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Captain's Blog
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.
Captain's Blog // Roundtable
Post by roman // Jun 9, 2006, 11:13am
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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I am starting this blog to keep you guys updated regularly on the progress with TS7.5. Many of you requested this and I am glad I finaly found the time. I will keep this a closed thread so only I can post in order to keep the progress flow more visible. Here goes the first entry:
With trueSpace7 release more than 5 months behind us, things are finally settling down here to a business as usual. truespace7 release was what Wall Street analysts affectionately call a “disruptive innovation” - some trueSpace7 users instantly saw an amazing revolution “changing the 3D work as we know it”, but a lot of guys are still wondering why in the world Caligari abandoned a tried and true formula of previous versions.
One long time user wrote to me privately that he feels like a passenger on a bus from Boston to New York which just stopped in Connecticut with the driver suddenly announcing that the new destination will be Philadelphia. I think he expressed sentiment of many of you. I wrote back to him saying that while at this stop we are changing the bus for a new shiny one, the destination is still New York, passengers are the same and as always I am in the driver seat. It might have been painful to change the bus but it is now done and behind us and let me tell you this new bus may not have cushioned seats yet but it does have some good stuff under the hood!
In the end, the true value of a new platform can only be proven by the benefits and features it delivers to its users. While some found that the new “revolutionary” features in trueSpace7 were not what they “really” wanted, I am here to tell you that I am convinced that everyone will love trueSpace7.5.
How do I know? The reason is simple, unlike trueSpace7.0, most of trueSpace7.5 features were requested, specified and in fact co-designed by Beta testers - who are users like you - in collaboration with our developers. The developers now have to prove that their new platform will make it possible to implement this feature set in a fast and reliable way.
This is what 7.5 will bring:
1. Simplified UI
Some say that the trueSpace7 interface is needlessly complicated. The reason is when we created the new architecture, we decided that not only did we have to provide backward compatibility for truespace6 users, but we also had to create a live bi-directional bridge so users could move back and forth between old and new parts of trueSpace in real time. While the bridge is not perfect, it works well, and I am still convinced we made the right decision at the time and that many users benefit from this ability today.
However, as many more old tools get converted to the new architecture for 7.5 (there were over 400 in trueSpace6!) the need for the bridge and the "two types" of interface will be less, and we can eliminate many old legacy tools. Furthermore, with 7.5 we will complete those elements of the new UI which were not quite finished for TS7 such as configurable toolbars and libraries. This is the #1 priority for us, we take ease of use seriously and you will find 7.5 UI is easier and more polished.
2. Character Animation
Historically, trueSpace animation tools were never on par with its great UI, power modeling, surfacing and rendering. All of that will change with 7.5. We are designing a brand new, state of the art character animation subsystem, which will take advantage of the new architecture as well as the latest advances in animation research.
First, our new IK will be style based, using empirical databases of motion styles to make manipulation of characters much more natural, while at the same time giving full access to every single key-frame-able parameter a demanding animator will undoubtedly need and consider as his birthright.
Second, you will be able to freely and seamlessly blend traditional keyframed clips with new procedural and physics based clips. Physics can help greatly in creating certain types of realistic animations such as jumps, falls or crashes and 7.5 skeletons will be very much physics based.
3. Modeling tools
We are working feverishly to convert existing tried and true tools from Model to Player side and introduce some cool new ones. Expect a complete polygon modeling suite of tools in the Player, all of which will work with our next generation SDS editing as well.
Additionally, you will get new Material Editor, UV Editor, Draw panel with curves etc. Among the new tools will be redesigned PolyDraw, which can draw on SDS surfaces as well, advanced snapping and constraints, shrink wrap and unwrap. True displacement tools will allow you to literally paint new geometry on the existing surface using image brushes.
4. Rendering
Yes, you will get Hair and Fur shaders :) V-Ray will be moved to the Player side so that bridge will no longer get in the way there. Other new V-Ray features will be good animation support, such as high quality motion blur, incremental updates for irradiance/photon maps, GI light maps, multi-pass rendering, depth of field, post processing, chromatic refraction, anisotropic reflections, true displacement mapping and more. There will be improvements in Lightworks too.
5. Collaboration
Collaboration is not just a fad as some currently proclaim and I am convinced that one day everyone will use it, just like 3D acceleration or 3D widgets today (both of which appeared first in trueSpace, ahead of the so-called “big boys”), and we have no intention of relinquishing the credit for bringing it to market ahead of everyone else. There are great improvements in store for 7.5, most prominently private user shared spaces. Think of it as MySpace.Com in 3D.
