Hi, my name is Matej and I'm an aspiring CG artist from Slovenia. I currently specialize in still photo-realistic 3D renders.
When I started to learn CG in summer 2009 I opted to go the open source way. I wasn't entirely sure about this decision, which it seemed risky to me at the time. Deciding between the expensive but proved proprietary way and between the free & open-source but unknown way, was not easy. More so because you can spend months and years learning software, such as modeling tools or painting programs.
Now when I look back I'm satisfied about my decision as the open-source communities deliver such outstanding stuff and allow me to be creative for free. The least I can do is give them credit, though I try also to help back where and when I can. Though there are some licensed programs in my toolset, I currently mostly use FOSS programs:
- Blender for modeling and compositing
- GIMP for texturing, post-production and compositing
- Yafaray and Octane* for rendering
- Luminance HDR (Qtpfsgui) for tone-mapping
- Inkscape as support drawing tool
Everything of course runs on Linux ;-) (Ubuntu mostly The king is dead, long live Linux Mint!)
* non-FOSS