX Tools Icon

FluidNinja VFX Tools

Bake fluidsim to Flipbooks and Player Materials. Drive Niagara and Volumetric systems with fluid data. Create stylized and realistic fire, smoke and clouds. Make your own VFX assets, inside Unreal.

Fluid Ninja LIVE icon

FluidNinja LIVE

Fast, responsive Fluid Simulation for Character and Environment VFX: sea, rivers, clouds, smoke, fire, sand, snow and foliage. Drive all dynamic systems with fluidsim.

Miscellaneous/used in both games and CGI

Adobe After Effect

Adobe After Effects

Primarily for compositing, motion graphics, and visual effects. It's approachable but can get complex when dealing with intricate animations.

Nuku Icon

Nuke

A node-based compositor used for high-end VFX and compositing in films and games. It's intricate and requires a solid understanding of compositing.

Zbrush Icon

ZBrush

Used for high-detail sculpting, especially for characters and organic models. A bit complex for beginners but very powerful for detailing.

Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate is advanced 2D animation software, used for creating interactive content and animations.

Harmony

Harmony

Harmony is advanced 2D animation software with features for character rigging and advanced animation techniques.

To learn more about VFX tools used in games, visit This page