Updated 10 April 2011

Software Development Links

Tools

• Subversion - source code revision control system, much improved over CVS
• Python - great scripting language with powerful library. Easily embedded as a scripting engine into C++ apps using a boost.org library. Good online book here - Dive Into Python, though the tutorial included in the online docs is excellent too
• Doxygen - nice source code documentation generator for C++ and other languages
• Valgrind - excellent open source memory debugger. Finds all memory allocation/leak/access errors, even without debug info built into your app
• JEdit - java based programmers editor, which runs well across windows, linux and OSX, and had loads of great extensions
• Araxis Merge - best graphical merge tool for Windows that I've seen
• XXDiff - and a free one for Unix
• SCons - an improved 'make' utility, including self-diagnosing dependencies, MD5 checksums instead of datestamps, Python based scripts and more
• Perceptual Image Diff - tool for comparing images by visual metrics, rather than by data values. Great for regression testing of graphics apps
• Protovis - graphing library, using javascript to make some pretty awesome static and interactive graphs

Libraries

• Cortex - open source library for VFX tool development
• boost.org - a collection of excellent C++ libraries, by many of the people on the C++ standards Comittee
• wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) - an excellent and free cross-platform and rapid development development library.
• QT - a great commercial and open source cross-platform development library
• SGI's STL - great online docs for STL, even if you use a different implementation
• libtiff - great library for handling TIFF image input/output
• OpenEXR - ILM's free High Dynamic Range Image format and library. Includes some great math (e.g. quaternions) and image source code
• zlib - free compression library, used in gzip
• HDF5 - very impressive format and libraries for reading/writing large and complex data sets - perfect for particle/fur/geometry or anything else you need to deal with in 3D and scientific disciplines. Lots of nifty features.
• Gnu Scientific Library (GSL) - library for heavy scientific/numerical/math stuff, like FFTs, least-squares fitting, polynomials, linear algebra, root finding, etc.
• SQLite - lightweight embedded SQL database engine, so you can have database stuff within your apps without a full SQL server, nifty
• ODE - Open Dynamics Engine. A great Open Source physics/dynamics/collisions library, already used in a wide range of free and commercial apps (including XSI)
• Open CV - open source computer vision library from Intel, lots of interesting stuff in there, e.g. 2D feature tracking, motion analysis, object tracking, etc.
• OpenImageIO - open source image IO library, started by Larry Gritz, covers all the major formats we need for VFX

Math

• Wolframs's Math World - massive online math encyclopedia
• Numerical Recipes in C - excellent book with source code available in full online
• The Matrix FAQ - answers to all your vector/matrix questions
• Dave's Short Trigonometry Course - nice trig overview/reference
• Paul Bourke's Site - lots of good math and graphics references here

Source Code Hosting

• SourceForge - the original open source software hosting and support site
• code.google.com - Google's open source software hosting and support
• GitHub - another online source code repository

Misc

• Agile Software Development - good site for agile/lean dev articles
• Graphics Gems - source code from the books online
• Red3D Research Papers - Some good articles on crowd AI, flocking, collision detection, etc

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