Due 31 Oct 2017 🎃
Free, open source, fully featured package for 3D modeling, animating, and more. Popular with indie film makers and game developers.
Industry standard fully featured 3D modeling and animating package. Higher budget game studios will use this.
Digital sculpting package. Used to create super high resolution sculpts of meshes to be further processed by Maya/Blender before being used in game.
Free ZBrush-like sculpting package maintained by the authors of ZBrush. Lacks a lot of ZBrush's more advanced features, but still provides a good sculpting experience.
Formerly free architectural modeling software. There is a free version available, but you now have to pay for extra export options, which you need for Unity.
Free voxel editor and renderer. Something of a middle point between pixel art and 3D art. Great for a block-aesthetic or quick prototypes.
Pixel sprite editor and animator. Great for palette-based sprite art.
Another pixel sprite editor and animator. Also good.
macOS Photoshop alternative. Cheaper than Photoshop, tends to run faster, and does more or less everything Photoshop can do.
The inescapable giant. Photoshop and Illustrator are super effective in a game asset pipeline.