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Need honest advice from tS 7.x users
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.
Need honest advice from tS 7.x users // Rants and Raves
Post by frootee // Sep 24, 2007, 7:01am
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frootee
Total Posts: 2667
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true; I should have stated that this video card I purchased is an AGP-4 board. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Sep 24, 2007, 7:17am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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You're welcome 3dpdk :)
Just let me know if you need it.
There's some great deals to be had out there now with nVidia's 8800's and ATI's new HD2900's driving the prices down on the older cards. Good luck with the search! :D
-Jack. |
Post by TomG // Sep 24, 2007, 9:52am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Yes, be sure to check what graphics slot you have, AGP or PCI-E. That's important to know!
NewEgg are awesome (a personal opinion, not a Caligari statement), this whole system I now use was bought from NewEgg (I bought the pieces, then just put them together myself, much better value than a pre-made system). I always use NewEgg for any sort of upgrade or component too.
Let us know how it goes!
Tom |
Post by Chester Desmond // Sep 25, 2007, 5:27am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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If it affects your decision any, some of the (more interesting) plugins in Anipak do not function in TS6.6.
http://www.caligari.com/store/Plugins/compatibility.asp
I don't have 6.6 installed right now, but I do remember having trouble getting Puppeteer to work and had to go with Jointmaster from CK Game Factory. May have been only me with this issue though. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Sep 25, 2007, 5:34am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Dunno if Greg's still hanging around the forums, but looks like he updated Puppeteer for 7.x:
http://www.alabsoft.com/bkp/puppeteer26.htm
Here's his website:
http://www.alabsoft.com/bkp/ |
Post by TylerZambori // Sep 28, 2007, 3:48pm
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TylerZambori
Total Posts: 100
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Dunno if Greg's still hanging around the forums, but looks like he updated Puppeteer for 7.x:
http://www.alabsoft.com/bkp/puppeteer26.htm
Here's his website:
http://www.alabsoft.com/bkp/
Jack, how do you like this plugin?
I'm working graveyard shift right now so I'm a little bleary-eyed..... |
Post by Jack Edwards // Sep 28, 2007, 5:23pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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I have it, but never really got as far as animation so I can't really comment on it other than what I've seen others do with it. It does seem to be the best forward kinetics animation plug-in for Model side and older versions of TS. To see it in action, you should download the gameSpace video tutorial at 3DBuzz.com.
You should also look into Motion Studio which was made freeware some time ago. I have used that and it is intuitive and gives more natural looking motions but I think for game development Puppeteer is likely going to produce more reliable (and re-usable!) results. |
Post by TylerZambori // Sep 29, 2007, 3:40pm
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TylerZambori
Total Posts: 100
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I have it, but never really got as far as animation so I can't really comment on it other than what I've seen others do with it. It does seem to be the best forward kinetics animation plug-in for Model side and older versions of TS. To see it in action, you should download the gameSpace video tutorial at 3DBuzz.com.
You should also look into Motion Studio which was made freeware some time ago. I have used that and it is intuitive and gives more natural looking motions but I think for game development Puppeteer is likely going to produce more reliable (and re-usable!) results.
Hi Jack,
I'm having trouble installing motionstudiopro. I unzipped it,
it got saved as a tsx file to my TS directory, and when I click on
that file, it opens TS and then I get this message:
error event: Load object: Invalid version: 4 |
Post by Jack Edwards // Sep 29, 2007, 8:55pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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To load the plugin, you need to switch to model side and click on the icon at the end of the main toolbar that looks like plug. This will create an icon for the plugin. :) |
Post by 3dpdk // Sep 30, 2007, 5:46pm
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3dpdk
Total Posts: 212
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Just to up date this: (incase someone else is lurking about trying to make a similar decision)
I attempted to follow good advice from Thomas and shut down the onboard Intel video driver but Dell apparently doesn't want me to do that. There's no obvious way to actually do that on this system! The system setup during boot has no provision for selecting a default monitor and/or disabling one or the other and I can't uninstall it in hardware manager. Apparently some of the drivers are located on the chip set itself (firmware) and if disabled, the nVidia card will cease to function. I'm not really sure of that but I can't figure out how to disable it.
(Seems like there's always someone insisting I configure my system the way THEY want! A long standing dislike of Microsoft for this reason!)