Roman |
Post by roman // Jul 6, 2006, 6:35pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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While there is still a lot of new infrastructure work we are putting in place for 7.5, particularly in animation area which does not yet produce visible results, we are starting to get some new player modeling tools under way.
Here are some of the first examples of displacement mapping, all created by SteveBe. Althought the tools are in early stage, Steve was able to use them in an way we did not quite anticipate. |
Post by roman // Jul 6, 2006, 6:47pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Here is another modeling example by SteveBe. This screen grab does not show so much new tools (it could be created with 7.1) what I like about it is the clarity of the real time working space which gives it very natural feeling.
I promise examples produced with new modeling tools soon and I have a feeling that one of these days we will see the ant below animated, even displaying some character:). |
Post by roman // Jul 29, 2006, 11:20am
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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We just released a collaborative server called trueServe which can host public or private 3D shared spaces accessible by any combination of truePlay and trueSpace7 clients. trueServe is in fact, the exact same software which powers our truePlay and trueSpace portals for a several months. We consider it to be by now stable enough for public release.
Some of you may wonder what this is all about but it makes perfect sense to have a collaborative server to go with truePlay, a free 3D collaborative player and trueSpace, a 3D collaborative authoring tool. With the release of trueServe we now have all the pieces in place for our customers to create and maintain a complete collaboratively built, 3D online worlds, whether they are for 3D community use, social networks, games, learning or more serious business or design collaboration. Think of it as your own private GoogleEarth server except Google will not sell you one:) Not everyone will need trueServe of course, but those who do will find pricing reasonable for even a smaller business of 3D community.
All three parts of our collaborative solution will evolve fast, next week we will release truePlay1.1 with an FPS style game like navigation and built-in home scene. After I come back from Siggraph, I will report on current progress on trueSpace7.5 on which I and our R&D team spend essentially 100% of our time. |
Post by roman // Aug 18, 2006, 2:11pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Did you guys notice the update of our web site? We decided to aggregate Content pages scattered all around the site into one place so it is easier for you to find. It is our intention to add more new content at regular intervals. We also elevated Training materials to the top level, updated Help and About section and streamlined the site overall. Finally we also cleaned up the old navigation parts although there are still some legacy pages lurking here and there. Let us know if you like the new changes and what do you think we could add (or subtract) to make it even better.
The way I see it the site should not only serve you, it should be created by you guys. In many ways it already does: Gallery, Forums, Courses etc are all examples of user created content. I am personally excited about upcoming new “Best of Forum” section that Tom is putting together which will showcase the best art posted to Forums in a more prominent fashion. There is some amazing stuff posted there and some of it you might have missed it.
Let me not forget, trueSpace 7.5 is making good progress too:) I was playing recently with new Player side modeling tools, particularly with Point Edit, Snap guides, Inference guides, PolyDraw etc and I found them a lot of fun when combined with new Dynasweep. I made a short video, let me know if I am right about the fun factor. With these tools, power of Player modeling is going up considerably.
Just download this rar (it is about 4MB you can Save it or just Open) it and click on HTML file inside, you should see about 2 min Flash animation with voice over.
http://forums1.caligari.com/DL/PE3.rar
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Post by roman // Sep 5, 2006, 12:37pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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While we are making good progress on animation editor I have no real content to show it off yet, so I am including screen grab of improved transparency in real time 7.5 modeler below as a consolation prize instead. Hopefuly I can show some animation stuff soon.
Meanwhile I want to point out a very strong August Gallery which took me by surprise, it seems many of you decided to skip summer vacation:) Also I was impressed by the strength of BEST of Forums images put together by Tom from Shike, Mad Mouse, Emmanuel and Paul Woodward's posts. Finally, Mathew Collins course on procedural animation is just great.
All of which brings me to the following point: We have so much artistic talent in our comunity that it seems natural to explore commercial potential for many emerging trueSpace artists. If you guys are willing to look beyond ILM and Pixar, I think we at Caligari can help out, I see many new exciting commercial opportunities emerging on web.
Just look at procedural objects in Mathew's course at http://www.caligari.com/Products/trueSpace/tS5/Courses/newProcAnim.asp?Cate=Training&SubCate=Master they have much greater use than static meshes, market for which is pretty saturated by now. I see great future for creation of learning objects for 3D virtual classrooms with realistic behaviors, game objects or 3D avatars for 3D social networks which I see as emerging in near future or interactive objects in online commercial environments. More on this later, meanwhile keep your mind open and sharpen your interactive skills.
