United3dArtists Archive

Greetings,

I was reading one of the Viperfish threads this morning and learned that one of our best trueSpace developers, Jack Edwards, has reached a "crisis point" because he and others (like froo) have spent countless hours developing some great plugins for trueSpace but there isn't much interest. Understandably, they can't continue if enough folks don't buy their products.

Before someone jumps to a wrong conclusion, I'm not writing this to make anyone here feel bad. Nor is this a sales pitch. Rather, I'd like to ask the quesion: "How do we grow our community and support our developers?"

It would be easy to throw our hands up in the air and give up citing the hard realities of the bad economic climate. And there is no denying that this is a problem. Yet there are industries that continue to do well during bad economic times and one of those industries is the Entertainment Industry where, it would seem, trueSpace could participate. Let's not forget the attraction of having a great 3D program that is totally free!!!

Consider this: Right now the number of members who regularly participate at the Caligari forum seems to vary between a paultry 100 to 150. That's out of a total of 8446 registered members! As of this morning (21-Jul-09) we have a grand total of 298 registered members here at United3DArtists and our daily regulars are only a small portion of that. In fact, the most members who have been online at one time here is a whopping 22. Yikes! So the number of people who are learning to use trueSpace and who are participating in its community is very small. This also means that the number of people who have heard about our developer's products like the Blender Fluid Importer, dribble interface for RenderMan-compliant renderers, the YafaRay4tS exporter for the YafaRay renderer, the Workspace Side Obj Importer, and the Procedural Animation Toolkit has got to be very small.

Why is this? Perhaps it's because 3D creation has such a steep learning curve. If this is true, it will remain a niche until 3D creation becomes brainlessly easy. Roman Ormandy, in my opinion, moved us in that direction when he created trueSpace. And yet, as "easy" as trueSpace is, it still has a high learning curve that undoubtedly prevents many of the millions who have downloading trueSpace since it became "free" from participating and seeking the help of our community and great developers like Simon, Jack, Jason (froo), and others with whom I'm not yet aquainted.

At the very least, a newcomer is faced with tons of new terminology to learn. Imagine a new person seeing the phrase "math brick" when they read about Jack's Procedural Animation Toolkit. And yet Jack's toolkit helps to make animation relatively easy.

It seems to me that we need two things:

First, we need a way to gain publicity so we can attract more people---to inspire some of those millions who downloaded trueSpace to learn to use the program. Perhaps we could use "viral marketing" if some super-talented 3D artists published some of their animation work on YouTube and plugged both trueSpace and some of our developer's products.

Second, we need lots of great tutorials geared toward beginners that feature the latest version of trueSpace and show how easy it is to do some of this stuff---like using the YafaRay renderer with the YafaRay4tS exporter to create stunning photo-realistic images, using the Obj Importer to tap into the vast libraries of 3D models to speed creation, and using the Procedural Animation Toolkit to create exciting animations.

How do we accomplish this? Do you have any other ideas?

Best regards, First Light

I get the distinct feeling folks did a runner when Truespace got closed down, It kind of looks like people where waiting for a massive update that never came and just moved on, and now we just have the faithful and a string of new people and to be fair the new comers are a long way off needing more toys to complicate things.
From my experience with the games world only a very small amount of people latch on to any software, something like 80% never get past the first level. I'm sure the same thing will apply to TS and whether or not it will remain active in the future.
For me personally I don't use workspace which rules out most of the plugin these greate guys are working on, I keep attacking Yafaray but my lack of skill in WS and a cr*p PC means its a long and often disapointing pastime, I don't use OBJ's in anything ufortunately
Its really bad timing for the guys developing plugins, I'm hoping we just need to weather the storm and we get to see a brighter future for Truespace, all we can do is try and get the community to work together and start making awesome art again.
Just my 2 pence worth..

Very simple ! Only usefull things get used ! Truespace has had a very autistic approach towards integrating into
the workflow with other applications. Truespace has got some pretty interesting possibilities to do procedural animations
like the steerable shark project but yet there is no way of yet to get that out of Truespace into another enviroment.
Lots of us have and are migrating to other software and what we need to have is solutions to use truespace as it is now
inside those new enviroments rather then the other way around and ending the projects inside Truespace.
Truespace has got some easy to use rigging tools and it would be a joy if we could use those prerigged characters
inside other applications even daz studio and Poser.We would have tons of fans from that side if they could avoid the complicated
setup tool that they now have and we could have integrations into the posing tools that they got for free .
Steinie just asked about the moded morph panel from the captains bog that never made it to the final. We could setup our models
in Truespace and use the ones in Daz studio and move back again with the finished animation into a truespace or any other application(including morphs).
Same as with the tsx building plugin get closer integration with the blender city generator and the upcoming Sketchup city generator and
we are a part of the other forums again...
To put it in a few words we need better integration into the 3d world ........ !
Thats more people coming .......
My 2 cents because that the position that i am in now and some of what i would like to see..

Two reasons: Modeler, which is the old core, is technically outdated since years. And Workspace hasn`t even reached this power yet.

The shame is that there is not this much missing to finish the Workspace at least to that point that it becomes a useful app. Mainly bugfixes, and some minor still missing functionality. But it`s exactly these missing bits that misses badly. Bones system is nearly useless. Don`t ask about the battle to get our movieproject finished. Modeling means you still have to switch to Modeler for basic things like Bevel or functional SDS, and and and ...

