Hi, This may be a bit off-topic for the Carrara forum, but I am curious... I am a Ray Dream/Carrara (and now Amapi) user for the past several years. Awhile ago, I downloaded and tried a demo of TrueSpace 5.2. Since then, I have gotten email offers from Caligari selling TrueSpace at low prices -- below the price of C. Of course at that price I considered it, especially because it had bones, facial animation, and radiosity. Then C2 came out with bones and GI, so I decided not to bite, and I got the C2 upgrade instead. Still, I am wondering if anyone has experience with TrueSpace and what they think of it -- especially when the price makes it very competitive to C.

I have trueSpace, but I find the interface very confusing. I like it when I can get it to do anything useful. Of course, they just announced trueSpace 6 coming out July 1st.

TrueSpace, nothing much I have read about their reviews, some said it is good. But I do scan their features and find that they have add many new features likr facial Expression, Flash export ouptput, and improve in many areas. I saw their NURBS modeling is great with many creative tools and maybe some more interesting tools. It price very competitively against Carrara Studio. However it is a matter of preference as long as we feel happy with with out modeling. Ed

I'm on the same quest, Carrara or TS! Used only demos of both. Here are my thoughts... Three things about a modeler are important to me. 1) easy interface, 2) modeling tools, 3) texturing capabilities. I'm familiar with the MetaC interface so Carrara gets a vote here. Certainly, its ahead of my vote over programs like Rhino demo that are more autocad/turbocad interface and Maya Personal Learning Edition that are just flat out expensive for training to learn how to even rotate the view. That said, I'm more partial to the TS interface which is different enough from the MetaC stuff to make me feel like I'm in a real modeler. For some reason, the C1.1 interface just doesn't go right with a modeler, even if it is MetaC. As for modeling tools, hands down, TS has C2 beat. Metaballs, NURBS, all the other basic modeling tools like spline, champher, etc. I can ditch all the freeware Metasequoia, sPatch, hammapatch, amapi 4.15, etc modelers for TS. Not so for C1. Not sure about C2. Texturing is the key for me. Quite frankly, whoever has the best texture tools wins. I dont want to have to buy darketree or deep paint to make my models look good. I want to be able to bring up my model in 3d space and move around it and brush directly on it. Dunno which one wins here, still playing with the texture tools. That said, all the other features like render engines, bones, etc are nice, but I can do bones in Poser pro and with the right tweaking an Bryce lightening, render is just fine for me in B5. So, both programs get my vote on item one, TS gets my vote on item two, and right now, no one gets my vote on item 3. Tough call. Best advice to you... get the demos and use the hell out of them. Get past the learning curve before you make a decision.

I am a user of Raydream ,Carrara1 and now Carrara2(3 days) but i have also bought Truespace 5,1.I like the Truespace tools but i have never liked the interface :seems nice looking but i find it confusing and not pratical.I have also received the upgrade offer from Caligari and still hesitate;new features seems good but the interface still the same.

Thanks for the replies. As for the texturing issue that EricofSD brings up, I think TS has a brush tool for painting directly onto the model. C2 does not -- it just has the polygon layers that you can put on the model. I doubt the TS brush tool is as powerful as deep paint, though. I do think that the C2 shader trees are quite powerful and easy to use, though often hard to grasp all that can be done. I have to agree with some of the responses. TS offers lots of capabilities, and for the price, seems to offer more than C2, but I have not gotten used to the TS interface. It looks nice, but I have a hard time getting used to it. I like the properties tray in C, where you can see all the numbers. I often manipulate objects by typing in rotations, coordinates, and dimensions. In TS, I did not see how to keep this stuff easily accessible. Also the C modeling rooms make it easy to model with exact coordinate values and dimensions. I also like the easy hierarchical access to everything in the sequencer tray and with shaders. Perhaps I have gotten too used to the C interface and hesitate to give it up for something that may be better. I think TS 5.2 is a great deal at $300 (cross grade) or $400, and it feels like a more professional tool (though it still seems to be a niche tool compared to LightWave, Cinema4D, 3DMax, etc). The images in the Caligari gallery are beautiful, which speaks to the tool and the artists that use it.

I've used trueSpace some. I believe numeric entry for coordinates and the like are available through right clicking the selection tool. I like both RayDream/Carrara and trueSpace. Both are reasonably intuitive, reasonably priced, and each has its strong points. trueSpace has more tools and available plug-ins, Carrara comes stock with more special effects, both have global illumination (although C2 is first to arrive with caustics), etc. Some objects and scenes seem to align better with Carrara's toolset, some with trueSpace's. Although there are more expensive programs that may offer a bit more, I suspect that most Carrara and trueSpace users are hard pressed just to keep up with those packages continuing progression of new features and capabilities, and that it has gotten to the point where the artist's skills and available time are now pretty much the limiting factors anyway. Enjoy. rj