Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Krackers87 on November 27, 2003, 01:49:50 am
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If i ever see someone who made that program its gonna be a ****ing misunderstanding.
Seriously, if not kill i would at least maim the sadistic bastards for selling this piece of crap for money.
Now i move on to learn light wave and 3ds max and try to forget all my experiences with truespace.
All its good for is converting.
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if you can't even figure out truespace don't even bother with the other ones.
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Why? Max is far, far easier to understand than TS. Everything is labelled and in a logical place, with a logical icon to represent it. TS has... none of the above. So which is easier?
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Originally posted by Black Wolf
Why? Max is far, far easier to understand than TS. Everything is labelled and in a logical place, with a logical icon to represent it. TS has... none of the above. So which is easier?
everything that is labeled in max is also labed in TS. everything in TS is in a logical place, and they all have logical icons with pics describing what they do just like in max. what are you talking about?
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I can't figure TS out, but I'm fine with max :doubt:
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guess it depends on the person.
also, if you've learned one program, the other may be more difficult. like if you've always walked on your hands your entire life, it would be difficult to try to walk on your feet.
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"There is no poopy modifier." -my 3DSMax teacher
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I learned TS5 wihout having even opened a 3d prog before, and without even reading manuals, I just clicked randomly the buttons the first days to understand the overall program philosophy, and as soon as I understood it, I found most of the buttons just were I supposed they should be.
Obviously it required more more time to understand the limits, the tricks and the best strategies, and I'm still learning, but It required (for many reasons) more time to understand the best way to creat ships for the game rather than to understand the best ways to use truespace.
I wasn't able to do the same with max (but admittedly I haven't spent enough time on it).
My opinion is that truespace IS easy and intuitive, and somehow elegant too, but it is organized in a different way than most of other progs.
From my limited experience and from what I heard from others, it is hard to switch from truespace to other progs, or from other progs to truespace.
Truespace is probably more suited for newbies: it has big limits compared to other packages, but (*almost*) all that is needed for lowploy models is there, and it has a pretty fast learning curve.
Once you get used to the on screen view control you don't even neeed other views except for very specific things, I work 90% of my time with only a window in perspective view saving a lot of workspace. I know you can do the same in other progs, but...it isn't the same:)
Probably the hardest step is to understand that most of the modelling tools are subdivided in object tools and point editing tools, that many tools will pop-up just by switching modality between object editing and point editing, althought almost all the other progs do the same (in different ways).
The only tricky part of the interface is to remember where the tools are, since the bars are compressed by default and many icons are hidden, and many advanced options can be accessed only with right click.
Believe it or not, Photoshop is organized in a very similar way, and probably this is why I found immediatly my way in truespace.
And don't forget that you can completely modify the interface: you can delete, move, add, copy icons, you can create custom toolbars, you can make em persistent, compressed, expanded, or pop-up bars, so if you don't like how the interface is organized (and if you know what the tools do), you can just create your own interface, completely different than the default one.
Since each 3d package has its own philosophy, it is very possible than some people will find extremely simple to understand a specific prog, and extremely difficult to understand others; but I'm talking about understanding how a program is organized, if you have problems instead understanding how/when use specific tools, how/when do things, well expect problems with any 3dprog
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Oh great. Another person want's to start a round of let's bash Truespace.
Ever consider the fact that the problem might be your lack of talent Krackers? :rolleyes: As the saying goes "A poor workman blames his tools." I've seen renders done in truespace that put everything I've seen on these boards to shame so I think that your comment that it's only good for converting is a load of crap.
The simple fact is that just because you don't like something that doesn't make it a crap tool. I personally hated working with Blender but some people don't and if they can work with it and get good results then more power to them.
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whats the current cost of 3dmax nowadays?
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too much
Karajorma: I've seen awesome pics done in MS paint. Don't laugh, it's true. Does that mean Paint is a great prog? No. It means some people have too much time on their hand. Take any of your super beautiful renders from TS, it will take 1/4 the time to do the same in max, LW, maya, or whatever pro prog you want.
