trueSpace7 collaborative 3D cad

trueSpace7

I hate to think of how much this must cost but it might be worth looking at.

I'da know.

It's nice that Caligari is finally putting something like that out on the market, but their "only product that" statement is a bit misleading. I know Croquet is also working on this front, and may or may not have an open prototype for collaborative CAD.


That said, I personally didn't like Caligari's Truespace/Gamespace lines of CAD products. They struck me as too candy-coated and unworkable, much in the same way I find Poser to be. Their products are normally quite expensive for what's provided, and I know from experience they will spam your inbox if you even consider registering.

If any simple and effective CAD programs come around that allow collaboration, let me know.

Yeah, the claim is a bit over the top. Collaborative CAD is not new. They may get away with the claim from that functionality being built inside of truespace. CAD applications are usually now a subset of bigger collaborative suites (called PLM) which encompass far more than just working together in 3D (everything from linking to PDF docs to running the CNC machine down in the shop). The equivalency would be SL = PLM, and Build Tools = CAD.

I would agree, Jeffrey. Maya has had this capability for ages. It takes a bit of screwing around with MEL, and I don't remember how to do it to save my life, but we did this in my advanced modeling class a few years ago. We had about 20 computers running Maya, and we were all able to insert our models into a single scene and have ourselves a little robot war.

It's pretty tuff to have a war without physics, but I still managed to "win" the battle, at least as I see it. I was the only person who seemed to notice that not only could we move our own models around, but we could also do whatever we wanted to everyone elses. I simply looked around the room to discretely discover the names of everyone else's models and then I entered a text command to turn off visibility for all of them except mine. I could have deleted them or or smushed them into little balls or something, but I figured that would be going a little too far. Hiding them from view got the point across nicely. Everyone was like WTF? Even the teacher couldn't figure out what had "gone wrong" until I announced what I had done. Good times.

From the product claims: "Non-linear Editor, IK and bones now can be combined with procedural animations and physics simulation in a photorealistic real-time working space with a fully editable command history stack"

One claim that has been made for Second Life is that it is useful for collaborative 3D modeling. This program seems like it would be immensely more powerful, yielding far more impressive looking results, that can be exported into a variety of widely used file formats.

The price of $500 for a new user's copy gives you a "high prim allotment", so to speak, and you don't have to keep paying.


It claims to have physics, collisions, deformable surfaces, and voice control lip synching.

They do need to include avatars for the users though.

I used to teach classes in TrueSpace, back in the day (versions 1-3). It's a good app to learn 3d modeling with, for the most part, and the newer versions have some nice features. The biggest problem with it is that the workflow in it is very different than it is in just about any other more professional app. While it's good for learning theory, it's not necessarily a good stepping-stone to more advanced apps.

As for the real-time collaboration in the new version, I can't imagine it being especially useful. In a simple app like SL where you're not trying to do really complex work it's a great thing. In something like TrueSpace, unless it's only being used as a sort of whiteboard during planning stages, I could imagine it being incredibly frustrating unless the people collaborating are part of the same hive mind.

Given what my poor spam inbox received from their marketing reps, I wouldn't be surprised if TrueSpace 8 came with "does your taxes, cooks you dinner, AND takes you out to a movie..."



Seriously though, you raise a very valid point when you called them "prims." After all, why should we have to pay for an alotment of them in a sim, when we should be able to play with an infinite number of them in a far more versatile environment?

And really, that answer is bandwidth and storage on LL's servers. We pay LL to host our prims around the clock, 24/7, without a more granular level of control over the hosting itself. It's really an oversimplified model of hosting apps at our end.

Now, one of the largest feature requests I've seen these days is the want for a "localhost sim." Without tooting my own horn (I'm working on one too!), this should more or less be a moot point in terms of how LL works it.

Why we don't have control over this really baffles me, but it seems to be tied into LL's goals as a business.

Moved to Off-Topic.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but you're bringing me back to that Maya class again that I mentioned before. Another project in that same class was, believe it or not, to program Maya to do your taxes with MEL. And you thought you were kidding, didn't you, hehehe.

Never got it to cook dinner, but it can play movies. Two out of 3 ain't bad.

Nah, I saw that one coming.