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Post by roman // Oct 9, 2006, 1:45pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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I have a new video showing how you can literally draw a 3D primitive on any surface. The video only shows cubes, but you could use other primitives too. Also note how primitive drawing, when combined with snapping and inference guides, becomes a very powerful combination.
http://www.caligari.com/news/news_sept2006/images/tS75_PE200609.wmv
Also, remember that our "Most Interesting Caligari Project" contest is shifting up a gear, be sure to check out our list of prizes and submit your entry.
Among other news, we will soon revive the One Man Show section on our website. Like modern Olympic Games, it will introduce a new generation of trueSpace artists to 100,000+ unique visitors who come to the Caligari web site each month. I will not spoil the surprise who the first modern gladiator is! |
Post by roman // Oct 13, 2006, 9:19am
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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OK guys, now for some news on animation progress. After a long period of massive infrastructure building we are getting to UI part, i.e visible stuff. First, I am going out on a limb here as we never before showed designs of unfinished code. Below you see my current design of UI for character manipulation and while the grabs are all real time grabs of current, running TS7.5 code, the character UI part is not functional yet and may change for the final product. If Beta testers posted anything like this in public forum I would eat them alive but there are benefits of being a CEO:)
What is already working from the screen grab below is the animation editor at the bottom which shows the dope sheet. You can simply pull the title bar up to see additional animation tracks (not shown). You can also already record positional key frames as well as procedural animation with key framed attributes.
We now have new IK solver working which is fully integrated with physics (including collisions) and we think it will provide amazing animation flexibility for integrating key-frames, physics simulation and procedural animation. We also have skinning and skeleton working with rudimentary IK UI.
Now to my design. For the dark "look" I just changed the color of ground tiles, that is all, I even kept the default lighting. Credit for mesh goes to Carpenter. Small inset on upper left shows how the base IK manipulation should work, the one on the right shows skeleton editing and big picture shows editing of joint limits for hinge joint and ball joint.
I hope you like it, feel free to coment on other threads, the whole idea is to gather your coments and make changes or improvements while we still can.
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Post by roman // Oct 17, 2006, 8:22pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Some users asked for a higher res images, so here we go. I am also adding a new image which shows "soft tissues". In TS7.5 these will be just weight envelopes which will be also used for real time character collisions, but they will evolve into real soft tissues soon. Actualy the image showing skin, skeleton and soft tissues from back looks like an alien medical illustration already:)
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Here is the small image with base character navigation widgets in higher res.
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Post by roman // Nov 9, 2006, 3:32pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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I took some "Thumpin" and I am behind on my "Bloggin":) Here are two videos I made a few weeks ago. One shows an early version of skeleton key framing as well as key framing of a procedural object (The bone color and size are corrected now). The other shows an early version of displacement mapping paint. They are both Flash videos, just click on HTML document inside the rar file. I promise next post will not take 3 weeks.
[Edit Nov 10th] To respond to some critical comments, yes I was tired when I was recording these, but I did not slip with the Beta2 correction, this indeed is Beta2 and before Beta1 we had thirteen Alpha releases. I do these videos when I test individual releases. These are not supposed to be marketing videos, if you only want to see something very polished, you would have to wait longer. But you will see some "polished" stuff comming your way too.
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Post by roman // Dec 4, 2006, 10:31pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Displacement mapping is getting better. I am including a video done by one of our developers, aptly named "face mutilate":) Since I could not grab the video I recreated the effect myself in about 60 sec.
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Character editor is making progress too. Here are two stills from a video by Oliver Rohe, in this case grab worked, needless to say if it did not, it would take me more than 60 sec to recreate it. Video shows use of weight envelopes binding skin to bones as well as IK posing.
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Post by roman // Dec 4, 2006, 10:54pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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I am including another mockup of TS7.5 UI, this one is actualy pretty close to what final UI will look like. Color scheme is largely by Oliver Rohe, Icons by Paul Woodward, Gargoyle by Carpenter and IK controls by me. Marcel Barthel, Emmanuell Asset and many others also had their hands in this. As you see, our users are truly collaborating on TS7.5:)
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Animation Editor also makes good progress. This video is again by one of our developers and it still shows light colors, which will soon be replaced by darker ones. Function curves interpolation on this video are linear but splines are coming. Dope sheet and FC editor is pretty capable already.
