My apologies for not making a larger post right now, but I have exciting news for anyone who's looking to enter into the world of 3D design on a budget... I recently found out, through an advertisement email I got at work, that TrueSpace 5 (my 3D design tool of choice) is on sale right now for only $40! For a program that normally retails around the $199 mark, that's a heck of a deal!
I know that if you really want to get a job in the industry, it's best to learn Maya or 3D Studio, but if you're not quite at that level yet, or you just want a tool that's easy to use and still powerful in output, consider checking out TrueSpace. It's a great way to introduce yourself to working and editing 3D scenes, and has some pretty nifty animation and physics features to boot. My one caveat with TrueSpace 5 is it's lack of a good UV editor, but if you don't mind using a separate tool for this (or you're planning on keeping your models within the program), then you're good to go.
Check out this link to Caligari's website for more information. Anyway, I'll have a bigger post about some of my secret favorite games soon, but I just wanted to help promote a product I've enjoyed over the years for now!
4 Comments
Wow. That’s a pretty amazing deal. And it comes with 4 hours of tutorials. Unbelievable. Blender must really be putting pressure on these guys.
I use LightWave myself and I remember when it and Caligari came out on the Amiga. There was a bit of a rivalry between the two at the computer shop I worked at. Not many products can boast such a long pedigree, but the big four in CGI have very deep roots.
The first 3D software I ever owned, CAD-3D for the Atari ST, came from a tiny studio run by one guy. Eventually it would become today’s 3D Studio. It’s hard to believe that its humble beginnings were as a type-in BASIC program for Atari 8-bit computers in the pages of ANALOG magazine. That little article had a profound impact on my life.
http://www.asterius.com/atari/history3
That’s some interesting stuff, Xot. I remember 3D Studio back when it wasn’t the giant it is now, but I never used it much then, and didn’t know of CAD-3D. I had a roomate in college who was in engineering, and he had to use CAD for certain things – I always felt like it’d be a good thing for me to learn, but I just never got around to it.
The first 3D software I ever used was TrueSpace S/E, and it cost around $100 at the time. This was in the mid 90’s, and I immediately started recreating effects I had seen done on my N64 with it… this actually turned out to be a very useful bit of learning for me as far as graphic design for games is concerned, because it got me to really investigate how certain graphical techniques were done in games.
I never met anyone else who used the program until I got into college, where a friend of my roomate was actually an employee of Caligari. He showed me a lot of neat stuff with the program, and I really got back into it when version 5 came out. As far as TrueSpace goes, 5 was a big turning point for me, as it offered a lot of the great aspects of previous versions, and the rendering engine just seemed a lot more realistic than before.
I think version 7 looks very nice now too, but I can’t afford it… I might give the demo a spin though, hehe. It’s funny to think about it like that, but I guess TrueSpace had a pretty large impact on my life… it really got me into computer graphics in ways that just goofing around with Photoshop all day never could have (not that I didn’t do that too).
Cool!
I’ve always been interested in 3D Modeling, but I’ve never got into it. Would you recommend this to a beginner?
I’ve attempted to use blender, and I made a few text animations with it, but its never been easy to make actual models.
Jem ;)
Yeah, I would recommend this to a beginner. It’s not as basic as some other 3D modeling / rendering packages, so there is definitely a learning curve, but if you are really into this sort of thing, then you should have no problem looking through the help and spending a lot of time experimenting.
I’ve used Blender a bit before myself, and it’s very confusing to me. Might just be that I’m used to a different kind of working environment, I dunno.
There are demos for Truespace 6 and 7 on the Caligari website, so I’d definitely try out at least version 6 first, since it’s the most similar to 5, if you’re thinking about buying. At $40, it’s not too costly a mistake if you don’t like it anyway. ;)