Caligari Truespace 3.2.........free

[surftwo]

Yes you all heard that right .  Caligari Truespace 3.2 is now free.  It's a 10 year old program but still has great features.
It's a real nice 3-D modeling and CAD program.  Sort of like Bryce 5....etc. 

One of the great feature's it has is the lathe tool it lets you draw a helix from a shape.  Neat.......

If you want to give it a try go here........http://www.download.com/TrueSpace/3000-6677_4-10187286.html?tag=lst-1

It's also only a 20 mb download.

[tide]

TrueSpace 3.2 is pretty outdated but the bad part is that you will forever be inundated with promotional material from Caligari to upgrade to a newer - very high priced - edition.

[Jimdoria]

LOL - I still have the tS 3.2 CD lying around somewhere. I never did upgrade to 4, etc.

My problem with Caligari was a common one - they'd implement cool new "toys" but they'd seldom go back and fix the broken stuff. What good was radiosity and better IK if I couldn't get the MOUSE to work the way the docs said it was supposed to? Or if importing a mesh had the ability to break features of the program?

I frequently ran into the problem where I'd import a 3D file in one of the supported formats, and about half the tools would not work on it. No visual feedback, no explanation, no error codes or anything - the tools just wouldn't work. Or maybe they'd work, but only partly, not the way they were supposed to. When I posted to the forums, I always got some variation on the response "Well, try it on a native cube. If it works there, then it's not a bug." Bah.

There were lots of things I liked about trueSpace at the time, and I did complete one very nice project with it, but with DAZ3D giving away Carrara & Bryce, and free apps out there like Blender, Anim8or & Wings, I don't think I'd invest any time in trueSpace at this point.

[kartal]

If you need free 3d application you definetely go with wings3d-blender combination.