Caligari Truespace has been around since the beginning of time; i.e., in terms of 3D content development. In fact, Truespace was one of my first 3D programs running on an Amiga ‘ yes, a Commodore Amiga. When I finally found my way into the visual effects industry, my awareness of Truespace diminished, as my head had to make room for Lightwave, 3DStudio, PowerAnimator, Softimage, and then, Maya. So, I was happy to find out that its staying power is quite impressive given the competition. In release 7.5 now, Truespace falls into the same development maturity as its more well-known brethren. In this latest release, lots of tools have been added to keep up with the Joneses; character development with rigging and advanced IK, mixing animations between dynamics, keyframe, and motion capture, high-level rendering features like hair, sub-surface scattering, HDRI implementation and integration with VRay (sold separately) and incorporation of scripting languages. Yes, you see an ‘s’ on the end of language instead of one proprietary language, Caligari allows its userbase to develop with Jscript, Lua, Python and VBScript.
Now, this is truly a way to keep up with current technology, so, you might ask ‘What is different about Caligari Truespace?’ and that’s a very legit question. It’s doubtful that Truespace will prevent Autodesk from ultimately creating the 3D equivalent of the New World Order. However, Caligari has carved out its own niche in the industry by having its focus on 3D web content, and more specific, a method of live collaboration within a virtual environment on the web. Distributed artists can work on the same assets at the same time in the same 3D space. This truly makes development available to a world community working remotely, and clients can participate in reviewing assets online through the free 3D truePlay application.
For $595 (with an additional $299 for Vray) you can get started with an incredibly robust 3D toolset, and you’ll be one step ahead of the key players when you are showing off your latest creation to your clients inside a 3D conference room which you’ve built on your own.
Website: www.caligari.com
Price: $595