For now I have discovered by reducing screen resolution and switching to 16 bit color helps tS 7.5 run a little faster. I'm sure when I install a new graphics board it'll work fine. Can someone tell me how to find out if the expansion slots on this system are PCI-E, please, before I spend money on a card I cant use.
Anyway, I'm familiar with Tigerdirect.com and will compare prices between that site and the ones posted here, but the bottom line is that I WILL upgrade my graphics board. No sense in having all the power in this system and have it all limited by an older slower display driver.
BUT.....
From the compatibility list it looks like the plugs in aniPak I'm interested in will work.
... and here's the one main point I'm having trouble with:
As Frootee points out, all the plug ins I use now can be used on the model side (or 6.6) of 7.5 but as far as I can tell, the recorded animation from the 6.6 side (or ones from my present copy of 6.6) such as facial animations will not cross the bridge to the 7.5 side where I could take advantage of tS7's new skinning tools and combine the animations. So if my animations depend on this mixing, and I can only do this on the 6.6 side, and the resident render engine on the model side doesn't do as well as the "old" 6.6, I can't honestly come up with a valid reason for upgrading to 7.5.
One thing to point out here is that ever since 3.2 I started out working in wire frame mode, got used to it, and that's how I work in 6.6. I usually only switch to solid render when I'm adjusting UVs or working in point edit mode and want to be certain I've grabbed the right vertex. So my point is I'm really, really not concerned about real-time rendering. If I want to see how my scene will render ... I render it!
This isn't sarcasm, it's the way I'm evaluating things at present. My interests are in rendered stills and recorded animations. I realize that the Internet virtual world experience is a growing trend and "the way of the Internet future" and tS7.5 is a good step in that direction. It seems to me by leaning towards this aspect of 3D graphics it has (maybe inadvertently) moved away from the side of 3D graphics that interest me. No matter how fast and smooth I can get the workspace side to run on my system, if it doesn't solve the above problems I won't be able to do the things I want to do in trueSpace 7.5. Maybe as some have suggested 7.6 or even tS8.x will recover this side of 3DCG and I just need to wait to up grade. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Sep 30, 2007, 6:37pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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3dpdk,
you may want to consider upgrading your motherboard and CPU while your at it ;)
ASRock ConRoe1333-D667 R1.0 LGA 775 Intel 945GC A2 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813157113
Item #: N82E16813157113
$54.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 Allendale 2.0GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E4400 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819115014
Item #: N82E16819115014
$124.99
MSI NX8600GT-T2D256E OC GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814127286
Item #: N82E16814127286
$10.00 Mail-in Rebate
$109.99
Total: $289.97 |
Post by TylerZambori // Sep 30, 2007, 6:41pm
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TylerZambori
Total Posts: 100
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To load the plugin, you need to switch to model side and click on the icon at the end of the main toolbar that looks like plug. This will create an icon for the plugin. :)
That worked, thank you. It was easy! |
Post by TylerZambori // Sep 30, 2007, 6:42pm
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TylerZambori
Total Posts: 100
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3dpdk,
you may want to consider upgrading your motherboard and CPU while your at it ;)
ASRock ConRoe1333-D667 R1.0 LGA 775 Intel 945GC A2 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813157113
Item #: N82E16813157113
$54.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 Allendale 2.0GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E4400 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819115014
Item #: N82E16819115014
$124.99
MSI NX8600GT-T2D256E OC GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814127286
Item #: N82E16814127286
$10.00 Mail-in Rebate
$109.99
Total: $289.97
I know, it's too bad we all have to become our own computer upgrade experts, but that's the only way we can cherry-pick our computer parts. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Sep 30, 2007, 6:48pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Oh yeah and new HD + RAM:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148140
Item #: N82E16822148140
$79.99
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL4D-2GBPK - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820231087
Item #: N82E16820231087
-$10.00 Instant
$79.99
:D |
Post by Jack Edwards // Sep 30, 2007, 6:52pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Yup. I agree Tyler.
Building it yourself is the only way to get the parts you need to do any real gaming or 3D work. Unfortunately Gamers and 3D artists are considered a niche market and so the companies see more profit in selling computers for internet and word processing. In fact most computers sold today are installed with onboard graphics cards that can't even play 3D games from 4 or 5 years ago... forget running TS or TruePlay... :( |
Post by trueBlue // Sep 30, 2007, 7:20pm
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trueBlue
Total Posts: 1761
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Hello Paul:
What I did with my Dell when I bought the best Video card I could find for a PCI, was Disable the Intel Controller in Device Manager. It has worked flawlessly without any conflicts that I can tell. I followed the instructions that came with the card. I would bet that your rig has PCI only.