The best workman will do his job even with a dull tool, but how long will it take? Think about it, and ask yourself why isn't truespace used for making videogames and movie effects :doubt:
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Venom's hit the nail on the head (of course). More powerful programs just allow you to reach similar results in less time. That has its ups and downs, I personally am quite fond of taking my time with renders, but if speed is of the essence to you, then you're going to have to fork out for the luxury.
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comparisons between Paintshop pro and photoshop is an excellent case in point..
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Originally posted by Setekh
Venom's hit the nail on the head (of course). More powerful programs just allow you to reach similar results in less time. That has its ups and downs, I personally am quite fond of taking my time with renders, but if speed is of the essence to you, then you're going to have to fork out for the luxury.
Well, I do prefer to spend much time on my renders, but I prefer to spend that "much time" refining lightning and details, than having it wasted coz you're only halfway through the basic layout ;)
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but we never said truespace is a pro prog. It isn't.
But I doubt you absolutely require maya3d to build low poly meshes for a game (althought the new bumped limits of FSO changed a bit the situation in favour of more powerful packages).
I'm sure maya, xsi, lightwave, max or whatever else will speed up your work, like photoshop can speed up your work compared to paintbrush... but even photoshop don't give you much much more than paintbrush if you just want to draw a black line over a white background.
With truespace you can add verts, edges, slice polys, sweep, scale, move, select, use boolean operations, and many other less useful things (not to mention the plugins). Is there really a lot more required for lowpoly models?.
I know that max and others pro progs have many other small tools that sometimes could be useful, and that give results in few clicks when in truespace you have to do a lot more of manual passages, and there are other tools that in TS simply are less reliable, or you simply have a better control of your mesh in other progs.
This doesn't mean that you can't work at excellent levels in truespace (like in paintbrush) but I also doubt that you will see incredible differences with the kind of meshes we are used to work on.
Most of those pro packages are designed for complex scenes, animations, pro renders, and you would probably make them in less that 1/4 of the time that you would spend in TS, but we don't use TS to do them.
And truespace has a rather different workflow than max..some people can love it, others just hate it, this doesn't mean that it is crap or illogic or confusing, it is just different, and I think that sometimes the problems with how it is organized are just lack of patience in understanding or some other times lack of skills.
The program that lets you obtain the best results is not necessarily the most professional (even max isn't the most pro between 3d progs), but the one you are more comfortable with.
I love for example truespace's workflow and organization, I'd just like sometimes more tools and more powerful tools in the same program struct
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Originally posted by KARMA
I love for example truespace's workflow and organization, I'd just like sometimes more tools and more powerful tools in the same program struct
maybe I'm a pervert:nervous:
:lol:
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I figured out TS5 simply by experimentation and reverse engineering V models (and ICQ coaching from Narol now and again...). I only use the basic features, but it from a beginner's point of view it seems fine. Just save often :nod:
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I use TS5 exclusively and don't find much of a problem with it apart from my lack of talent.
We do have 3DS Max 4.2 in the university network, but I've tinkered with it and have no idea how it works!
With TS I tinkered and got some results, tinkered some more and got better results. Many of my programs are learned by tinkering. Not the most economic way to do it I admit, but that's just me.
Plus I figure, you're going to have to use TS at some point so why not use it all the way? :)
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Well this is it, building stuff in TS prevents **** ups during conversion from other formats :nod:
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I like TS, that is TS 5. I tried the free 3.2 version and have to say that five is lightyears ahead of it. Now if I could rotate textures with it it'd be perfect.
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just rotate uvmaps:p
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Well this is it, building stuff in TS prevents **** ups during conversion from other formats :nod:
Well, somehow, I managed to make 3 whole, available for download fleets starting from max files, and woomeister didn't have much pbs with conversion, go wonder :p
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Well, you're special...
Heh, not really. I can make pofs from 3ds too, no problem.
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its not that i dont know how to use TS. The reason is because of all the stupid things it does.
Myu main reason that made me give up on t was when i tried to make new lines for new faces, it kept automaticaly making faces that i didnt want i to.
Then id have to delete that face and strt over again to just get the same results.
:mad:
If i can figure out a way around this i may continue to use TS since all my experience in it would be a shame to waste.
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Ehh, TS does that sometimes... You have to try it in perspective view, and then move it in side view...