What is missing is that the developers go back to work and invest at least one more year to finish this baby. But this will not gonna happen. The devs are gone. And everybody knows that. So who wonders that nobody is interested in tS anymore. tS is dead

Well, I'd be willing to crank up my old Phantom tutorial if it'll help, but what we'd be encouraging is to bring new users onto a very out of date program, one that'll get older as time goes by

Now for once First Light I'm not going to argue with you (makes a change eh? XD) but we've got to consider something

When Caligari went under, many people who might have been considering Truespace got turned away from it because it would have been unsupported software, many of us also got catapulted out of Truespace because they'd rather a supported Community, now while it may be free, on paper Blender is the only option for many people wouldn't you say? It does what Truespace does and some more, and the "quirk" of this program is that it's all keyboard based rather than Truespace which is visual based.

Aside from our regulars, the only audience we can realy get is that dreaded "insivble" audience, the 2000 odd people who signed up to the Cali-forum and only posted once to ask a question, or indeed never signed up, the only problem with them, first off we'd need to to attract them (the point of this thread) but, how can we attract them if they're visible? I can list the "regulars" which are
Prodigy Froo Jack Edwards Rich Splinters MadMouse Stenie Nigec Marcel Tiles Design Devil Wigand Breech Block, Nez, Mr 3D, Theuns, Maybe Nowherebrain unless he's moved on, Rayman, We've now got Buzz, Ranger101 and Kenc3 and BooxieMalone. Many of us stay because it's the same community and we're all familiar, some of us stay because this is primarily now the only solely Truespace Based community. The fact we're all familiar might repel some others despite how welcoming we all are, no-one likes being the Newbie.
And of course other users mainly just poke their heads in, dump the artwork and run off again, sometimes that's the approach others make, it means when your program goes down the tubes you're less attached to a communtiy that'll then disperse.

What we'd be doing is not so much expanding by getting new audiences but more existing audiences that don't know of this place or find it a bit too much of a "cult"

One option might be to allow other programs? That way users of other programs could well learn more about TS and those of us could learn more about a different workflow. Blender would be a good option, because then we could learn how to make the fluidsims for the TSimporter Froo made, and also all those "free program" hunters could see the difference between the two programs.

I wonder if that'll help
ATB
Steve

I agree we need to open the doors to other software for the community to work, we have a healthy amount of TS regulars even then some have their fingers in other pies it would be great to see what they come up with
I'd hate to see this turn unto somethig like an MG's Owners club, where they talk about the same old things, compare rust spots, wear tweed and frown upon anything that isn't an MG car!

What's Wrong with Tweed? (Sorry could not help that one)

But seriously... You all have some great points, and I think opening it up to other groups would be a great benefit to the site. But, I worry about how True Space would hold up. Being new to the program I do not know it strengths or weaknesses yet. So i belieive being able to point out how well TS does certain things in comparison, and being able to convert them to the programs being used will attract more individuals, to the site to learn and to TS to do it. The age of a program is definately important when considering what you are going to use, but...
if TS does something well, then we have to show that, and how easy it would be, for say blender users, to do this in TS then port it back to their native app. Peak there interest and get them hooked.

Karthogen wrote: if TS does something well, then we have to show that, and how easy it would be, for say blender users, to do this in TS then port it back to their native app. Peak there interest and get them hooked.

heheheheh .... you dont know Blender users well do you ?
I will not point you to some of the comments from the Blender community some time ago when Ts became free... ; P
And what do you want to export from Ts and how ? Thats exactly what I wrote in my post above.
particles....... nada( you have to manually export obj frame by frame from model side..
hair doesnt export.... procedural animation doesnt..... the limited cloth from Ts doesnt.....
Try to get bones into Blender good luck .....
Heck you cant even export BVH you can import them but not export them and you cant import collada
but you can export collada even with bones but the bones dont show up in ie: Daz.... you just get dots..
Did you look at Jacks developer site the most people want the developers to work on exporters......
Ive got physics to export (only on static objects) but was lucky.
If anybody finds ways of exporting please show them to us ! I am more the happy to see how
That goes on and on.......

Its amazing how territorial people become over software, I guess it could also be a problem getting folk to just visit and be active.
TS has its floors and unfotunately it effects the animators and game developer quite badly, Blender has a huge advantage if something doesn't work someone will beaver away at building exporters and fixes

Well, on the subject of exporting...

I have finished the Workspace OBJ Exporter. Some of the folks here are testing it,
to make sure there are no showstoppers. But it is pretty solid IMHO.

The following are supported:

* Simple nodes (non encapsulated)
* Complex nodes (Encapsulated objects composed of multiple sub meshes)
* Faces are sorted by material, and written to OBJ file accordingly
* Material textures are written as PNG format bitmaps
* MTL file
* Alpha, Bump, and Color Texture channels
* Import and Export dialogs provide status-bar and textual updates as processing progresses

BTW just did a quick test with Crazy Bob; posed him and exported him; then reimported him.
He came back in, correctly posed. So that's nice. That means, if necessary , an animated character Could
be exported as a series of OBJs. Have to think a bit about the interface to do that cleanly and user friendily.

