Truespace 7.6 released - for free!

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Christian Herzog   (Jul 24, 2008 at 20:12 GMT)

Very nice!

I allways wanted to try it out..so I guess the time is now ;)

Kenneth Holst   (Jul 24, 2008 at 20:45 GMT)   Resource Rating: 4

That's quite cool! Been a long time since I did anything in Caligari. Gonna have to check this out. Thanks!

Cary Howe   (Jul 24, 2008 at 23:13 GMT)

I bought both Gamespace and Truespace back when I was trying to work .X format. Gotta say it wins my prize for worst interface ever. Instead of name headings you get friendly blobs of color. I spent more time mousing over to see what the blob of color meant than I did using the software. Some basic features are so buried or poorly laid that they are useless. Other key features I never found and the documentation was unhelpful. There are some intensely cool things for editing animations but I never got close to animating anything. I never even figured out something as simple as laying on a UV map to an existing model. I managed to use it a few times to convert a model to .X but the exporter was dicey.

In truth as much as I hate the interface I'd go with Blender if you want a free package. There's a lot of power there if you can get past the interface. At least you have a fighting chance since things are labeled. Some companies mistake user friendly with intuitive. There's nothing intuitive about the interface and at first glance you may think it's user friendly but it's the opposite. I found the blobs of color useless and I started memorizing the third blob from the left was a certain function so I either moused over or counted the blobs. That's just plain sad for an interface.

Devon Winter   (Jul 25, 2008 at 00:06 GMT)

For what it's worth, I spent over three months this year wrangling with Truespace and Gamespace both, learning their interfaces, stretching their legs, and seeing how they worked with Torque. I will upgrade to 7.6, mostly because, well, *now* I'm familiar with its modeller and I like its modeller. But trying to get out of Truespace and into Torque is still a perilous road. IMHO, if I were starting from scratch today, I'd go with Houdini. From my experience, it's far more important to have a competent and intuitive exporter than it is to get the latest edge sweep functionality.

More comments here.

Kevin McLaughlin   (Jul 25, 2008 at 00:17 GMT)

Cary, I hear you. ;) The GOOD news is, once you know all those friendly blobs of color by heart, Gamespace/TS flows really well. The bad news is, you don't have nice neat dropdown menus organized like we're used to in Windows. Gamespace has some other oddities too, like the way UVs are done - it just takes TIME to learn to do things "the caligari way" as opposed to the Maya way, 3DSM way, or Milkshape/Fragmotion way.

That said, I'm digging into TS7.6 a bit now (always had been a Gamespace user, so this is a big change for me), and my first take is that this is a really QUALITY piece of software. It's got a lot of assorted stuff that I don't really need, for game modeling; stuff for film, for high end renders, etc. But it looks like it will replace Gamespace as my staple DTS modeling package.

If I had $3500, I'd grab 3DSM. Since I don't, and really don't care for the Blender interface and HATE the Houdini EULA (c'mon, why do I want to buy and learn to use a brand new program that I can only legally use to make DTS models with?), Truespace looks like a good bet.

Novack   (Jul 25, 2008 at 02:40 GMT)

Thanks for the news!

Ed Averill   (Jul 25, 2008 at 17:18 GMT)

TS has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get past that it's pretty decent. Gotta love the .X export, but it looks like I'll have to pick up Milkshape to convert to DTS format (cheap enough, though). Everyone's workflow is a bit different - Blender gives me an instant headache, for instance - so it might not work for you, but since it's free it might be worth a few days of dinking around just to find out.

The gigabytes of training videos help a lot, as well.

And I'm with Kevin on Houdini, it's a killer app but I'd end up spending more time trying to make a VFX portfolio with it than crank out DTS models (lol).

I'm hoping I can eventually use TS to crank out sprites for TGB, as well. And for cut scenes, you can get VRay for it, and there's a plugin that will let you render with 3Delight (Photorealistic Renderman-compliant renderer).

All in all, seems like a good deal.

Chad P. Dowell   (Jul 31, 2008 at 22:50 GMT)

For those who hated Truespace and those who finally learned it....

I have been with them since 4 or so, though I tried out version 1 just to find out what 3d was all about....this was back when we quad divided by hand uphill both ways in the snow..

Anyhow, 7.6 still has the old modeller available but they are going a whole new route, and its alot better in so many ways, if you hated Truespace before or just want to try again now is a great time, both the new interface and all the videos for free mean the best chance ever with it.

I am not a happy happy customer of them, in fact I paid not so long ago for an inferior version of their product and now its free....GRRR (and also now owned by microsoft) BUT it may well be a good move meaning improvements over time....(I pray instead of an evil conglomeration of ...well evil)

But GIVE IT A TRY is what I am saying, its free... :) and has some really nice features (so does blender btw but a bit harder to learn to use)

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