Thread: Truespace
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Old 22nd June 2006, 04:30 PM   #6
Dennis
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Default Re: Truespace

trueSpace is actually among the less expensive software in its class, offering modeling, animation, rendering, and physics support in one package.

Speaking as a former trueSpace user, however, I had *many* headaches with it (version 6.6). It was a very unstable product --- crashes were the norm in trueSpace. And woe to those that did not save many versions of their scenes, because files got corrupted *very* easily and with seemingly complete randomness. I would save a scene, only to re-open the file later on to find that it would no longer open (would crash the entire app on open). Caligari obviously knew this issue existed, as the app defaults to saving backups along with your scene files.

Between corruptions and the continual crashing, I abandoned trueSpace after little more than a year of use. The few scenes I rendered were way more difficult than they should have been, and I compromised certain aspects of the scenes because I was trigger-shy to reposition things once they were set out of fear of crashes/corruptions. That's not acceptable.

I have not used the latest trueSpace version (version 7), so cannot comment on that.

There's really no comparison between an app like trueSpace and AC3D, since AC3D is a modeler and trueSpace is an all-in-one solution.

If you're looking for animation and rendering tool to complement AC3D, and aren't looking to spend a lot of money, Blender is certainly worth a try (costs nothing but your personal time to learn it). In my personal experience, Blender is an unfriendly modeler --- AC3D is much easier to use, and you don't need to learn tons of shortcut keys (with many keystrokes duplicated in different editing contexts). Some folk love the Blender modeler, of course, claiming that it's great once you get the feel for it. I spent a month with it and still didn't quite get the feel, so abandoned it as well. The animator/renderer seem to be a much better than the modeler from what I've seen, but I honestly haven't used them enough to say for sure.

Last time I checked, Blender offered native AC3D import/export.

One man's opinion, but I hope it helps.
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