I think we need to help support our Developers as well. One way is to help them with this community with or without Truespace. If you noticed the domain name is United3Dartist.com . This can continue on even without TS. I am sorry to be so hard but at the speed in which Technology advances TS even with everyone building Plugins for it there is no way it can catch up. Much less keep up without making it open source.

There are other applications for these guys to use their skill on to make a few bucks. I for one would love to see some plugins to help people like us with software compatibility. Make it easy to move and transfer from one app to another. Maybe some tutorials C++. but bringing people to this community is key to the success of it.

I think our animation project is the way to go to get folks interested in our community. And by saying that I mean any community project will help. You want to get people in here then help them learn to do what they want to do. Training for 3D in general is the one thing that is hardest to find on the web. Well MY 2 cents have been spent. Just think all of you guys are a great bunch and don’t want to see you all disappear one by one.

Greetings again,

Many great comments with different perspectives! A healthy disagreement is great---it's how we test our ideas and learn. For example, I don't share Tiles' opinion about trueSpace being dead. But I understand why he feels that way and his logic is sound. Perhaps I'm just slow to admit it now---but I'm sure I will admit it in a year or so if the economy has picked back up and Microsoft and Caligari haven't done anything further. But I want to wait a while and see what happens after the economy is better before reaching that conclusion.

I'm not sure what to think about the idea that trueSpace is unsupported, weevil. I see you point---nothing more is being done with the kernel. But you have to admit that, in the case of trueSpace, there is a strong mitigating factor: Caligari exposed the kernel to third-party developers on the Workspace Side. So there is still a lot that can be added to the progam without changing the kernel---at least for a couple of years (I think). That's why I have a hard time saying it's completely "unsupported" as long as we have talented developers willing to work at it.

As for Model Side versus Workspace Side development, my impression is that much more is possible on the Workspace Side than on the Model Side so naturally, that's the side that will attract the most future development. In fact, I believe that this was a design goal at Caligari for their "new architecture". Our developers could comment more intelligently than me about that.

Perhaps someone should begin a wishlist of features that the Workspace Side needs to make it viable for them. Then our members could be polled to rank the items and form a priority list that developers could use as a roadmap for future development. We need to keep such a list practicle. Let's not ask for the moon until we get some of the basic needs addressed first. RAYMAN, you seem to have some insight here, perhaps you could spearhead such a list.

---------

But I really logged back on to share another idea that came to me as I was out jogging. What if we create a 3D School at United3DArtists. We'd seek a talented artist who is also a gifted teacher AND an expert with trueSpace 7 or later and ask him/her to design and teach a course on 3D Design with trueSpace. Students would pay a fee for the class so the teacher would be paid and so our developers will be paid---every student would receive our developer's tools as a part of their class materials.

How many of us would have loved to participate in an online 3D class when we were starting out? How many of us still would? (Me, for sure!) We could promote this everywhere possible. If enough of those millions of trueSpace downloaders learn about it, then surely we'll have a "full" class.

Once the first class is over, we can use that experience to launch other new classes. For example, we could do the same thing with Blender. Perhaps a multi-program class could be constructed to teach the kind of workflow that RAYMAN wrote about. (Remember, Prodigy has already made it clear that he wants this place to welcome other 3D apps---just look at the new forums under the "Tutorials" forum if you doubt this.)

If you like the idea, then the next step may be to figure out how to do it from an infrastructure perspective. I've never participated in a virtual class before and am unfamiliear with what is involved. I imagine that it requires both real-time two-way texting with the teacher and live video streaming. Although I think the live video can be avoided if video demonstrations were recorded ahead of time for students to view on their own time and the teacher were available online at a specific time to lead a discussion and handle questions.

Or there is trueServe. But I'm leary of its scalability. Could it handle a large enough group of students within one scene (or world---I'm not sure of the correct terminology). Also, could trueServe be used in such a way that students would see the instructor's trueSpace display as he/she instructs the class and demos concepts.

Hosting a series of online classes in a 3D School could be a win-win-win for us. Many of us would benefit from the instruction personally, we'd undoubtedly attract more folks to the forums, and our developer community would benefit from better visibility and income.

What do you think?

Best regards, First Light

froo wrote:Well, on the subject of exporting...

That means, if necessary , an animated character Could
be exported as a series of OBJs. Have to think a bit about the interface to do that cleanly and user friendily.

Froo you are the light on the horizon !
I was Pm ing with you about both the obj series export and the keyframking of procedural animations like the shark.
That is a great beginning into the right direction !
It would be cool to have series of objs also from things that run in the modeler side like particles.....
Did you try anything in that direction ?
I did it manually but you go nuts if you export 200 frames of obj manually ... ; P
Peter

Masybe I should clarify there..."Officially" unsupported, after all there is no Caligari customer service and the team's moved onm unnofficially however indeed it is a different story, one which this forum justifies

You've hit an interesting point, why not use Trueserve that came with the 7.61 patch to hold things like the old Thursday night live, things like that?

Hi Rayman;
I have not tried anything like that yet for model side;
I just finished up the workspace exporter and have another project on my plate.
On WS Or Model side a command-line interface is required, so you don't have to click the OK button
on the dialog 200 times. I am not sure if LUUV can be called like that; if so, that makes things a lot easier.

Weevil:
yeah that's a good idea. Trueserve is free, not difficult to install/configure and get folks in either.
Though honestly I am not sure about stability with large numbers of folks. Though judging by
the headcount at TNL's, and scriptor meetings, that may not even be a problem.

