Caligari trueSpace4

Activeworlds is proud to offer our citizens Caligari's critically acclaimed modeling software, truespace4, at a discounted price of $99.95. That's half the price that truespace4 normally sells for!

This offer is available to current Activeworlds citizens only. If you are not a current citizen, you can still purchase truespace4 from Caligari at their web site www.caligari.com.

All orders take approximately 2 to 5 days to fill, depending on when your order is placed. You will receive an e-mail explaining where you can download your new truespace4 software.

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truespace4 redefines the state of the art for 3D authoring. A new photorealistic renderer, true 3D interface, hardware acceleration and many other new or improved features make it the ultimate tool for animations, illustrations, designs, web pages, games, 3D worlds and more.

truespace4 lets you create whatever your mind's eye can visualize. New features give you unprecedented power and control, all seamlessly integrated in the design environment. truespace4 gives you the tools to create 3D characters and worlds your way, faster and easier than with any other program.

trueSpace4 includes a brand new photorealistic renderer based on Lightworks Pro rendering engine from Lightwork Design.

Hybrid Radiosity

Radiosity provides for the ultimate realism in computer generated images. trueSpace4 seamlessly integrates an advanced radiosity renderer with traditional rendering techniques such as ray tracing and phong shading.

The idea underlying the radiosity technique is to model the distribution of all light energy in an environment. This is in contrast to the ray tracing technique, where only the light entering the camera is modeled and diffuse light transport is ignored.

Radiosity is important in the quest for realism because many surfaces in an interior environment are lit by no direct illumination at all, and are visible only by light reflected diffusely from other surfaces. Also, a surface that is illuminated indirectly may appear to be a different color than it would appear to be if lit directly, since color from one surface can ‘bleed’ onto another. With radiosity, all the light in the image is taken into account, instead of just part of it.

Volumetric Rendering

Volumetric shading allows you to create effects like fog or smoke in a scene with scattered light. It uses true, mathematically correct volume sampling so it can generate physically accurate and consistent results, including effective volumetric shadows.

Adaptive Anti-aliasing

In addition to oversampling, you can choose adaptive anti-aliasing which works only on the areas which require it.

Area and Projector Lights

You can create realistic soft shadows with a penumbra effect by using area lights in conjunction with radiosity. You can use projector lights to project images onto other illuminated objects.

Advanced Shaders

truespace4 materials are composed of four component shaders: color, reflectance, transparency and displacement. Additionally, there are background and foreground shaders and post processing shaders.

Anisotropic Reflectance Shaders

These shaders simulate the appearance of anisotropic reflectors (which reflect light differently according to the angle of incidence) such as brushed metal.

Layered Materials

trueSpace4 materials can be multi-layered. You can combine the effects of two or more shaders in order to create incredibly realistic effects.

Multi-threading

The trueSpace4 renderer now supports multiple threads on multiple processors.

True 3D Interface

In trueSpace4, 3D widgets are augmenting more traditional control elements such as buttons, panels, and sliders. Thus, the interface itself becomes part of the 3D work space and is fully accelerated by 3D hardware. Using 3D widgets, you do not have to worry about coordinate spaces or X, Y and Z axes, since the widgets always position themselves in 3D space to clearly indicate their function.

3D widgets and menus make the user interface simpler, more self evident and maintain constant size regardless of screen resolution. Of course, if you prefer the existing tried and true 2D interface, it is still there. You can also combine 2D and 3D interface elements.

The real time capabilities of trueSpace4 rival those of first class video games. The quality of the real time rendering, particularly transparency, is much higher and the speed of D3D acceleration is 3 to 5 times faster compared to trueSpace3 on an identical 3D card.

Even if you prefer wireframe, trueSpace4 will run several times faster with hardware acceleration. As an added benefit on cards that support it, trueSpace4 can display anti-aliased lines.

While trueSpace4 will perform well on the current generation of 3D cards (it was designed on I740 3D card) and is the only 3D application which accelerates all aspects of your work, we expect that the new generation of 3D cards coming to the market this summer will make trueSpace4 truly shine.

Skeletons and deformable skin allow you to create and animate realistic characters with Caligari’s trademark ease of use. Simply make the skin transparent and adjust the skeleton, skin or the level of skin deformation in real time with direct manipulation. There is also an extensive selection of skeleton building tools, starting with the basics of simply drawing the skeleton right in the workspace. 