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Post by roman // Jan 2, 2007, 9:10pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Happy New Year Everyone! Just before Christmas we finaly managed to release first public Beta of trueSpace7.5 to proTeam members. I decided to copy the initial responses by proTeam Beta members here. The quotes are edited of course but they are not selected from a lot of indifferent posts, they are simply the first three reponses to be posted by proTeam members.
Sat down to give 7.5b a spin and first impressions are that visually it's a MUCH cleaner interface than before and looks very impressive. Overall I can say already that this is a HUGE improvement over 7.11.
j_edwards - proTeam
Hi. I've installed the ts 7.5 beta 5.1 and tried it for a couple of hours. First of all, the improvements look incredible.
larsen - proTeam member
First let me say that my response to 7.5 is that it's flipping AWESOME! It has a totally different feel to it than 7.
Heidi - Junior Member
And here is the image Heidi rendered in Beta of trueSpace7.5 using V-Ray GI and new Depth of Field.
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Post by roman // Feb 5, 2007, 3:49pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Here is a new installment, showing actual screen grab with default layout in current beta. Object is actualy a 3D recording which I just stopped in the middle and edited a bit using SDS. It is a 1280 grab scaled down to 800 pixel width.
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Here is a video tutorial showing multiple tracks and blending in animation editor. UI is a bit dated but not too much.
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Post by roman // Feb 6, 2007, 3:26pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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There is more. Here are some very recent renderings by Marcel Barthel in Beta TS7.5. This one is showing new Alpha Transparency, a real time rendering mode in workspace (called Player in TS7.1) which has been added to latest Beta.
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This image is also from Marcel Barthel and it shows Depth of Field rendering in V-Ray.
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On the left side below you see new light maps used in V-Ray Global Illumination (image by Emmanuel Asset), on the right is a screen grab from the infamous "corporate marketing" video created by our own Tom Grimes which seemed to become a target of corporate conspiracy theorists on this list:) It is a bit dated by now but still nice.
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Post by roman // Feb 23, 2007, 3:17pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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First, I want to mention that we opened very recently two 3D galleries dedicated to you: Works in Progress and Speed Modelers. If you have truePlay1.21 you can visit either one simply by clicking on this link: http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSpace/ts7/Brochure/truePlaces.asp. Feel free to post to Works in Progress interesting new work, that's what the gallery is for.
As for newest info on trueSpace, I would like to share four animations created by our developers. They are not ambitious works of art, but they do document our progress well.
First video shows new blowdryer brush in Hair grooming tools.
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Next two videos show progress in Animation Editor. First one shows how BVH files can be imported and quickly edited using Story Editor.
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Second one shows more complex editing of another mocap in BVH format. It shows use of animation layers, Story Editor and Function Curves in a task level scenario.
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Finally, you can now drag just about anything in and out of trueSpace, including from/to window folders, desktop, e-mail etc.
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Post by roman // Mar 5, 2007, 4:17pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Today, I would like to present some new stuff added to real time workspace renderer. Even if your work is in static illustration or non real time animation you may find this valuable. First is my video demonstration of real time live video projector, some modeling and character posing in current Beta which we just made available to proTeam users. Notice that projected image has glow and supersampling.
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I always admired creativity of our users but with TS7 we see ever more surprising user collaborations too. Marcel Barthel baked GI lighting into a house scene for real time walkthrough, then he shared the scene with David Bokon who added mirror and messed up the furniture:)
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Finaly I just grabbed this layout from Marcel Barthel's work on real time subsurface scatering shader. Both David and Marcel are working on other interesting shaders some of which we hope to share with you as well.
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Post by roman // Mar 23, 2007, 11:07am
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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As you guys might have noticed we are aproaching shipping date for trueSpace7.5! Those of you who purchased trueSpace7 during pre-release offer will receive this upgrade for free and what an upgrade it is! In some ways it is more like trueSpace8. At the same time we made it real easy for owners of previous versions of trueSpace to upgrade without pain, all the way to completely replicating default trueSpace6 layout as one of the available working layouts.
We will have accompanying release of V-Ray, but some trueSpace7.1 users were asking on this Forum if their current V-Ray version will work with 7.5. I am happy to confirm that: either V-Ray1.0 will work out of the box as is or we will issue a free patch at the time of 7.5 shipping.