You can run it from your own computer of course, and send folks your public IP address.

I feel like I may be breaking a rule by mentioning this but, I was driven here by a few comments on the Game Creators forum. They do not have a thread for truespace but they do have one for 3D modeling and several of ther people use it. It as mentioned and I came here when I downloaded it.
If new people cannot get truespace, it will eventually turn into a site with the same people because no new users to input. I know this will all wash out in the end. Maybe we need to open the forum to other software threads and gain more input that way. Just a thought.
We need new users to grow and without them we will not grow.

The developers made and are making plugins, scripts, and so forth for various reasons including a perceived business opportunity and to add or access missing tools that TS development was too slow to provide. Those projects were started when TS's future seemed long.

I hope all the developers succeed in profiting or seeing their goals accomplished from the tools they make. It doesn't look like that will happen. When TS was stopped by MS they "pulled the rug from under" the developers.

People like me will continue to use TS as our main program. I'll use it because I have it, know how to use it, like it, can't afford to buy anything else, and I'm a hobbyist so TS5 or TS6.6(modelside) work for me. Most users will move to other software with continuing development and support as TS becomes obsolete.

So, the developers (Jack, Froo, and all) should look at a broader customer base. Make import/export tools for a variety of 3D programs and make the plugins that interface to renders etc. work with other software too. Maybe some Blender, Modo, or whatever, users would like a 3Delight, Kerkythea, or Yafaray connection.

The forum is not just for TS. It will thrive only if it is for any 3D and related software. The discussion of that should be how to keep things orderly while serving users of so many programs.

we can do whatever we want but without a real update of TS, the plugins will not slow down the fall of TS. This software with 2 heads with the latest that is not finished is difficult for new users and those who have experience of the modelside felt they had been abandoned before Microsoft stops TS. I expect the workspace is finished to install myself but I know it will not be possible now. The true reason is the lack of a fast renderer as LightWork, editor texture as simple as the modelside and many tools (if i compare others soft). DX shader and realtime are beautiful to see on screen but unnecessary for my professional needs and it will be outdated very quickly without update. I do not want to waste my time with it (this concerns only me and my job). If we must go elsewhere to finish our work, why not stay at this new location? That is what will accelerate the fall of TS. The best thing you can do is to use TS and show your work (illustration, animation, script, plugins...) . It is the best way to promote TS.
However, I am not pessimistic because my best tool is my imagination. And I will be one of the last to use TS ...
(I use a 10 years old soft for photo editing, and people sometimes ask me what function I used with Photoshop to do my work )

This Site is here to save this Community of 3D Artist, no matter what application
you use, what age group or ethnic group you might be. We all share that desire to
learn more and to become better Artist. Unlike many other Forums we don't try to
make you feel unwelcome, ignore your questions or treat them as silly nuisances.
We all started as rookies at some point and I think most everyone here has something
to share. That is what made the Caligari site a great place to be and Prodigy, myself and
all of you want that place to continue.
This place is not Application specific. In order to grow it cannot be. I still think great things
are ahead.

Well I don't know about people wanting any kind of plugin to trueSpace. I don't see people asking for additional plugins and yes I examined the pool at Jack's website (also read the users post requesting plugins) but that pool is not conclusive. It's inconclusive because people say they want that, need plugins to do that, but they are never specific making difficult to guess what is really missing and what should be prioritized.

I mean I tried to make a fbx importer / exporter, I added some more formats to it and now I try to import export animations to those formats. I did this plugin because I primarly needed it but I also gave it away free just to help the comunity and because I was under the impression that people would want to be able to export / import in multiple formats and import / export animations. But I didn't get much feedback back. I mean expect for Prodigy who helped me pointing to some problems and telling me about his experience with the plugin (slow speed on some imports, some models not importing correctly, no support for curves and polylines in dxf, etc), froo who found a bug in exporting triangulated obj files and rayman suggesting for a script to export / import frame by frame, no one seemed interesting in that plugin development. And the last version with all the supported file formats I only have 8 downloads. So the amount of feedback and the amount of downloads leads me to the conclusions that people do not really need to export or import their work or their existing interchange capabilities suffice them and the need to have features supported by plugins is very limited or geared to towards niche areas and the willingness to test plugin functionality and report problems is very low (because bugs are in all software and I don't believe I don't have bugs or my work doesn’t requires improvement).

Based on those observations I’m not surprised to see the investments in plugin development is not returned back or the interest for plugin development is disappearing. Truespace users don’t want to stick with their application and try to evolve it inside the community they just want to learn new applications and migrate completely to be able to remain competitive 3d modelers (don’t get the wrong impression I’m not judging just observing facts) and truespace is not blender to be maintained and upgraded by the community, it’s an ex commercial application where features and bugs were always done by calligari and people still want that to be the case, they don’t want to extend their applications by buying plugins they just want to install truespace and have it all.

So even if there would be a real need for plugins I really don’t see any economic model that could be used in truespace case to make plugin development viable (plugin market, donations, etc), nor do I see a user base interested in using truespace as their main 3d application in the future.

trueSpace is a great and Easy Program. It has everything I need to enjoy!!! I'm not changing over to any other modeler anytime soon, and the people who keep pushing other programs are the same people who have been pushing them for a long time now. These people, in my opinion, haven't really learned truespace (because I've yet to see anything created from trueSpace out of them) and would rather push the Modeler they do know how to use.
Once again, truespace is a Great Program, has all that I need, and I'm not going anywhere for a long while.

