Tools and Utilities

Does anyone have a free 3D package they can recommend? While I do have an old version of Max I'd rather have a program that has current plugin/exporter support. Now that I am unemployed I'm going to try to get back in to the habit of doing some design/art/code on a regular basis, but I need some decent tools to work with.

If your after a free 3D package then Blender would probably be your best bet.
Max and Maya are free for students, but I think you need a valid e-mail address or something like that to confirm it.

*fake edit*

Just check out this page:
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryTools

It should help you out finding free/cheep art tools.

Cool, thanks.

To continue this trend. I've been working on increasing my programming skills so that I can build art tools and automate exporting and whatnot.
Can you guys recommend a good free IDE to use.
I'm mostly going to be using Python, since Maxscript and Unity have their own editors based on Scintilla.

I've not done anything in python myself, but a quick search came up with a few.

There is a Scite config file for Python editing, but if you want an actual IDE you could try these:

The Python Windows installer includes one called IDLE.
Then there are Eric IDE and PyTools for Visual Studio 2010. (You don't actually need VS, just the VS Integrated Shell which is a free download.)