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I had to respond to a very, very short MacGems article on MacWorld covering Blender 3D and awarding it a 4.5 out of 5. I think having a free piece of software around is a good thing, because it keeps 3D vendors producing meaningful updates to their software. But Blender itself is a victim of its own enthusiastic user base.  Professional 3D software is never easy to use to someone new to the field, and while Blender has improved significantly since its last major release – it is not easy to use. In addition, like many open source projects, you run into feature niggles that can be terribly difficult to resolve. For example, I tried to import a small handful of 3DS format models into Blender – ones that imported flawlessly into several commercial 3D products.  The results looked like a bad Star Trek transporter accident.

Free is never completely free. If a software product is missing a feature you need, or some feature is broken, the work around time you spend has an opportunity cost associated with it. If I have to just through several software packages to convert my models to work with Blender, or if I have to recreate my models in Blender, the cost of Blender just went up by the cost of my time.

That says it all – Caligari TrueSpace 7.6 – the newest release of their 3D modeling and rendering tools was released for free. Get Caligari TrueSpace for free.

TrueSpace is a Windows only 3D modeling and rendering package that’s been available for over 20 years. Recently, the company was acquired by Microsoft for their Live Earth project. This runs parallel to Google’s acquisition of of SketchUp! a few years ago. Read the rest of this entry »