ATTN: SeanR and others: Now that you've played with TS5 for a while...

How much have you done natively in TS5 ?
Are you finding some things easier? Harder?

I ask you in particular SeanR how do you find the lighting and shaders?

Just curious....

[seanr]

I have TS5, though I almost never use it. I have found it to be much too buggy for general use. The one noise shader I use more than any other crashes TS5 and the material editor in general has been shot all to hell, making it all but utterly useless to me. The only thing I've really done with it is a small amount of NURBS modeling, like creating the folded napkins in my bar scene.

The light features would be very usefull to me (particularly more controllable falloff), were it not for the constant stream of problems I've had with it.

i have tried to do a few projects in ot. some simple stuff. i don't like the way it triangulates randomly when it's doing booleans. and i still don't like the polygon tools.

On the overall, I like tS5 better than tS4. especially with the subdivision surfaces btw, about the boolean triangulation thing, just right click the boolean subtract icon, and there should be a dialog which pops up that let's you uncheck the "Triangulate" first checkbox, unchecking it should fix that situation for you I like using the polygon editing tools (in fact, that's what I use mostly, I rarely touch the Nurbs stuff, mainly because I just can't stop using subdivison surfaces :P). Have fun

-mattam

[CmdrSolar]

I've used trueSpace since 1.0, for the fact that it's so simple to understand, with the controls right out in the open, not hiding from you, which seperates it from LW or Max. But I was very dissapointed with tS5, Partly because of the apparent lack of care in both programming (crashes) and partly because the ease of use factor crashed through the floor with this version. I was one of the first to order it when it came out, and I honestly haven't used it since I recieved it.

In my opinion, an update to a program you've used for 4-5 years shouldn't have a learning curve so steap that it puts you off using it. Needless to say, I'm not really happy with it in any aspect.
Jon

[seanr]

Solar, you seem to be double posting and awful lot lately.

[CmdrSolar]

Thats really strange. You know, it only happens when I'm at work, and I'm using a Mac here.. maybe there's some coralation. Grr.. I've tarnished my spotless record of no double postings.. Goddamned Macs..
Jon

[Kai]

got it installed.. but I don't use it... I stick with 4.3
more stable, quicker to use and just plain nice....

sorry Caligari.. you cocked up.

I don't have tS5 yet.. Will get it.. But IMHO I always stick with pervious version..

When I model my ships, Depending on what I am doing, I will use tS2, 3 or 4 .. I doubt that will change with 5 ..


Ryoken

...and apparently i should at least try out the subdivision surfaces...is it any better then the quad-smooth-divide tool in 4?

[seanr]

It's totally different. The subdivision surfaces tool in TS5 is basicaly just the MetaNURBS tool in TS4. Smooth quad-divide is something completely different.

The subdivision in Ts5 and MetaNurbs in TS4 are not the same. They can provide similar results, but the algorithms behind them are quite different, as is the quality of the resulting smoothed mesh.

Subdivision surfaces (at least the Catmull-Clark variety, which TS5 implements) gives you more evenly shaped/distributed polygons, and always 4-point polygons, which gives a rounder and more even look with smooth polygon shading.

In addition you get "levels of detail" for free - Any subdivided surface can generate an even smoother subdivided surface, etc. Try doing MetaNurbs on a MetaNurbs generated mesh - Ugh!

As for smooth quad divide in TS4 - It is really a poor mans Subdivisions surfaces. Much worse. Subdivision surfaces really replaces both smooth quad divide and MetaNurbs in TS5.

cool. i'll go try it now.

:afro: c): :laugh:

[Kai]

after a little research I've come to the following conclusions

if you wanna do Character Modeling, use 5
if you wanna do technical (eg ships and machinery) use 4

Well put Kai
Everything I do is mech, I could not do organic for nothing, I find 4.3
good for almost everything. I made an interesting discovery the other day, if you have the Objectman plugin it will import STL files, it may do others but it works great for STL. I have Solidworks and it does many nice things that are very hard it TS so I save as STL. import in Objectman and wala and they are stable meshes. You must perform a boolean operation by subtracting somthing that is not touching to remove unwanted polys. Solidworks is very powerful but the way it does things is very clunkey compared to TS
Steve:construct