There is even better news: all trueSpace7.5 users, not just the owners of V-Ray will be able to enjoy the benefits of advanced new animation tools for offline photorealistic rendering. This is possible because our bidirectional bridge will convert new workspace animations back to TS6 style model side where they can be rendered with improved Lightworks renderer.
Here is an example of how the process works:
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I am also including links to two video animations which, while not polished, do document well two new features of TS7.5: First one is a video which a real-world world-class animator Oliver Rohe produced in real time documenting how fast 3D artist can use TS7.5 tools to rig and manipulate a simple body part, a leg. Second video shows one of our developers using hairstyle library to create a quick hair cut simply by drag and drop from a library of haircuts. As it turns out you can place human hairstyle on a Rhino without too many complaints:)
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Post by roman // Mar 30, 2007, 8:43am
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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trueSpace7.5 is pretty much done. We still have some bugs to iron out in remaining 20 days prior to release but I think we delivered everything we said we would in 7.5. Users who bought trueSpace7 during pre-release will get the upgrade for free, trueSpace6 users who did not upgrade yet can upgrade to trueSpace7.5 for $299 which is one of the best deals we offered in my opinion. Hair, Posing and Animation features shown below alone are worth the price of upgrade from TS6.
I was creating some marketing stuff for 7.5 web site last night and I was able to create the images below rather quickly while having a reasonable amount of fun, so as they say the proof is in the pudding. Now, all it takes is a better artist than I am to make TS7.5 shine.
First I dragged two haircuts from the haircut library onto a head object. As an alternative you can spray paint hair (Spray on hair:) on any surface. Either way, once hair is created you can brush it using several brushes available. To be honest I did not have as much luck with brushes, the hairdo's below are pretty much the default settings from the library. My favorite brush is blowdryer but I have to practice some more. All together I spent maybe an hour to get two images below. The one on the left is a real time grab actualy showing a brush as a white circle with arrow. The left guy reminds of of Bladerunner replicant, while the right one I call Highlander. Sure faces are the same, but the hair makes big difference:)
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Next, I turned my marketing attention to posing, as it occured to me that many TS users could be interested in posing characters for still renderings before jumping to full scale animation. We received meshes for Oscar and Lucinda characters from aXYZ Corp to use for limited promotion so I started with them. It took me about 15 min to create a skeleton, bind it to skin and start posing inside Labs scene which I like because it has good light (created by Emmanuel). First, both characters would bend like rag dolls until I realized that I did not set joint limits for them. That took another 10 min for both (joint limit UI is very elegant), after which posing them was a piece of cake. If I had another 10 minutes I might have fixed the default, one click skinning with weight paint but I did not, so I just threw in tankgirl, grabbed real time screen in workspace and made web page live. Oscar and Lucinda have about 4,000 polygons each Tankgirl has about 400 vertices. Sure the poses are a bit stiff given my experience and 5 min posing deadline and it is true I did not notice until now that Lucinda hand pushes through glass table but most importantly I had fun.
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Video below is actualy more impressive than images above. It was done by one of our developers and camera is so far out you can barely see the character deformed, hidden behind giant 3D widget. But what you see is amazing. It shows how well physics simulation is integrated with keyframe animation and character editor in tS7.5 animation editor. I could be wrong but I think from high end programs only Endorphin has this seamles integration, and may I point out it has no modeling:)
There is no audio, so here is my written guide. First, the animator creates an empty clip for the car, starts physics which pushes the car, creating keyframes as it goes in real time. Next he adds a character to the scene, creates a clip for her, starts the simulation again and this time both clips fill with keyframes. As the car hits the girl, she crumples and is dragged by the car simply by physics and collisions.
Then animator cuts ends of both clips and converts the clips to pure key frame form. He then creates new procedural clips, changes physics forces on the car and continues simulation from that point on. In a way, physical forces events become high end key frames and can be edited any time unless the green clip is converted to orange, pure key-frame format. These events are very flexible and animator can add a wall into cars path, change the forces a bit, restart simulation and presto, new key frame animation is created automaticaly. Next I want him to add hand animated key-framed end where she gets up and walks away from the accident, it should not be too hard.
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Post by roman // Apr 18, 2007, 5:05pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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As you guys might have noticed, we just announced that trueSpace7.5 release is moved to April 30th. Our testers found more bugs so we have to keep you away from trueSpace7.5 for a little while longer. Our development team is burning midnight oil and we are making good progress towards end of the month release.