 Most trueSpace modeling tools now work directly on NURBS surfaces. Even better, you can simply drag the direct manipulation widget and see the NURBS surface deform in real time. You can also change the smoothness of a NURBS surface or the gravity of control points (locally and globally) with the same real time feedback. 

Using simple Python language and a built-in editor, you can create custom animation and modeling effects. More importantly, you can create a simple interactive application or game prototype entirely inside trueSpace4 with a minimal amount of coding - simply by copying and editing trueSpace objects with direct manipulation.

Scripts have access to the same internal functions as plug-ins, so you can add to trueSpace functionality without the need to purchase a compiler and learn C.

Use Lasso or rectangle tool on any object and watch how the faces are selected, even while you draw with the lasso tool. Then apply the sweep, paint or UV space to your selection.

The Drawing tool allows you to draw directly on an object’s polygonal mesh. You can also copy faces and insert them on an object’s surface.

Per face texturing

Simply select any set of faces and apply to them a new UV space. Great for game design.

Multilevel Object Collision

In addition to box and mesh level collision, Voxel based collision provides for more precise physical simulation and more intuitive real time interface.

Rendering

• Hybrid radiosity, ray tracing, Phong shading
• Advanced shaders (color, reflectance, transparency, displacement, background, foreground, post processing)
• Volumetric shaders, Anisotropic reflectance shaders
• Layered materials
• 3D Paint
• Area rendering
• Shadows
• Fog
• Motion blur
• Depth of field
• Lense Flares
• Adaptive anti-aliasing , oversampling
• 8,000 x 8,000 pixel resolution
• Alpha-channel for transparency
• Area, projector, sky, spot, local, and infinite lights
• Unlimited cameras
• Multi processor support

Modeling

• NURBS
• Advanced selection tools
• Drawing on 3D objects
• Live Skin metaballs
• PlastiForm
• Accurate collision detection
• Organic deformation
• Boolean operations
• Polygonal and spline based drawing
• Polygon editing and advanced sweeps
• Vertex weld and erase
• 3D primitives
• TrueType text
• Postscript import
• Advanced texture placement
• Real world dimensions

3D Plug-ins Animation

• Bones with deformable skin and muscles
• Function Curves
• Scripting
• Forward Dynamics
• Inverse Kinematics
• KeyFrame Editor
• Vertex animation
• Spline-based paths
• Hierarchical animation
• Animation Preview
• Animatable deformations, metaballs, materials, lights, cameras, etc.
• Animated textures(AVI)

3D Interface

• Real time, perspective, direct manipulation
• 3D widgets for object and view manipulation, Point Edit widget, 3D Properties and global preset panels
• Simulated 3D guides

Hardware Acceleration

• Third generation D3D, OpenGL, and 3DR drivers

Internet Support

• VRML 2.0 worlds export
• Integrated VRML 1.0 browser
• 3D Bookmarks
• In-place editing
• Level of detail
• 3D sound
• Polygon reduction

Import and Export

3D Import

• SCN, COB, SOB, WRL 1.0 , GZ, WRZ, DXF, 3DS, ASC, PRJ, LWO, OBJ, LWB, IOB, GEO, X

3D Export

• SCN, COB, CAN, WRL 1.0 and 2.0, DXF, ASC, 3DS, X

2D Import

• BMP, TGA, AVI, FLC, JPG, DIB, AI, PS, EPS, PNG, DDS

2D Export

• BMP, TGA, AVI, JPG, TIFF, PNG

System Requirements

Windows 95, 98 or Windows NT 4.0, Pentium 120(Pentium2 recommended), 32MB RAM (64MB recommended), 20MB free hard disk space, VGA Graphics, (3D video card recommended)

Note: In certain cases, trueSpace4.3 will not run in DX mode. This affects only specific OS's with specific video drivers and DX8.1 as noted below. The conditions that seem to cause the problems are: Windows 2000 or WinXP with DX8.1 and nVidia drivers above v23.11 for GeForce2 and GeForce3 cards. The nVidia drivers version 5.13.01.1410 appear to work fine; there don't seem to be problems with DX8 with any combinations.

Options: If your conditions may cause problems, you may choose not to run DX mode. Holding down the Ctrl key when you start the program will allow you to change the settings under which trueSpace will start. Switching to DX8 solves the problems encountered under 8.1 for any drivers, OS, and card.