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trueSpace 5.1
In the realm of 3D modeling you'll find applications at both ends of the price and performance spectrums. On one end of the price spectrum you have applications such as 3D Studio MAX, costing several thousand dollars. While such higher-end applications offer an excellent feature set, their price might put them out of your league. Starting at just $299, Caligari's trueSpace 5.1 doesn't sacrifice capability to gain economy and presents a good alternative to the more expensive modelers.
Lost in trueSpace
You might get a little lost on your first voyage through trueSpace. The program uses a unique interface with floating, iconic toolbars for controlling nearly every function with the exception of opening and saving files and setting preferences, as shown in Figure 1. Although the program offers an indicator in the status bar as to the function of each icon, it doesn't use ToolTips as do other Windows applications, making it a little more difficult for the novice user to learn the interface. With a little experience, however, you'll have little trouble navigating commands and settings. Toolbars are fully customizable, giving you the flexibility to create your own workspace with the tools you use most often.
The default layout for a new scene is a single perspective view with a phantom grid and shadow box to provide a visual orientation for the scene. You can move the point of view in any direction and on any axis. trueSpace also offers front, back, left, right, top, bottom, and camera views. This latter option sets the view from the currently selected camera, light, or object. You can move the view either by moving the camera or through the navigation tools. Views can be interactively resized and repositioned, and trueSpace supports multiple displays, that can enable you to arrange your workspace accordingly.
One part of the interface I particularly like is the tools trueSpace provides for manipulating objects. A...