If I knew how to use it, I'd probably try Max5... As of now it's taking up space on my HDD... :blah:
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It seems to do that quite randomly. It's not really a problem. Just make sure you save regularly incase it makes a dodgy face and decides to crash as a result...
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But how do i get it to stop?
I cant make the faces i need if it keeps doing that and theres no way that Freespace will like that anyways.
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Like I said, it just does it randomly. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. If it does, do things a different way instead.
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this is a common problem, but it doesn't happen completely randomly
I used TS5 and TS6, so my experience is limited to those.
First of all, TS6 works far better than TS5 in those situations, wich I suppose to be already better than older versions, I remember I built sometimes ago in TS5 a pretty complex mesh w/o using booleans at all (but spending a lot of time), just joining manually all the primitives:/, and I found some tricks: this was a big prob for me too, but now it doesn't happen that often to me.
these are the "rules" I can tell you to "limit" the prob:
[list=1]
- manually add faces as less as possible:p I'm not kidding, often it is better to work with already present faces; so, if I want for example to manually join two separated objects with some new edges, it is better to create new faces with the slice tool in both of the objects, sweep those faces so the 2 extrusions intersect, boolean unify the objects, clean and finally work to obtain the desired shape.
Adding small primitives with booleans, and then manually modify/weld vertices to obtain the desired shape is another strategy that could come handy sometimes, althought I don't suggest it always
- be careful when adding new edges, always work in perspective view or you risk to have an extremity in a different position than the desired one; also check the two extremities: you can have a double vert sometimes(the new edge is not really joined at one extremity, althought it look so) wich will screw completely the face generating process; check for double verts if you are having problems
- try to work from a bigger level to a smaller, never the inverse: when possible it is better to create first a big non flat face over your hole (or whatever else), then slice this face to create the new edges and finally give it the desired shape, I never use it but I suppose the polydraw tool in addition with the new edges tool should be useful for this purpose
This is the best strategy to (not completely) avoid this kind of problems: expecially in ts 5 try to use the slice tool whenever possible instead of the add new edges tool (as said you need a face to slice...)
- when creating faces, if you can't create a general face first, try to work with triangles
- if you are creating a group new faces, complete all the new edges before exiting from point edit mode: when there are problems truespace try to fix em automatically when exiting from point-edit mode (when you press the arrow button), and it will work better if you created a "complete" and "logical" shape; possible results: nothing will happen; TS will crash (save a lot); the problem will be solved; some of the new edges will be deleted and there still will be problems (but it could be easyer to fix em).
- try to understand how the face generating process work, when a new face will be generated, why, what (sucking )ehuristics it use....if you can understand this, it will be easyer to avoid ambiguous situations that increase the possible problems
- use (as last resource) the try to fix bad geo tool.... it is intended specifically for those problems, since they are very common
- exercise as much patience as you can:)
[/list=1]
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I forgot two things:
1 in ts6 (and, IIRC, in ts5 too), if you are surrounding an existing face, like when you join manually 2 cubes (you connect two faces, one for each cube), this face will be deleted: all the edges of the cubes faces will be edges of the faces you are going to create. But if you have internal edges that will not be used by the new faces, they still will be there and you will have to manually remove them
2 the above situation will more likely give you problems: TS doesn't know what it has to do with the faces that are going to be occluded, and may give problems in the faces that you are adding. A good strategy is to delete first all the edges and faces that will be occluded. This will reduce the ambiguity and it will be more easyer for the program to decide how to create the new faces
3 there are some plugins that are useful to connect faces with new edges. I remember a couple of them, and expecially one for TS5 that connect automatically two faces with the same number of verts. It didn't work always as you could expect, but it was often useful
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Originally posted by Nico
Karajorma: I've seen awesome pics done in MS paint. Don't laugh, it's true. Does that mean Paint is a great prog? No. It means some people have too much time on their hand. Take any of your super beautiful renders from TS, it will take 1/4 the time to do the same in max, LW, maya, or whatever pro prog you want.