We will be releasing more information throughout. Were are just making live two more TS7.5 modelling pages on our site:
http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSpace/ts75/Brochure/Modeling_intro.asp?Cate=BModeling_intro
http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSpace/ts75/Brochure/modeling.asp?Cate=BModeling_polyhedra
Meanhile here is a bit of eye candy from our current version. Marcel Barthel has created procedural object outside of trueSpace and rendered it in TS7.5/V-Ray. It could easily be used in Aliens4:)
In image on right, Paul Woodward first created model of himself using photographs and later another trueSpace artist, Heidi Simonsen added hair and beard by using hair creation and hair grooming tools in TS7.5. This kind of collaboration means a world to me.
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Post by roman // Apr 25, 2007, 9:00pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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It turns out that new animation tools are a lot of fun. First two videos show seamless integration with trueSpace6 like model view, as well as ease of use of TS7.5 animation, with BVH motion captures (by Mr Bones), full body IK and physics it is realy easy to create animation with just a few clicks. Car wheels are driven by a script by Dele, car itself is driven by physics. Dexter model is courtesy of Dele. Recording and voice by yours truly (YT)
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Here is another cool video by Dele which shows integration of key frames with physics:
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Post by roman // Apr 25, 2007, 9:25pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Here are three characters from the growing collection created by our Beta team: From left to right: David Bokon put some bones inside famous Poser Victoria model as well as translucent reflecting glass shoes, MrBones as himself:) and on the right another Mr Bones creation, Binky ready to take on Tankgirl. |
Post by roman // May 2, 2007, 3:34pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Well, it looks like this time we are on target for May 7th release. We fixed tons of bugs in last few weeks, collaboration in our Beta test group has been intense and our developers responded with realy great effort and fast turnaround on all reported bugs.
To pay my dues and show off tallent of our Beta testers, I decided to post here second animation by Dele which shows blending of keyframe clips and physics clips in one animation:
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Here are two interesting images from Davin Bokon, showing the process of adding skin and clothes to Poser Victoria model. First shows sking weight envelopes, second painting of Skin weights.
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Finally, Heidi created what seems like a best hair image yet. This one is part of TS7.5 Manual tutorial created also by Heidi.
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Post by roman // May 4, 2007, 2:13pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Several people urged me to post Parva's real time video video in my blog, so here it is, coupled with a still shot of older V-Ray rendering by Marcel on right, just to show that off line renderers still have their place in production workflow:) What is remarkable in live video below is that it shows the quality of TS7.5 real time worskspace for the purposes of high-quality pre-visualization. I also like the fact that Marcel created his own subsurface scatering DX9 real time shader simply by linking shader bricks in LE (and maybe some scripts). If you look closely you will notice that orange brick says "Melanin" and red brick says "Hemoglobin". How cool is that?:)
We think TS7.5 could be used in this way in high end film pre-production to save days, if not weeks from the actual production, whether final production is live or computer generated. Coupled with free truePlay collaborative viewer you could have individual members of production team geographicaly distributed and still aprove final production instantly and without travel to (sometimes remote) production site.
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Next two videos are equaly interesting. First shows Tom Grimes quick effort and generating 240 frames of potentialy broadcast quality animation in under one minute of total rendering time using TS7.5 GPU acelerated rendering.
Finaly, we have a video showing actual interaction bettwen key framed and physical characters. It is just a quick technical test but while previous videos showed seamless blending between key frames and physcs clips as well as interaction between two physical characters, the video below shows key frame character actualy interacting with other physical objects in the scene. Second part of video shows actualy speed of renderig the animation and saving frames to hard drive.
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Post by roman // May 7, 2007, 10:49am
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Latest update, we decided to push Gold Master build till tomorow instead of today as we needed one more day of final testing and minor fixes. This means if all goes well you guys who ordered upgrade should be able to start downloads on Wednesday.
Sorry for that extra delay, I hope it is worth it. As a consolation here are two animations created literaly in minutes by Mr Bones (with Noko assistance on catsuit). Catsuit is animated via imported BVH motion capture and Monkey is the same except BVH motion capture (i.e. key-frame animation) interacts with physics objects too, similar to the developer animation below, except it looks more fun. Even though both animation were assembled in a few minutes (which I love), I do believe that TS7.5 ability to assemble any kind of animation clips (hand key-frames, mo-cap, procedural and physics) easily inside Animation editor would be suitable for advanced animation projects as well.
BTW I am realy looking forward to some cool animations we could use for TS7.5 promotion. Once you get TS7.5 and decide to embark on a worthwhile project, let us know, if it is worthwile indeed, we at Caligari will help you to make it happen.
