Hi Ed,

Truespace seems to be a love hate thing. It is actually the interface which has kept me using it! The trick I think is to get all the icons you will actually use on screen in a layout that is comfortable. The truespace UI is highly customisable. The biggest problem for Caligari is that there is a lot of competition in the all-in-one 3D software market at the moment. I discovered that I could getter better render output using the free Kerkythea renderer, rather than the truespace built-in (lightworks). VRay is a cost option in truespace 7 and makes it rather expensive. At that price I would start to consider C4D etc.

What really interests me is the option to use more targeted tools. This is just a hobby for me and I can't afford the time to learn deep software. I'm also not good enough to spend big money. I'm impressed with the thought that has gone into the MoI UI. It works logically (to me anyway). Can't say that about 90% of the 3D software I've tried! I'm not a nurbs guy. Perhaps all nurbs software creates curves the way MoI does, but I have to say, the software seems to have a good idea about the shape of my boat! I created a profile curve and another curve in the top view of the boat's outline. When I looked at the top view curve in profile, it was falling away in a nice approximation of the fall in the drawing! A fluke? If not, I'm very impressed.

Hypershot looks interesting and that boat was very nice. I hadn't heard about Hypershot. Many thanks for the link.

Mark
http://www.homepages.ihug.com.au/~mabrown/index.html