Thats not a contradiction....
Most people are evaluating their 3d future and are a bit lost right now.....
They know that sooner or later they have to migrate but dont realy know yet where to....
Others like I know exactly what parts of what software they want to use but are lacking the plugins
and know exactly what those plugins should do and are willing to also pay for them.
And its probably not rocfketscience that I am expecting.
I have trouble with 2 plugins at the moment that were both written in python.
One loads all the obj. sequences into Vue and crashes it after about 100 meshes
and the other one that loads one file after the other from outside needs me to dive into code to
let me set the path to the files and the position.
The first is better then nothing but the last would be cool and I cant use but would be good to build upon.
On the other side i would need the export of sequences from TS both Ws and MS side.
That would make me happy !
I can export from Blender without any problems and you dont have to learn any keys and shortcuts at all to use
the fluid sim or the cloth sim except alt- a for running it after you have baked it and its as easy to use as Truespace.
Everything is out there already not much has to be invented !
Peter
Ps: animation from Blender inside Vue...

Maybe we could start a Topic on Drawing Programs. That would open things up to many different programs which are being used wth Truespace.

Maybe we could start a Topic on Drawing Programs being used with Truespace. This would open things up a bit for new comers.

To some extent I see these two issues as separate concerns.

As I see it, this community is the continuation of the community of former members of the Caligari forums. This group has demonstrated an interest in supporting each other in developing their skills as 3d artists and developers.

This community now faced with diverging interests in the choice of software used to create their art can continue to thrive as a community of mutual support. Growing this community will be accomplished by continuing to be a supportive environment and by developing materials, products or services of interest to 3d authors.

Supporting our developers relates specifically to the future of Truespace. To this end a path for the future of Truespace has to be established and supported by the Truespace user community and the developers.

The first exercise of any good business to understand the industry you are in and the customers you are servicing. Then you can make sense of the services you offer and measure your ability to service your customers.

The problem here is that TS has had a generic service model. From what I can see the business model was to service 3d artists. There was no particular direction for servicing any specific industry. If you liken this to carpentry the business model is to produce hammers and chisels. As long as you produce hammers and chisels, somewhere, somebody will probably buy some. In the meantime the larger players, now player for the most part owing to deep pockets at Autodesk, worked for the movie and game industries. They created a base product and built extensions and offered extensibility to those industries. Derivative users of their software emerged, eg illustration, but they were secondary markets and were treated as such. Truespace needed to focus on a specific market or market segment in order to ensure it had a core business. Lacking a specific business purpose it became a hobbyist application, an introduction to 3d. Blender is a product with a shotgun business model that works owing to the extent of its functionality and the tremendous support that open source projects get. The real competition for TS is Maya, 3DSMax or XSI, not Blender.

TS 6.6 was a terrific tool for animation and illustration as well as a good base for extension through plug in development. This environment was limited in its growth potential by technical issues and could not evolve with new hardware and operating system environments. But what it did very well was to remove a layer of complexity in creating 3d illustrations and animations for those learning the craft. Looking at other tools, like Blender and C4D, I was surprised at how quickly I could create something and how intuitive the workflow of the interface really was. I did not really have to understand the first thing about coding the application.

TS 7+ is a new environment with a targetted agenda (collaborative 3d web) that was , imho, never completely able to service any of the prior uses of TS nor the agenda for which it was targetted. Further, the interface is more cluttered than its predeccesor and functionality is more difficult to access. Understanding the LE is not just an option for those wishing to learn how to script, it is a necessary skill in using this new environment.

To move TS forward will require the resources of this community and the devs working in concert toward specific goals. The challenge I see in this is the timing.

First, the economic crisis is forcing many of the members here to look for work or deal with personal financial crises. Given the large percentage of the population that are hobbyists, 3D art takes a back seat to feeding the family.

Second, its the middle of a hot summer. Despite the economic hardships many are taking care of the kids out of school and vacationing.

Third, community attention is not focussed at present. The old Califorums are still up and people are spending time there. Jack has truespaceplugins.com and some of us are spending time there. Dragneye, Rayman, myself and a couple of others are trying to get an animation project off the ground and we have a project forum and, when I get the time, are modelling or whatever. Marcel is busy with a project in Saudi I believe. Some of us are still very busy learning to use the workspace with Yafaray at the same time we are trying to download everything we can from the old site and then we have to sort out which script , which version , what do we load and how do we load it ..... the list is endless right now.

Our ship is also somewhat rudderless at the moment, which is why I appreciate First Light asking this question, so I think our first step is to find the right personnel to load up the bridge, navigation, communications and engineering (every Enterprise needs its Scotty, right Jack ...

Next is chart our course. I think the majority of those using TS are illustrators, animators and game modders/authors, in that order. Perhaps we need some help refining the definition of our market. We need to find a focal point sooner rather than later so that we can say that we are at least heading in that direction.

When we know who is doing what and where we are going we can start working at telling more of the 5 million who downloaded TS what is going on. If we have a message communicating a direction then I think we can start interesting those who downloaded TS for free and thus expand our marketplace. I don't know the stats on the downloads so I don't really know if we have to support 7.6 as well as the betas. I suspect we do.

