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The tS Community
One of the biggest advantages to using any product lies within its community support, and tS is no exception. In fact, the community surrounding trueSpace is so large that there’s almost no question you can ask to which you won’t find an answer. Community is one of the most valuable features of any product or service you may be considering.

trueSpace has an abundance of tutorials available, some directly through Caligari’s own website, and many more available elsewhere. Certain tutorials for other modeling programs, such as 3d Studio can also apply to tS, so if you can’t find an explanation for the process you’re interested in, there’s always somewhere to turn.

Caligari also maintains a mailing list for tS users. This is by far one of the most valuable types of resources available, and it’s very active. In addition, there’s also a dedicated chat room for tS users, which generally attracts some very skilled artists.

For further information, see the Resources section at the end of this article for a list of community resources including websites, tutorials, mailing lists, chat rooms, news-groups, plug-ins, and coding information.

Rendering Engine
As with most of the commercial modeling programs, tS includes 2 rendering engines: the real-time renderer, and the ray caster. Both are superb, even when compared to the high-end competition.

The real-time renderer can run in software mode or hardware accelerated mode. You can choose between Direct3D, OpenGL, or Intel’s 3DR display. The rendering engine seems to be well optimized, and even on slower CPUs which lack hardware acceleration (I can’t imagine that), runs relatively fast in wire frame mode with standard game related models. With slow CPUs (I’m talkin’ 100mhz), it’s relatively simple to work in wireframe, and switch to solid rendering here and there when needed in order to keep things fast. With hardware acceleration, performance is superb. The bottom line is, you don’t need an $8,000 plus computer system to run your $500 software. Your standard development system will most likely work about as well as anything.

The ray caster, based on the Lightworks Pro rendering engine from Lightwork Design works equally as well. There are tons of features to tweak, such as volumetric lighting, radiosity, fog, lens-flare effects, and a host of others. Of course, if you’re only interested in modeling low to mid-range polygonal models to load into your game engine, the rendering engine won’t usually be of much concern, unless you’re making renderings for your game manual, etc. However, if you’re making the next RIVEN, or ABE’S ODDYSEE, you’ll be pleased to know that tS’s ray caster is capable of putting out some very high quality imagery. For proof of this, just check out the screenshots below, or keep an eye on Caligari’s "One Man Show", and Image Gallery at the Caligari website.