GameSpace

#1 I'd say it's a great program for modelling and exporting DTS and DIF shapes, as long as you don't need character animation. Character animation - actually just the animated bones - have known bugs that prevent most useful animations from exporting. There are a couple of threads on the subject - I can provide more info if you want.

#2 Dan,

thanks for answer.

So what do you use for character animation?

#3 I love gameSpace for the price and for prototyping .difs and .dts shapes for level designs. I don't handle the finished production art for us in which case we use 3DSMax. For a good artist though I'm sure they could do a darn decent job with gameSpace.

#4 We (Scryer Games) own GameSpace 1.6 and use it almost exclusively. We haven't gotten into animating with it as of yet, so don't know if it has bugs or not. There are a few animation systems out there designed specifically for TrueSpace, and GameSpace like Truebones.

#5 I basicly like gamespace. But there are some really nasty bugs that sometimes occur. The program seems to work really well on my laptop. But on my stationary pc it hardly work's at all.

#6 I advise you to look at something diffrent. I have learnt it the hard way.
I like it, but there are to many issues,bugs, workarounds..
/Alienforce

#7 It has value, if you catch it at the right pricing cycle...quirky in some areas, but great workflow for fast working as Jeremy says...

The next workable product up the price scale is several times over the retail price of gS[LW, perhaps?], then the price curve skyrockets. All really depends what the intended end result is used for.

I tend to make anything I've gotten my hands on work, it's kinda de name o' the game, ;). "It's the poor woodsman that blames his axe..."

TDN article, the start of one...:). Been very busy with realTime work. I've already worked it thru to a DTS export, with animations. I'm readying imagery and experimenting with format outline, should be 'done' by Christmas or earlier. Stay tuned...I'm out to clone for the gS users, all the current Max/Maya articles. And Milkshape ones for that matter too, ain't I ambishous? I originally constructed my radar dish with the empty spaces in Ms3d; it took me a half-day to figure the workflow in gS to accomplish the same results.

#8 Hey Rex.

You mentioned gSLW in your posting. Am I wrong, or isn't there a limitation in gSLW that prevents you from loading plugins?
With this limitation you are not able to export dts shapes and this makes the light version useless for torque developers.

Or have I missed something?

-- Markus

#9 Sorry, Markus, perhaps I misspoke. I have no experience with LW, only it's placement on the DTS matrix...mea culpa. The concept though still stands; the next workable program is way up the price scale; til XSI exporter is released and then there will be no question, XSI is the package[hoping all features supported], OH, btw, I was talking about LightWave, not the 'lite' version of gS.

#10 I purchased GS last year, used it for a month, then dropped it. Buggy, odd interface and doesnt seem to be well supported (it's still on the same release as when I purchased it). The low poly tools are neat and allow quick creation and roughing out of shapes, but then really lacks in UV mapping. The animation interface is about 10 years behind the times and quite buggy, also not allowing weighting per vertex. I dont regret many software purchases (I've personally spent tens of thousands over the last few years), but GS is definitely one of them. It's too bad, as GS/TS has some interesting concepts and techniques that are time savers, but the follow thru sucks.

Save your money and use Blender. It is updated about every 3 months and keeps getting better. The DTS exporter is a bit buggy (not due to James U's work, but blender's interface), and will need a possible rewrite as Blender's animation system recently had a complete re-write, this shouldnt be too much a problem for a production team. The UV mapping tools in blender are awesome, the low poly tools are all there and very useable and the interface is very quick once you get your hot-keys down.

The other option is XSI. Very nice tool, I have no complaints. The materials workflow is built to slide right into TSE. The new GATOR feature is AWESOME, but you have to drop a couple $K to get those features as it isnt in the Basic package. For those waiting on the exporter: glancing at the SDK interface, a good coder could put together an exporter framework relatively quickly (~3 weeks) ...most datatypes seem to match up. Animation may give a bit of trouble due to the non-linear nature of the editor, but baking keyframes may be the way to go here.

#11 Ditto Jameson. I disliked TS/GS, along with Caligari's business practices.