I firmly believe that Truespace can have a productive future but we must create a working group with a structure sufficient to carry it forward. The collective input of individuals adds value and is appreciated but a coordinated group effort is what we need to target and achieve future success.

Roman, realizing you are likely to read this post, I hope you forgive my criticisms but like many others here I saw greater potential than what was realized. Also, when you read this post would you send me a note as to who I have to speak to regarding future distribution rights for 7.6, the betas, Trueplay, the SDK and other materials.... thank you.

Don't forget to support Simon creator of dribble for modelside as he will never make a workspace version at this rate. He is the oldest plugin dev around here and he actually worked on truespace through the years including vray.

If I wasn't making plugins and scripts for my own use it would be futile because people don't show much interest at all in them so I removed them from forums long ago with plans to sell them after updating them but saw no point. Soon yahoo will be cancelling geocities where my ts6.6 model side plugins were posted for years. Ian Kirkley's shadermagic shaders will be gone too as they are on geocities.

I may get around to posting my layers for workspace plugin at Jack's site , there is not much incentive though.

As for new folks joining here I doubt many will be truespace users. Truespace is virtually dead unless ms gets off it's duff and sells it to someone with the desire to keep it going or Roman buys it back which I doubt.

I think many of those 5 million downloader can't get it to run on their older system like some of the people I told to get it so it's useless to them until they upgrade.

Thanks v3rd3. Excellent post!!! That's the kind of clear-headed thinking that we all need.

- Understanding A Newbies Situation -

(besides I just read v3rd3's coniderations after having drafted my post, I think mine could be an addition to his - I know, I have to ask for your patience now to read such a long ...)

Hi all,

just want to give my 2 cents to the implicitly expressed presumption, that there were only little interest in new developments, which is not the whole truth. IMO that impression is a lot owed to the fact, that new users can't keep pace with all developements, which took place recently and still take place now. One of those tS newbies speaks to you, though I'm not new to 3D at all since about more than two decades, but I don't use 3D professionally any more - at least actually not.

Just to give an impression:
It took me half a year after download to install tS, had no time left - then it took a big time to mess around with it, then looked for renderers, then jumped into the forums (regularly). Took lots of time to read, to download, to install.
Then tS ending - PANIC - downloading everything I could get hands on before it'll be gone with the website-shutdown (I knew I will need it sometime, but not now - someone mentioned the aspect of buying plugins, well this has to wait for the real need or at least up to finding the time to step in, sorry) - further archiving the corresponding posts and explanations, that'll enable me to work with it later, watching tutorial videos, installing codecs and converters, convert videos which don't want to run on my system, try out functions, trying to understand tS in it's underlying logics - and don't think I could finish any more than a couple of testrenderings up to now (which is nothing to post) ... and so on.

Surely the list could be continued almost endlessly. But this should do. Only want to show the general difficulties new users are confronted with.
And forget the spooking statement tS were an 'easy to use' app (perhaps easier compared to competitor apps). Though it is not to me who already did finish several 3D drafts including presentations for quite some jobs and tried out some dozen renderers and apps from CAD to even hack in text-coded pictures to POV privately. So maybe that I'm nailed to older GUIs or the technical draft stuff, I don't know - but I know I'll carry on. Thank goodness I'm leastwise not delayed additionally in having to learn computing internals ...

Conclusion:
So, dear developers, please don't interpret the absence of feedback as non-interest or non-appreciation - sometimes it's only the lack of knowledge & experience, not enabling one to give any. Or e.g. give any other feedback than "thanks, I'll give it a try sometime" ...

and this time this one goes to ... ChMar

A Thank You:
@ ChMar - for sharing your im-export-tool, which I didn't try out yet, but surely will work with it sometime.


Kind Regards
-BM.
.

stan wrote:Don't forget to support Simon creator of dribble for modelside as he will never make a workspace version at this rate. He is the oldest plugin dev around here and he actually worked on truespace through the years including vray. ...

Thanks Stan!

I apologize for Simon's omission---I have corrected my original post so that dribble is included. It would be GREAT to have a Workspace Side version of dribble!!!!!

I'm sure that other talented contributors and developers were not mentioned---many of them I'm probably not aware of. If anyone else comes to mind, please let me know about them and their product(s) and I'll add them to the original post. But let's limit it to developers who have trueSpace plugins and scripts for sale. I mean no disrespect toward those gifted trueSpace experts who have contributed free scripts and plugins---we are in their debt, too. But when I started this thread, my focus was on Jack's situation and those developers, like him, who may be forced to stop their efforts because they are not earning what they need to continue.

Again, thanks for reminding me about Simon and his cool dribble interface for RenderMan-compliant renderers.

Best regards, First Light

Why should the situation for the developers be better then what the situation was for Caligari !
They stopped selling Vray the only workspace (offline)render engine at that time because of lack of interest........
What must change ?
Now there are even less people with a focus on Truespace because it was stopped.
What are the people doing now ?
Where are they going to software wise ?
What makes them still use Truespace and what parts of it are they still using........
thats some of the questions that we have to ask ourselves.
The software has been Blenderized which means that the people ask for free and are not willing to spend......

RAYMAN wrote:... They stopped selling Vray the only workspace (offline)render engine at that time because of lack of interest........