The best workman will do his job even with a dull tool, but how long will it take? Think about it, and ask yourself why isn't truespace used for making videogames and movie effects :doubt:
Let me put it this way. Everything you've just said about the TS-max relationship could be said about the max-Maya relationship. How often do you see max being used to make Hollywood movies? Does that mean that max is rubbish? Does this mean that anyone trying to make animation in max should give up and learn Maya because that's what the big boys use?
Your arguements for doing things in less time hold just as true there and Maya can do them better than max can as well.
Besides Krackers wasn't complaining about the time it took to do something. He was complaining he couldn't do it at all and that is almost certainly due to a lack in his abilities because there are plenty of good models in the community that were made using TS.
The simple fact is that I'm sick and tired of hearing people bashing TS. If it weren't for TS I probably wouldn't have started modelling at all and I think lots of people feel the same way. Having a program that is intrinsically 4 times faster is useless if you can't do anything with it.
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Well, I've had enough problems in models in the past to get to know a little of the interface, it's not as bad as it first seems, the model info panel contains everything you need to know, Truview is great for moving models around, better than 3DS Max or Lightwave, though their own methods are still pretty usable :)
I will always find TS too stop/start for my tastes, but I put this down to my unfamiliarity with the program :)
Flipside :D
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I've used only TS for all my models,
are my models crap?
thank you come again.
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hey i use TS for my models, it pisses me off from time to time, less the more i use it.
But what bothers me is it has really great features but very aparent bugs.
And i fixed it by myself. Thank you very much.... :doubt:
And thx Karma ill remember that.
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errm i like maya so i wouldn't know about TS
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Krackers, I thought you used MS3D.
Anyway, yes, TS is bizzare, but you should learn it anyway. It'll help when using other proggies.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
I've used only TS for all my models,
are my models crap?
thank you come again.
hey, you are pro when using TS in modeling because your model's just rock:)
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Originally posted by Krackers87
hey i use TS for my models, it pisses me off from time to time, less the more i use it.
But what bothers me is it has really great features but very aparent bugs.
And i fixed it by myself. Thank you very much.... :doubt:
And thx Karma ill remember that.
you are right, some of the tools seem powerful, but sometimes they also seem not reliable, to say the less.
You may receive the impression that using some specific tools it gives you random errors/bugs.
You wouldn't be far from true but, and trust me on this, I noticed that often it isn't ONLY the tools that are unreliable, it is the way we use those tools that is "wrong".
The adding new faces process is a good example of what I'm saying: it may sound very obvious the way it should work, just add new edges, maybe use polydraw on those new edges, and you expect to have the faces exactly where you want them.
Well, the problem is that in adding new faces (and it is the most tricky process of all truespace in my opinion...) the prog has to use some ehuristics to decide HOW to add them.
Something similar can be said sometimes for other tools that doesn't seem to work properly.
Very often the problems lyes in the data to be used in those ehuristics that you give to the program (in this case, the way you prepare the mesh and how you add new edges), since it is interpreted in the wrong way.
Give to the system the right data, and it will return right results.
The problem is that it isn't always obvious or clearly expressed what is the "right data":)
and some other times the right data doesn't exist at all:p
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TS = Blah. Sorry, I just never took to it's wierd layout. And it is more difficult do complex shapes in.
Lightwave all the way. Splines make my day.
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Milkshape is the way to go! :)
Vertex by vertex good results are built, lol :D
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Originally posted by karajorma
How often do you see max being used to make Hollywood movies?
quite often. I don't really have any exemple right now but... ah, yeah, that movie with Clooney, you know, fishmen in a big storm. was done with max. But mind you, I never watch the credits in the end, so I couldn't really say. What about you? :rolleyes:
oh, and max and maya are not meant for the same things, your argument is quite flawed. Maya robably rules over movie industry, but max owns the videogames one. Don't compare a saw and a hammer, please.
But, to end that stupid argument, I challenge you to find a single occurence of me bashing TS in that thread, saying it's bad or crap. I just said it wasn't a professional tool. Is that an insult to you coz you use it? If that's the case, please accept my apologies.
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I'm not a professional. That's my whole point :D Lots of us who are new to modding find TS easier to use than max.
In addition to that TS is free Max isn't (and you're surely not advocating that we pirate Max? :D )