OT: Truespace - Last Chance.

farss wrote on 5/21/2009, 4:44 AM

I only a few hours ago received an email informing all who had an account that Microsoft have decided to pull the plug on this free product. We have until the 22nd of this month.
I can make no warranty as to how good Truespace is, I managed to get a few things done with it. Like all 3D programs it's extremely difficult to get your head around. That said many have produced serious work with it.
I'd urge everyone to download their free copy, apart from a bit of bandwidth and storage space it's going to cost you nothing and even if you have no interest in 3D today or next month it could come in handy one day. Link to get it is here:
http://cart1.caligari.com/web/Truespacemainreg.aspx
If you don't already have a username you'll need to create one.

Bob.

Comments

ingvarai wrote on 5/21/2009, 5:16 AM

Hm..
Who wants to walk up a blind alley?
I do some 3D and I use Carrara and the product is maintained, version 7 was recently released.
Thanks for the tip though

ingvarai

plasmavideo wrote on 5/21/2009, 5:18 AM

Thanks Bob - downloading now.

richard-courtney wrote on 5/21/2009, 9:43 AM

I received the email too.

"You may have heard that Microsoft Corporation, reacting to difficult business conditions" IMHO: OVER reacting to prior business DECISIONS

(Sorry, I don't usually rag on others but too many companies are panicking)

Make sure to grab from the site the 76.zip manual pdf and videos.

An alternate forum: www.tscommunity.co.cc

EDIT: Corrected new forum url

xberk wrote on 5/21/2009, 9:48 AM

Man -- this is a whole other world.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/21/2009, 7:29 PM

what do you mean by "whole other world?"

xberk wrote on 5/21/2009, 7:40 PM

deusx wrote on 5/21/2009, 8:08 PM

you can model and animate anything with a 3D program like truespace. The limitation is your skill.

The only catch is that Blender is also free and it's supposed to be better than truespace, but it never hurts to have both.

farss wrote on 5/21/2009, 8:18 PM

Yes, you can create very complex 3D object from primitves such as cubes and spheres. You can cut, slice and dice those and extrude them. Yes, it will tween motion and shape between keyframes.

If you want to have a go with something simple Daz Studio might be better for you. There's a number of prebuilt full on models you can download and try animating. This is much easier as they have joined limbs, mouth and eyes that you can simply control the position of so you can make your fish move it's fins and head. Getting the motion to look vaguely real is a bit of work. Great time waster but also builds an appreciation of the amount of work that goes into the CGI that we take for granted in movies.

Bob.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/21/2009, 8:38 PM

3D modeling. I'm so out of it I don't understand what Truespace does? It looks something like an editor but does it also create 3D objects or do you just get to use the ones it comes with ? .. Does it use these objects and create "in-betweens" to animate a 3D object? --- I'm still a flat lander.

"primitives" in 3d apps = "generated media" in vegas. the keyframes/inbetweens are pretty much identical to vegas except that in 3d you have more options because of the three dimensions. Basically, if you can figure out 3d track motion, it's a real simple 3d app setup.

The better, more featured, 3d apps can do everything you can do in AE. sometimes easier, sometimes harder, but you always have more options. Check this out. :)

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/21/2009, 9:02 PM

ok, i just don't have the time to download all the video turorials. they have some for pretty much EVERY part of the program!

xberk wrote on 5/21/2009, 10:19 PM

Thanks Guys. I'm getting the idea guys.
But Truespace may not be cutting edge.
Here's a really stupid 2 min student clip that nevertheless shows us what
the future of film making might be like:

megabit wrote on 5/22/2009, 1:32 AM

I'm surprized the videos linked from the PDF manual have no audio... Or have I misconfigured it?

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/22/2009, 7:25 AM

i must say, if they were editing that vid in vegas it wouldn't of crashed on just playing a file. :D

I haven't used truespace in a while, but there were better ones out there then it, but not @ it's price point. For the price you could do quite a bit. Now blender surpassed it, but at the time truespace was popular blender didn't exist/wasn't user friendly.

richard-courtney wrote on 5/23/2009, 5:34 PM

http://www.caligari.com/downloads.html