Free for Educational/Non Commercial Use Thread

[Zeealex]

In this thread I will list a few handy sites that give you access to software that would normally cost a fair bit, for free under an educational/non-commercial use License

The sites are the official sites of the suppliers, so no need to worry about dodgy/illegal downloads.

Some sites will require you to confirm that you are a student by following various steps.

Microsoft Dreamspark: Access to 170+ pieces of software including operating systems (this includes windows 7 and windows 8) for free (Microsoft office powerpoint etc. is not included in this)
You will need to confirm that you are a student for access to the software.

Cryengine 3 SDK: Game Development and animation development kit provided by Crytek, intuitive design and easy to use, it would be interesting to see what you guys can do with this.

Unreal Development Kit: Game development Kit provided by EpicGames

Autodesk Education Community: Thousands of pounds worth of software including 3ds, and Maya, for free.
You will need to confirm that you are a student at a school, college, or university for access to this software.

Cinema 4D Student Edition: Fully functioning version of Cinema 4D, free for students.
(you do have to register)

Any more I find will be added as I find them, feel free to suggest more.

Please note that if you download and activate this software, you have agreed to use these programs FOR EDUCATIONAL AND NON COMMERCIAL USE ONLY, if you make money from anything you produce in these programs (be it selling them in disk format or using them for making a profit) it is a breach of your license agreement, so please do not use these for spicing up freelance jobs.

 

[rufinatti]

Thanks for posting this list. I've actually been using Dreamspark for about 6 months now. I just checked my account and Office is available to me. The software that one has available may differ based upon the agreement that one's school has with Microsoft.



As to the other software offerings, some truly impressive stuff is available. Alas, I feel that most of it is way beyond my technical level. I didn't know that Autodesk had free offerings. I've always wanted to mess about with CAD (not that I know what I'm doing; just think it'd be neat).

 

[Zeealex]

hey Ruffinati!

I Hate to break it to you, those aren't full microsoft office packages, Office visio isn't word powerpoint etc and office suite 2007 SP1 is an update.

I'm still trying to figure out how to put windows 7 onto a disk for installation

It is pretty cool what these guys are doing, they have sort of tried to reduce piracy of their software by doing this as people no longer need to pirate it to be free if they are at school/college/university.

it's a shame Adobe hasn't done the same really.

 

[rufinatti]

Well, what do you know? I stand corrected. I hadn't tried downloading office as I already have it.

 

[Hoogle]

I do believe Adobe offer a variety of student software however it is down to the school academic site to pay a subscription which lets people download the free stuff or heavioly discounted stuff

 

[Zeealex]

I do believe Adobe offer a variety of student software however it is down to the school academic site to pay a subscription which lets people download the free stuff or heavioly discounted stuff

yeah students can get it for half the price or something ridiculous like £192
but when you look at autodesk, giving it all out for free, only to put a watermark on the work, Adobe could do the same for their software when you think about it, they made a blunder with recently with stopping online support for photoshop CS2, and people actually thought it would have been a good business move, handing it out for free.

 

[besmirched]

hey Ruffinati!

I Hate to break it to you, those aren't full microsoft office packages, Office visio isn't word powerpoint etc and office suite 2007 SP1 is an update.

I'm still trying to figure out how to put windows 7 onto a disk for installation

It is pretty cool what these guys are doing, they have sort of tried to reduce piracy of their software by doing this as people no longer need to pirate it to be free if they are at school/college/university.

it's a shame Adobe hasn't done the same really.

I too thought that was a full version of office 2007, I checked and ur correct. I reckon I downloaded everything that wasn't nailed down at dream spark

You can make a win7 bootable usb key drive it's easy peasy and better than making a dvd I think http://arstechnica.com/business/2009/12/the-usb-flash-drive/