Hi RAYMAN, Do you know this for a fact? I'm not trying to criticize---I'd honestly like to know. My impression was that V-Ray's availability ceased because of a licensing issue regarding Microsoft's purchase of Caligari.

First Light wrote:

RAYMAN wrote:... They stopped selling Vray the only workspace (offline)render engine at that time because of lack of interest........

Hi RAYMAN, Do you know this for a fact? I'm not trying to criticize---I'd honestly like to know. My impression was that V-Ray's availability ceased because of a licensing issue regarding Microsoft's purchase of Caligari.

No it was Roman in the captains bog:
"We realize that we have to earn your trust as recently we did not bring you much of new and exciting news. We are still working on TS7.6 patch which should include some Vray fixes. As you know we are no longer selling Vray, simple reason is that sales numbers were just not there."
http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/s ... stcount=49"

I believe Rayman is correct ..... They stopped selling Vray the only workspace (offline)render engine at that time because of lack of interest........

it never worked right so people waited, rightly so..

yes, think it was Tom who told us that.

V3rd3 wrote: "Marcel is busy with a project in Saudi I believe".....
Right now I work for the Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. I made 3d animations for luxury shopping with Truespace. It is for broadcast on television (advertising). In two weeks I will be in China to meet people and visit factories. Then I will continue my animation B.O.T. between two design if i have time for that. The speed of working with Truespace is truly an asset for me. I hope I can show you many things in a few months.

Thanks RAYMAN. That clears up the V-Ray story. It's too bad.

And, Stan, I'm sure there's quite a bit of truth to your suggestion, too. But I'm one of those who planned to buy V-Ray but didn't until it was too late. In my case, I was unaware of the problems and was simply putting off the purchase until I was ready to use it. I knew it would probably be another year before I would need it for my work and I thought "why buy it now and have to pay more later for an upgrade if it comes out---I'll just wait until I need it". Now I wish I hadn't waited.

I inquired at trueSpacePlugins about the possibilty of creating some sort of "bridge" plugin or script that would enable trueSpace to utilize the Blender plugin for V-Ray as a workaround for trueSpace 7.6x users and Jack wisely pointed out that a "bridge" for a "bridge" was not a good idea. Then he said that he was aware of another developer who planned to write a new plugin for V-Ray. He also said that if this other developer didn't do it, that may be he (Jack) would consider it.

However, in light of recent events (which prompted this thread), I'm not sure if a developer would be willing to commit the resources to such an undertaking today. Still, everyone who has helped to create the YafaRay4tS add-on has surely learned a lot about creating a bridge to a rendering engine and I imagine that they would be able to create a new V-Ray plugin faster than anyone else (except maybe the original Caligari team).

Having a wide choice of renderers for trueSpace 7.61 is one way to prolong its usefulness. Today we have support for (1) RenderMan-compliant renderers on the Model Side via Blender, (2) the Indigo 1.0.9 renderer on the Workspace Side via a free Indigo exporter script, and (3) the open-source YafaRay renderer on the Workspace Side via the YafaRay4tS add-on. But none of these are integrated into trueSpace as well as V-Ray was---at least not yet.

Back to the original question of this thread, "How can we grow our community and support our developers?" We've had a lot of good comments and many good perspectives. I like v3rd3's idea of defining a target market segment a lot. Perhaps that discussion should be the subject of another thread in the near future.

Best regards, First Light

Wow, lot of stuff to read. Didn't mean to stir up such a firestorm of discussion, just facing the same dilemma as everyone else.

I think we can be fairly certain that the member intending to do the tS plugin to VRay for Maya no longer intends to do it.

I can't help but think that our time might be better spent moving on to other software that already has a more complete (and working) feature set than spending months trying to bring trueSpace up to snuff. When you think about how much a year of your life is worth, it really helps to bring things into focus. Some of us are getting older and have a finite number of years left to accomplish things. Wouldn't it be better to spend that time learning and working on a software that still has a future?

Blender has a working fluid system, hair/fur, working bones, a decent modeler (even though it doesn't support n-gons, yet), good UV tools, tons of imports and exports, bridges to most render engines, and an active community. The interface is actually fairly decent once you get past the initial shock and change a few settings. (Stupid that it starts up in an orthographic view. )

If you're not a hobbiest and are really looking to go pro, what are you doing slumming it with trueSpace anyway? You should be saving up to buy 3DS Max, Maya, or SoftImage.

Personally I'm still going to use trueSpace for modeling for a while yet, since it's what I know. But considering it's limitations, once I get good enough with another app I'll likely move my modeling to that. As far as developing the plugins goes, I'll finish up YafaRay4tS, and make a few more plugins to post on my site but it'll have to be as a hobby since right now what I need is a "real" job. I was counting on the plugin thing to work out, so getting the rug pulled out from under me by Microsoft really sucks, but it may well be that there never was enough of a market there anyway.

I'd say that a large part of the reason for the limited nature of this market is the HUGE learning curve required to get into 3D. Regardless of the app making good 3D models and art will always require a lot of skill, talent, and hard work. Building up these skills takes a significant time investment. That's why the number of people who actually reach even the basic level of competency is very small. This likely makes it so that every non-mainstream 3D app has a future that is constantly balanced on knife's edge and can only survive based on it's perceived popularity and the excitement the app's community has about it's future.

