Competition is great, isn’t it? This is especially the case when big companies are fighting over a market segment. As I speculated earlier, Microsoft is now following Google’s lead and is releasing Caligari’s TrueSpace 7.6 for free.
I am installing TrueSpace right now and will post some examples soon, but for now the capabilities seem quite promising:
- VirtualEarth Export – That’s why Microsoft bought it after all
- Parametric objects, NURBS, Subdivision surfaces
- Interactive booleans – See example on right
- Real-time lighting, reflection and refractions – Sweet, I must see this for myself
- Real-time trees and plants and even cloth behaviour
- UV Painting
- Animation and characters
Altogether quite promising… especially for a free software. Now the ball is in Google’s court. Do I hear “SketchUp 7”?