One of my first projects in tS7.0 was to use Facial Animator in Model and then I made a 3D Recording of it in Workspace. I'll revisit that scene and check it out in tS7.5.1.
Note: Right click and select Disable for your Controller and red X denotes that it is disabled. Also select Properties and you should see mention of PCI... Bla Bla Bla |
Post by 3dpdk // Sep 30, 2007, 7:28pm
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3dpdk
Total Posts: 212
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But here's the thing Jack.
The stuff I'm doing in "old" 6.6 is, at the moment, only restricted by my skill level and not tS6.6 capabilities (even with the old graphics board) For me upgrading to tS7.5 also means having to spend money on system and other software; and it may not even be possible, after all the upgrades, to do what I can already do with good results in 6.6 without spending a dime. If I was a professional Graphic Artist I would do as you say without hesitation, but for now 3DCG is still but a hobby for me and expense for that hobby have to be justified.
Thanks trueBlue, I went into the device manager (I called it hardware manager) but couldn't see how to get any further. Of course - right click!!!! Head-up-the-*** syndrome. !DOGH!
Thanks I'll give it a go!
I was led to believe that animations recorded on the 6.6 side wouldn't cross the bridge. The trial version will not load up plugs so I had no way to test this. If this is not the case it would eliminate at least one con.
[EDIT] That worked! And yes the properties show that the nVidia board is plugged into PCI buss#1. It dosent say anything about PCI-E so I guess my choice of board is a little more limited that I thought. Thanks, you most likely saved me some money! Now I'll see if it makes any further improvement on 7.5. |
Post by 3dpdk // Sep 30, 2007, 11:18pm
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3dpdk
Total Posts: 212
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Ok y'all.
I think this might be my final comment on the subject and believe me, this is in no way a criticism on those who have switched to trueSpace 7.5 or the ongoing development by Caligari for their great software products. As I said I remain a trueSpace loyalist.
I have followed the technical help posted in this thread to optimise tS7.5's workspace side, but to no avial. Let me clarify something here that may not have been explained. If I'm working with a simple scene with only a few objects on the workspace side, everything flows pretty smoothly.
...but here's an example of one of the scenes in one of my projects.
8718
trueSpace 6.6 screen capture
8719
trueSpace 7.5 trial version model side screen capture
I tried to get a screen capture (several times) of the same scene / same view in 7.5 workspace to show as comparison and I'll tell you what happened in a moment.
This scene has a total 54000 verticies, 38500 faces, and 43 various optimized texture files in mostly DDS and some BMP format The character is all procedural but nothing too complex with no bump mapping. I still have to include street lamps and other various objects to make it a believable set.
The first is trueSpace 6.6 with my system set to 16 bit color. Set to 32 bit color and you can see the lighting effects better. I also have bilinear filtering set to on, procedural textures set to on, hardware acceleration on Perspective correction set to on. And notice I have texture resolution set to 512. Most of the textures in this scene are 512 x 512 or less DDS image files and a higher setting would be useless.
In old tS6.6, in solid render mode I can navigate through this scene and make adjustments with 1 to 2 / 10 second pauses or hiccups. Solid render with visible wire frame increase the hiccup time to about 3/10 sec. Annoying, but manageable. Transparent render causes 1/2 second hiccups. Still manageable but I never use that display mode.
Navigation through the scene in 7.5 model side is actually a little faster; it still hiccups but not quite as much. I forgot to check the DirectX settings but there's really no perceptible difference in the image.
OK so far.
If Lightworks is the render engine in older tS versions I'm not sure I understand why there's a slight increase in render times in 7.5 model side unless I missed an antialising setting or something which is not impossible.
Now, when I sent this scene to the work space side of 7.5 it took about 4 minuets for it to cross the bridge, but it did finally settle in. I turned off the bridge most of the display features and even some I thought might steal processor time, and tried to reposition the view to match the other screengrabs. Even though the second image shows several other applications running in the taskbar this was not the case with the following discription. I even closed PSP down to make certain it was not the cause.
