Game Space with DTS exporter 1.0

#1 I use trueSpace 6.6 for my DTS creation, which is nearly identical as gameSpace 1.5 as far as low-poly mesh creation goes.

If you are familiar with the trueSpace/gameSpace interface already then it is a great tool indeed. If not, I'd recommend you grab gameSpace Lite or the demo of gameSpace/trueSpace to see if you can become comfortable with the interface before paying for it. I personally find it fairly efficient, but I've been using trueSpace since version 2. There are a great many tools for modelling (both organic and non-organic types), and the animation capabilities are fairly robust if a bit quirky at times.

In terms of the exporter itself, Dark Industries has done an outstanding job on it, and continue to improve it (a new version is expected very soon in fact.) In my opinion, there is no need to evaluate the exporter; it works great and supports the majority of DTS features now (and will support pretty much everything when 1.5 is released.)

So grab the demo version (or gameSpace Lite, which mostly just has poly count limitations) and see if it works for you. I do recommend running through a few of their basic interface tutorial videos (there are a few free ones on their site) in order to grasp some of the fundementals of their unique interface, otherwise it can seem quite odd at first.

If you have any specific questions about it once you try it out, post and I'll try to answer anything I can.


Luke

#2 The demo does limit the poly count. The original demo also limited the size of the uv mapping window, but I saw they posted a fix for that. You won't be able to export to dts until you purchase the full version though. Any objects you create with the demo version you will be able to export once you purchase the full version.

I've created a couple objects with it, and I quite like gamespace. There are some very good tutorials on thier site. I especially liked the video tutorials on creating an elf.

#3 Doesn't the demo prevent any kind of scene/object saving?

#4 There is a per scene/ per object limit but as long as you are less than that you can save the file in gamespaces format, and X if I remember.

#5 I have to agree that the videos are nice. I cant even draw a circle in 2d and I found it easy to model in 3d(then again I havent tried to skin it yet!)
The price is good but I would like to hear more about how well all the other features of Gamespace fit into TGE.
Also if there are any projects out there that are currently using it.

#6 I purchased a license for GameSpace and have been using it for a few months now. I will say this, I like the UI once familiar with the many icons, their location, and their function. The program in general seems different in the way the scene is presented to the artist, because of it total interactivity. I'm still trying to understand the relationship between the Hierachy View and Layer View within the Scene Editor. I've been working the animation system heavily for a few days now and while at first difficult to master again the many different manipulations available within an object's context must be worked until comfortable with the workflow. Once familiarized with the UI, it does seem a speedy tool.

I have encountered some performance issues, animations seem to run very slow as they redraw on screen, albeit; I am running it on a 1.2Ghz Athlon with Ge3 Ti200 128Mb on an older machine, but it is the slowest playback I have ever viewed(a 1 second/60frame sequence ran at about 4 seconds Realtime?!?). I can/have run Max off this platform and it's playback is superb, most other renderers also. I have also noticed some weirdness with the input fields during animation setup. They seem to not be floating points, cause they round numbers off, and sometimes for no reason I can figure, actually change values on it's own, input48= 42???) in Joints Attributes. Also I'm finding it difficult to reposition the crazy Nail to assist in IK animating...I have not gotten Puppeteer to record a keyframe from within it's dialog and moved to a free plugin JointMaster(sorry no link).

I haven't really compiled any shapes into DTS objects yet; I'm planning on utilizing DarkIndustries exporter and it's not quite fully functional yet, so I have no experience with it's working/issues. I currently also use Milkshape3D and it's exporters from various authors and I will say this about that product: it's very close to the other more expensive tools, gS @ $299 might seem a little steep for the issues I've encountered and was 'sort of' baited into the purchase thru a 'sale ending...ah, was that April 30th???)'(which never happened;|), but at that point of entry, it's just about worth it and will prove so, once a fully functioning exporter is achieved...

...these are my thoughts on GameSpace, and our Project has three developers who purchased a license(I'm 1/3). Good luck.