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Post by roman // May 10, 2007, 12:56pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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trueSpace7.5 is shipping! While you guys are waiting patiently (some of you anyway:) for the e-mail with download instructions I decided to post here a few things you may try as soon as your shiny new TS7.5 is up and running. The easiest is to load a bunch of content from Libraries and play with it. I sliced some vertical Stack libraries here horizontaly and numbered various todo items:
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1. Drag and drop PaintSphere into workspace and try various SoftPaint and DM paint brushes on it.
2. SDS Cobra is great for playing with Point edit tools, my favorite is dynasweep, you just pull on faces and sweep them. Use Object select Icon to or Rclick to exit PE tools.
3. Move Hotrod (by David Egan) around with NAV widget, its wheels are spinning as you move it they are driven by a script. There is another Hotrod called mouse chasing car in activities-base if you turn in on from its panel it will follow your mouse. Both behaviors are scripted right inside the object, you can enter it in LE and check it out.
4. Load Cable object (by Glenn Gordon). Select 2D Move and drag blue and green cubes watching the cable to stretch in real time. Enter cable object in LE to play with sliders for length etc.
5. 6. Drag DexterZye character (By Mathew Collins) to workspace and press Play in AE title bar. he will go through a sequence of mocap animations. You can do the same with the Horse.
7. 8. 9. Load Crazy Bob, Bobby (created by Oliver, Tomas, Heidi and David, we mean collaboration:)) and TankGirl into workspace (you may want to do NewScene to keep workspace from clutter), select dynapose Icon and pose characters. Bobby is my favorite. Not being a pro animator, I Uncheck "Show skeleton" from Stack panel (switch stack to Panels aspect for that) and just drag on various parts of his body to pose him. You can also record a few keyframes in various poses and replay them. You can also edit joints or paint skin weights from character Icon popup. I love to edit shoulder joint with its elegant widget control.
10. Load Head object, place it where it is well lit and paint some hair on it with Hair length brush. Use Blowdryer or hair direction brush to work on his hair cut. It takes a bit of practice. You can also drag various preset hair styles on this head from library and groom them. Watch out, hair uses a lot of memory.
11. Load Translucent Material scene which uses real time subsurface scatering shader. Move around, add another spotlight. crank up the Filtering quality slider on spotlight to max thus switching to our best real time shadow lights which use poisson disks (you need pixels shader 3.0 DX9 card for this).
12. Load Pushit scene (it takes a while to load because it uses environment shader) and press Play on AE title bar. You will see how BVH mocap animated tankgirl pushes translucent glass cube by physics collision while spheres driven by physics are falling from top. Make sure your Play range is 600 frames instead of default 300. Mr Bones created this one.
13. Load D3D TRT scene, move objects, camera inside the scene (in front of head object) and projector light by draging camera and projector directly by their surfaces, to see real time video streaming in workspace.
14. Load Glassy scene with environment shaded objects (slow load) switch view to camera and turn on physics (tire icon from bottom toolbar). You will see real time environmment mapped surfaces, physics and HDRI panorama background. Great work by David Bokon.
15. Load Atoms scene, turn on physics, select PhysMove Icon from object move tools at the bottom toolbar and pull individual atoms, they hold together with simulated weak force (would be great for Intel to catch up with IBM to make self assembling chips:)
16. Hmm there is no 16:)
17. 18. 19. Drag Gooch shader, Environment shader (by David) and Translucent shader (by Marcel Barthel) on various objects, move them around in workspace, add light etc. This is more fun than you may think. I love those shaders and you can just point edit object with SSS translucent shader just like you can wireframe object in TS6:)
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Post by roman // May 11, 2007, 3:13pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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On Wednesday we held the first ever live 3D product launch party for TS7.5, dubbed aptly "Snowmen Conference":) Our servers held admirably, 3D voice less so. We had a lots of snowmen attending, familiar faces, most of them.
It was great to see so many Beta testers among the crowd, they are first class heroes of TS7.5 developement, along with our development team. It was also fun even with a lots of energy in the air. Jayr seemed most excited as he won a free TS7.5 upgrade. He is a light cyan snowmen.
Galloping horse I was vexing so eloguently about in my speech did not attend live, because truePlace currently runs on 7.0 architecture. That will change in near future as we will be adding real avatars in 7.5 based truePlay2.0. We will also be improving 3D voice too.