My hard drive immediately started grinding away, non stop. I figured it was caching the textures or something so I let it grind. 8 minutes later I noticed the view move slightly towards the direction I intended but the hard drive continued to grind. 15 minutes later the hard drive was still grinding but sporadically. I tried to make another adjustment. The pointer had no effect on any control but the hard drive went back to full time grinding. I waited another 12 minutes. The view never changed and the hard drive didn't slow down for another 4 or 5 minutes. As it slowed I moved my pointer (nothing else) and again the hard drive went into full speed grinding.
Well ... you get the idea. I finally used ALT/CTRL/DEL to escape but had to reboot my system because now my desktop display had slowed to a snails pace. I tried two more times but with the exact same results.
I have seen other's posting complaints that complex scenes are bogging down the workspace side and quite frankly I've noticed a lack of highly detailed images being posted lately. The one's that do, like some of Mad Mouse's images, turn out to be composite images pieced together in an external image editor, or some from Spacekdet that still use old 6.6. I enjoy MM's images and there's nothing wrong with post processing but to do that in animation either means a loss of dimensionality or a very tedious process of single cell editing.
Sorry for this lengthy post but I wanted to explain fully why I'm not upgrading to 7.5 just yet. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 1, 2007, 12:35am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Bummer. There's nothing I can recommend for PCI, it's all pretty much crap and would almost cost more than a new motherboard + a new card.
Personally I'd consider the computer upgrade more important than TS7.5 with your current hardware. If you can, it's probably worth it to hold off until you can afford to upgrade your whole system then cash your win in for 7.6 or 8.0. Because the money that would go towards that could go into your new system. The render time difference you'd see with a core 2 duo or quad chip would be insane no matter whether you're using 6.6 or 7.5.
Also I think 7.6's animation system will likely make 6.6 even with all the plugs in the AniPak mostly obsolete. According to Roman: "truespace7.6 will introduce vertex animation, morphing tools for facial animation, blendable morph targets as well as new workspace modeling tools and faster speed in modeling."
*shrug* Of course it does really come down to your current and planned needs. No sense spending the money if it doesn't help you further what you want to do. ;) |
Post by TylerZambori // Oct 1, 2007, 4:56am
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TylerZambori
Total Posts: 100
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Bummer. There's nothing I can recommend for PCI, it's all pretty much crap and would almost cost more than a new motherboard + a new card.
Personally I'd consider the computer upgrade more important than TS7.5 with your current hardware. If you can, it's probably worth it to hold off until you can afford to upgrade your whole system then cash your win in for 7.6 or 8.0. Because the money that would go towards that could go into your new system. The render time difference you'd see with a core 2 duo or quad chip would be insane no matter whether you're using 6.6 or 7.5.
Also I think 7.6's animation system will likely make 6.6 even with all the plugs in the AniPak mostly obsolete. According to Roman: "truespace7.6 will introduce vertex animation, morphing tools for facial animation, blendable morph targets as well as new workspace modeling tools and faster speed in modeling."
When do we get it? 7.6 I mean..... |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 1, 2007, 5:42am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Dunno... But Christmas is coming up. It'd be really cool if it was ready by then... of course most of us are pretty poor around that time of year... :p
Maybe Roman can drop some hints about his plans... Maybe he'll get to be Santa Claus and there'll be a cool Christmas upgrade special... ;)
LOL I just had a thought, it would be really cool if the community decorated one of the truePlace rooms for the holidays. Or maybe even made a whole new environment for the season. We've still got a few weeks until Holloween. And then Christmas after that. Sounds like something for the TruePlay interactive environment challenge. :D |
Post by frootee // Oct 1, 2007, 1:23pm
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frootee
Total Posts: 2667
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Now that sounds like fun!
3dpdk: One other thing I forgot to ask. Do you have WInXP or Windows 2000? Because there were issues with running 7.1 / 7.5 on Win 2000. I think there's a fix, but not sure where it is.
As far as checking your video card config, you may have to open your case and have a look. Here is a web page with pictures of AGP and PCI Express slots:
http://www.kids-online.net/learn/clickjr/details/vcard.html
and here's one with AGP versus PCI, and ISA (ISA is very old architecture BTW... )
http://www.si87.com/Products/Videocards/agpvspci/
HTH!
EDIT:
One other thing I thought of; do a search on Lavalys Everest. I have a copy at home (it is free, although no longer updated), it is a diagnostic utility
which gives you oodles of information about your system.
Another way to check is, on bootup, you go into your BIOS settings. Check in the video section to see if there are options for configuring the AGP speed. basically, if the BIOS has any option with AGP as part of the text, then you have an AGP slot.
Froo |
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