Steinie is exactly right about this forum one of the great things about trueSpace has always been it's user community. If we can keep that an still move on to better software, maybe that will be the best thing that could have happened for us.

Short-term I'm likely joining the Blenderites since I don't have the money to move to anything else at the moment and the software seems to have pretty much everything I need. We'll have to see where it goes from there. I think all of you need to seriously consider your own situations before spending further money on trueSpace plugins. While every purchase helps me, Froo, and the others out, you guys need to make sure that you're not spending money that could be better saved to help facilitate your transition to new software.

marcel wrote:V3rd3 wrote: "Marcel is busy with a project in Saudi I believe".....
Right now I work for the Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. I made 3d animations for luxury shopping with Truespace. It is for broadcast on television (advertising). In two weeks I will be in China to meet people and visit factories. Then I will continue my animation B.O.T. between two design if i have time for that. The speed of working with Truespace is truly an asset for me. I hope I can show you many things in a few months.

Sorry Marcel, I remembered reading your post but could not recall all of the details when writing my short story.

"Right now I work for the Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait ... 3d animations for luxury shopping ... for broadcast on television ... China ..." Yeah, but what real work have you done with TS?

Jack is right. The canceling of MS development for TS removed the market for plugins.

I think if TS had continued then some of the millions of downloaders would have become TS'ers. They would have been customers for plugins. Plugins that add features to an otherwise complete program. Some of the plugins for TS7.x are reinventing the wheel. They are finishing TS with features it should have had or that other programs do have.

There is a potentially profitable market for plugin developers ... write plugins for other apps. Write ones that add features that users want but are unlikely to be added by the company. Forums, this one too, can provide info. about what they want.

Well, regardless of the future of the truespace plugin market, I've always been driven to finish what I've started (much like Jack, stan, trueBlue, etc. ).

To that end, I am completing the OBJ Exporter. I will be posting it for sale at truesourceshop.com and truespaceplugins.com.

I would also like to develop plugins for other apps. Trouble is, I have to buy the application first probably. At a minimum, download a PLE and hopefully be able to have enough access to the system to be able to write useful plugins that have not already been written. That, along with learning the interface, SDK, etc. However, I doubt profitability there as well. Can't make a living with plugins, regardless of the package, that's for sure. But with any app, yes, even trueSpace, we can generate some revenue.

We'll see.

On another note, I still have the physics interactions with blender fluid sims on my project list. Pretty cool to see that happen in truespace.

When the OBJ plugin is released, I do hope you find it enjoyable and useful in your workflow with other applications.

Froo / Jason

froo wrote: I would also like to develop plugins for other apps. Trouble is, I have to buy the application first probably. At a minimum, download a PLE and hopefully be able to have enough access to the system to be able to write useful plugins that have not already been written. That, along with learning the interface, SDK, etc. However, I doubt profitability there as well. Can't make a living with plugins, regardless of the package, that's for sure. But with any app, yes, even trueSpace, we can generate some revenue.

How much revenue do you expect ? It very much depends on the application that you are writing the plugin for.
As a first stepI would love to see Jacks truespaceplugin site be a general site for any application with sections for Truespace.
I do not see Truespace as dead I see a very good possibility of it being used with other applications.
I see the people always falling into extremes from the best program on earth to dead...... its neither of it.
Instead of making more functions in Truespace use its functions in other applications.
Vue inf has a python toolkit and it has both an importer for obj. sequences one loads all the files and has a good interface but isnt easy to
use and the second plugins needs manual text editing of a python file but loads one obj after the other.
I would pay for a good obj series importer for Vue inf . with a good interface and there is a PLE version so you dont have to buy a copy to be able to make something for the people.
That would also be usefull for the people who still use Truespace as that other application is a perfect compliment that ads loads of features to
full athmosphere setups......
The market is there you just have to ask the people who want plugs and want some work on those plugs !
Here is the link to the 2 plugins
http://impworks.blogspot.com/2006/12/ob ... n-024.html"

plus the one without Ui
http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5089"

There is also some exciting work on city engines going on and there is lots of room between free and 7000$ what the one from Procedural
cost and is a bit steep for a normal budget !
Together with Collada you can even get all simulations from blender inside something that i showed above.

Truespace is free.....
Blender is free......
Daz studio is free...
a few tools like animate plus and the setup tool cost some money
animeeple is free
same as Kerkythea its also free....
yafaray is free.....(integration almost finished)
Sketchup base version is also free(can be impoprted with collada but Ts doesnt have Collada import but you can use blender as intermediate)
only Vue costs some money......
If we pull bridges between those applications we have something incredibly cool and production value !
Most of us got Carrara 6 pro and Hexagon on coverdiscs.......
heck what development are you looking for ?
We just have to start tying knots.....

Hi Rayman.
I do not have set expectations. Mind you, I'm not complaining.
But as Jack pointed out, it takes an extensive amount of time and effort to create these plugins.
along with testing and debugging, retest, debug, etc.

It's good experience though.

froo its the whole package that has to yet take up and get working you just finished the importer and the fluid sym
how can we recomend a workflow to other people from other sites........
all they wnt to have is good and working tools as soon as they get them they will take them up and pay some money.....
I want to Pm with you about python scripting maybe you can help me i dont want it for free...
Peter