Lol cows hates pirated stuff.Yet.....[opens closet] [copies of 3ds MAX pour out] [kazaa running on desktop]. hehehehe i knew it....

Man, you''re only 13 cows! How did you get so conservative...just messin...I think cows is one of the smartest people on the board. Did you look at the movie I put a link for? You''ll get a kick out of it if you havent seen it already...look in my post above!

Yea cows is merely 13 and he''s smart as heck. I''m a mere 12 year old except he''s signifigantly smarter than me. I started looking at the link but didn''t feel like watching it...I''ll watch it tomorrow.

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Original post by yspotua
You gave up on Blender too soon, but I understand it does take a bit getting used to.

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I''m thinking no. I could do more after 5 min in Truespace than after days of constaint Blender use. I think the main reason I went shopping was I couldn''t find any way to create reflective surfaces. I''m trying to get to a point where with a little help the images will mix with photographic portions. I couldn''t see that ever happen without reflections. The bump maping is much more evolved as well, which is a must. I''m not close to what I need to do with it but at least thats more because I suck than the programs limmitations. I''m not creating little running mario men but hopefuly at some point still artwork that prints at 20x24 at 250ppi or so. All though I can create little mario men as I need as well. The difference between what people are doing with the two programs are not even remotly close.I have to create things that could never be made in real life without pro set designers and even then... So I need somthing better than a freebie. I remembered someone talking about getting it for free but could never find it. I even remembered them puting it on a mags CD long ago to get people to want to upgrade. Sounds like its only 3.whatever. 4 sounded like it was the farthest I could go back and get any real use out of. I figured a 100$ for something that could make things posible that currently were not is a good deal. If I could run 3D studio Max I would but the money for that just isnt there. The program I use needs to be legit so "Cajun" style programs. That left me with the Truespace. I fugure its a good place to start. It may not be enough forever but for now It will do.

I think that you are very wrong about what can be done with Blender. Just go over to the forums at Blender and check out the ''Work in Progress'' forum and the ''Completed Projects'' forum. Espcially look for a project called ''The Airman''. Top grade work, IHMO.

Also as far as Blender not being able to due reflections, check out this tut http://www.elysiun.com/tutorials.php?id=8. Reflections in Blender are called environment mapping.

You can do just about anything you can do with Blender that you can do with most other 3D apps, it might take you a bit longer, but most you can do it. Buy the Blender 2.0 guide are at the very least, download some the tutorials and work through them so you can see Blender''s true power.



I will conceed that there are more people use Truespace, so you see more professional looking stuff made with it. Given that, it may APPEAR that you can do more, but to be honest I wasn''t very impressed with Truespace when I tried it. I do admit there may be some limitations depending on your specific field of 3D, for instance Blender doesn''t support soft body dynamics and many other upper level animation functions, but as far as modeling and texturing are concerned, Blender is tops.

But I guess if you just have to spend your money, this little rant isn''t going to stop you. Gook luck with your development.

if you are willing to pay money for a modeler... get lightwave... lightwave is by far the best modeler.

Ok I did find some very nice stuff so I will retract my prior comment. Its strange that I never found anything that was any good while looking around before. That being said I would say as it being free and all it is a good program all things factored in. There are some things I like about it. Offering much more than many budget aps. It may come in handy at some point so I wont be erasing it of my hard drive, but is just such a strange little thing.

Blender''s strangeness is a factor of its origins. It started out as an in house modeling and animation tool for european Graphics studio. It programmed to meet the specicfic needs of a small group or artists.

It didn''t have the luxury of starting from scratch when it went open source, hence its strange little quirks remains. It still my favorite open source 3d app.

I heard Truespace 3.2 can export to .3ds format, but I can''t get it to save anything except .cob, .scn, and .asc formats. Is there some kind of additional plugins or extra converters necessary for this?

I have version 3.2 and 4. I know for a fact that you can save in version 4, in 3DS format that is. I''m sure you can save 3DS version, I''m not sure though.

If you have version 3.2 just make your your own COB and SCN reader writer. As I mentionned, I use it because the file formats are well documented and you can download from the Caligari web site.

So it''s easier to make a reader, writer. As for lightWave, it''s 1599USD. Version 6.5 of TrueSpace is arround 500 to 600USD. Frankly, it''s an amazing modeler. Version 5.2 wich is also amazing, cost arround 400USD. I think it''s much more affordable with TrueSpace than anything else for hobbyist or idependant developpers. If you have money, give version 5.2 a try. Download the demo!!!

No I don''t work for Caligari.