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Please excuse the noob
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
Please excuse the noob // New Users
Post by Jedi Knight Krazy // Jul 27, 2008, 7:06am
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Jedi Knight Krazy
Total Posts: 8
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Well, I've been looking for 3D modeling/rendering/animation software for a long time. I really wanted something like trueSpace3/4, which were both programs I loved when they were free/cheap, but are now horribly outdated.
The other day, I got the email that trueSpace7.6, the latest version of my favorite software that I couldn't afford... was FREE. Wow. Downloaded it right away.
Unfortunately, since I'm used to trueSpace3/4... trueSpace7 really baffles me.
So, here are my stupid questions that I really should know:
BUG: I can't seem to find the properties panel for VirtuaLight. This appears to be a bug, and as such, is in the Tech Forum (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?p=73242#post73242)
How do I rig/animate characters? I never really mastered Bones in Ts4, and now it seems like I can't even pose the Banana man (peanut butta jelly wit a baseball bat)
That's all for now. I'll edit this list as soon as I'm feeling stupid again. Shouldn't be too long. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 27, 2008, 9:35am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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I can help with a few of your points:
The Workspace Organics Modeling course that I did for Caligari should help get you up and running and it includes a constant shaded DX Material that you can use for reference templates. Works much better than flat shading and you can adjust the brightness of the reference image as needed. You can find the course here:
http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSpace/ts5/Courses/WorkspaceOrganicModeling1.asp?Cate=Training&Subcate=Fundamental
Unfortunately unless you have VRay, nice looking renders don't have a one click solution. ;) There's a lot of lighting theory that it helps to know to create nice renders. UV mapping, texturing and materials are another big part of the equation. Each rendering engine has it's own strengths and weaknesses.
A couple of pointers:
1.) Don't use ambient, constant, or luminescence material settings for materials unless they generate their own light.
2.) Deep shadows and dark areas in your image are good. Having a good range of contrast between lights and darks in your image will help add richness and interest.
3.) The default lighting setup is for modeling, NOT rendering. Infinite lights represent a light source that is so strong and so far away that it's light rays are effectively parallel and have no falloff. That means that it is meant to simulate sunlight (or possibly moonlight). So unless your scene has two suns, you only need one shadow casting infinite light. The rest should be Omni lights, Spotlights, Area lights, etc.
4.) It's ok to fake it! Sometimes it's simply easier and faster to just add a light or negative light to simulate bounced or emitted light or to deepen shadows.
5.) Soft shadows. VRay has a nice little cheese for this that takes most of the work out of it. ;) For the other engines, it's important to remember that raytraced shadows are hard shadows and shadow maps are soft shadows. To get a soft shadow effect with raytraced shadows you need to have an array of lights instead of just one, or use an area light.
I'll leave rigging and animating to 3DFrog and some of the other animator guys to explain.
Hope that helps! |
Post by Heidi // Jul 27, 2008, 10:03am
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Heidi
Total Posts: 335
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Learning a new app can be really daunting, I know... but Jack's tutorial will give you a great start on putting it all together with TrueSpace.
As far as character creation and rigging, the workspace has some great tools for putting your characters together. Even so, there's more information than can be covered in a single post.;)
Check out Chapter 8 of the manual. In addition to detailed explanations for each of the tools and what they do, the manual also has a number of videos that demonstrate the process and workflow.
We can help in here with specific questions if you run into problems or get stuck on a topic along the way. :) |
Post by Jedi Knight Krazy // Jul 27, 2008, 2:30pm
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Jedi Knight Krazy
Total Posts: 8
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The Organic modeling course definitely brought me up to speed with modeling in ts7. I can now use some of the techniques I learned from other programs like Blender and gmax in trueSpace.
Any news of the rest of that tutorial? I only have Part 1/3 for some reason...
Also, I know that VirtuaLight is capable of some nice effects like Caustics and Global Illumination... but I can't seem to get to the properties panel. The manual suggests I right-click on the render button, but that only gets me the normal render properties panel.