(warning: none of the above should be construed as a forward statement of any kind and implying in no way any specific products announcements, product features or "heavens forbid" actual delivery time. "Near Future" is defined specifically as any time period between 3 weeks and 3 years).
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Post by roman // May 29, 2007, 1:38pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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Finally we have a Trial version of trueSpace7.5 out. I hope it will prove usefull, together with Guided Tour (13 videos recorded by me and dubbed by Tom) and Quickguide (all Icons and most panels) it provides a lot of information. BTW Guided Tour can be downloaded separately even if you do not need Trial. Some of you requested full manual but I do not see the point, Trial version is not for "learning" the software, but for "trying" it out to make a qualified purchasing decision. With 30 days money back guarantee there is very little you can lose.
I am also pleased to say that next week we will be shipping TS7.51 free to all TS7.5 users. I an addition to bug fixes reported by TS7.5 users, there will be upgraded manual (yes including videos this time) and a bunch of new functionality some of which may surprise you. I promise to post a full list of improvements as soon as TS7.51 is live.
For eye candy I am attaching two images by Mike Harris and MadMouse. I read that CGTalk did not accept HairyJackson image so I checked their site. I found a lot of good images (and a lot of broken links) but I do not see why would they reject image of this quality. I am sure they will change their opinion as more quality artwork will be created with TS7.51 and its successors. Who knows one day they may ask us about truePlace gallery:) We had a lot of fun with Renderosity artists during recent Aery Soul opening in truePlace. When I told them that soon they will be able to walk truePlace galleries in their own custom avatars they were very excited about that.
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Post by roman // Jun 14, 2007, 12:03pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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We released trueSpace7.51 yesterday, about a month after 7.5 release. We fixed many bugs of course but we added a whole bunch of new features. I hope you find some of the stuff below usefull in your work. If so please post to Forum, if not post anyway:) Here is a partial list of new features:
Formats:
COLLADA export,
BVH import/export
Physics:
Objects with KF animation can interact with objects animated via Simulation;
Better physics solver
Animation Editor:
Direct manipulation of Bezier handles in Function curves
Left, Right, sharpness and angle parameters for Bezier animation curves
Snap to keyframes and clips, better real time clip manipulation
Optimized clip blending graph and base clip detection
One click Edit in New track additive blending option
Full Undo/Redo on tracks and clips
Better control of play speed
Improved tree view
Animation clips can be stored into library
Drag and drop of clips to workspace and Link Editor
Character Editor:
Drag & Drop assemble of skeletons from body parts (arms, legs, etc) in limb library
Full symmetry editing of skeleton
Better integration of stiffness and IK solver
Better IK solver with soft and firm IK handles
Better IK/FK interpolation limits sliding feet
Hair:
Hair works better with Character skin
Better bending of hair strands
Better plant texturing and transparency
Support for Drag and drop of materials from library
UV Editor
Better navigation and refresh
Better shrinkwrap and weld
Heal UV tool
Improved UV projections
DX9 real time rendering
Hardware accelerated shadow filtering
Variable sized smooth shadows with Poisson filter
V-Ray
Zoom and Pan of Vray render window
Easier rendering of single images to file
Reduced memory use for Hair rendering
Correct Subsurface scattering
Improved panels with more controls
Material Editor
Works on multiple objects
Displacement Paint
Smooth control of brush magnitude indicated with 3D brush cone
UI:
Faster refresh of toolbars
Added traditional File menu with Recent files to workspace
Green corners for Icons with attribute panels
Rclick navigation of toolbars without need to activate tools
Tabs for Stack window
Libraries:
Richer tooltips with more info
Added 3D record library
Better Drag &Drop
Menu based export from Libraries
Improved library Browser
For eye candy I am including recent real time spaces (grabs from workspace) created by Marcel Barthel in TS7.51. If I was an architect I would give my right hand for this kind of interactive walkthrough of a client site. Even if architecture is not your cup of tea, just look at the light and remember that Light (and camera) is the prominent character in every scene you ever create. Now, about those snowmen....
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Post by roman // Jul 17, 2007, 10:03pm
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roman
Total Posts: 320
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A lot of you guys complained about slowdown in V-Ray1.51. I am pleased to announce that we were able to speed Vray up and we will release a free V-Ray1.52 upgrade shortly.
I see that some of you are working hard on character animations. I would encourage you to use physics, Mr Bones is an expert in combining physics with his motion captures and produced realy nice work in a very short period of time. Here are two of his recent animation, both excellent in my opinion.
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