Updating my first post with revised stupid questions... |
Post by Heidi // Jul 27, 2008, 2:49pm
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Heidi
Total Posts: 335
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Jack is the one who has to answer for parts 2 & 3 of that tutorial, since he's the author. :)
For the Virtual Light properties panel; you need to identify Virtual Light as your render engine. Then right-clicking on the render button at the top of the model window will bring up its properties panel.
To identify Virtual Light as your render engine you can either use the drop-down menu under TS6 Files, Preferences (upper right corner of window), or right click the render button at the top of the screen to bring up PhotoRender in the right-hand stack panel. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 27, 2008, 3:04pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Thanks Jedi Knight Krazy, I really appreciate the feed back! It's was about 6 months worth of work to make the course but I'm really glad people are getting use out of it. :)
I haven't done parts II and III yet, so that's why you won't be able to download them. ;) Make sure you send Caligari some feed back that you liked the course and would like to see parts II and III. If there's enough interest, hopefully Caligari/Microsoft will contract me to do the other parts. I'm definitely interested in finishing them. Right now my priorities are on the FBX plugin and Kerkythea plugin though. |
Post by Jedi Knight Krazy // Jul 27, 2008, 4:33pm
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Jedi Knight Krazy
Total Posts: 8
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Jack is the one who has to answer for parts 2 & 3 of that tutorial, since he's the author. :)
For the Virtual Light properties panel; you need to identify Virtual Light as your render engine. Then right-clicking on the render button at the top of the model window will bring up its properties panel.
To identify Virtual Light as your render engine you can either use the drop-down menu under TS6 Files, Preferences (upper right corner of window), or right click the render button at the top of the screen to bring up PhotoRender in the right-hand stack panel.
I have VirtuaLight.tsr set as my Render Engine in the PhotoRender panel.
However, right-clicking the render button at the top of the model view only continues to bring up the PhotoRender panel. |
Post by Heidi // Jul 27, 2008, 4:48pm
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Heidi
Total Posts: 335
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hmm...the Virtual Light properties panel should come up as a floating panel.
See if you get a different result if you select Virtual Light using Preferences in the TS Files drop down menu then try righ-clicking the render icon again. If the selection worked in the Photo Render panel it should already be selected in the Preferences panel.
Also, make sure Raytracing is checked in the Photo Render panel.
Um, in chasing this down, it now isn't coming up for me either... I'll see if I can get mine running again then let you know what I did.:o |
Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 27, 2008, 5:58pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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The Virtualight render panel comes up for me. You have to right click on the render icon while the PhotoRender panel is up though. So that would be two right clicks. ;)
Does that solve it for you guys? :confused: |
Post by noko // Jul 27, 2008, 6:04pm
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noko
Total Posts: 684
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I also can bring up the Virtualight render panel. Shifted around to the different renderers (lightworks, vray, virtualight) multiple times and it always came up and rendered a quicky scene. I hope it is working for you now. |
Post by Heidi // Jul 27, 2008, 6:52pm
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Heidi
Total Posts: 335
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Nope... thanks guys, but still not resolved from my end. Not even with a clean re-install.
I've reported it so hopefully we'll get a solution soon. |
Post by jamesmc // Jul 27, 2008, 7:45pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Works for me. Virualight has to be selected in the panel first (right click render icon) then another right click on the render icon brings up the floating panel for virtual light. |
Post by noko // Jul 27, 2008, 9:32pm
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noko
Total Posts: 684
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I lost the panel too, looks like a bug. |
Post by Jedi Knight Krazy // Jul 28, 2008, 4:12am
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Jedi Knight Krazy
Total Posts: 8
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I'm moving the VirtuaLight thing to Tech Forum, as it's not really a noob question anymore.
Continue discussion here:
VirtuaLight panel will not display (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?p=73242) |
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