Kia Ora from Aotearoa, New Zealand

[Iapetus]

Welcome to the guild!

[Redrobes]

Old boys... well fairly but there are many older than I. I think I might try Truespace then. I am more into the modeling side than the rendering or animation side. If you have LW and TS and prefer TS then it must be quite good cos I would say that its one of LW's strengths. Maybe its just that I am very used to the way it does it tho. My old version which is ohh 5 or something like that is so old tho. It has a couple of bugs in it when doing certain operations but if you know where they are and how to get around them then its not so bad. Otherwise its pretty rock and it never crashes so I am pretty cool with it. Mine, being old, has a 64K point limit tho which is very bad for terrain. And its single threaded and 32bit which means I can run 4 renders at once at full speed but its slow to render generally. Blender is lightning in comparison but not realtime. The LW preview is realtime GL but not a very compelling lighting model. Blender has been a double edged sword for a free 3D app. Its very good and capable tho ultra quirky. But being so well developed, noone wants to start again and dev a new one not so quirky at least until sketchup came along and thats not quite in the same space as a normal 3D app.

[Steel General]

I used to have a lot more free time on my hands...I don't post or map as much as I used to, but thanks for the comments.

[wzrd]

@ Redrobes - One thing to bear in mind with tS is that it's UI is quite different to ... well, anything else really! It's all icon driven rather than menu driven which can do some peoples heads in. In reality it's no harder learning what a button with a picture on it does compared to a button with a word on it but a button that says UV editor (for example) at first seems more obvious than an unknown icon. That being said I believe it's worth persevering with because once you learn where the necessary button/menu item is the interface becomes (for me and many other fans) a dream to use - specially for modelling.
A couple of other things - tS is actually two distinct applications - the older legacy side (usually referred to as the 'Model side'. and the new (much faster much, much more stable) 'Workspace' side. The two apps are linked by a software bridge which works well when you figure it out but is unpopular with many folk who want one application which does everything. Many users tend to use one side or the other but not both - learning to use both sides was easy enough for me as I started with the legacy stuff and grew into the new stuff. tS was in the process of being completely rewritten when Microsoft bought the company as they wanted a 3d app with great realtime abilities. The economic recession killed it though so they made the app free and stopped developing it. It does work on 64 bit systems but sooner or later will probably stop working as operating systems continue to evolve. There is a great forum here run by fans of the app. I recommend checking it out.
Finally, bear in mind that I do most of my actual rendering using Vue and use tS as the modeller. tS is extremely versatile though and can do much more than just modelling. As you say "Maybe its just that I am very used to the way it does it".

@Gamerprinter - Re "You're English then, not a Maori... or a hobbit." LOL - that's very true though living on the opposite side of the planet from my birthplace means I tend to think of myself as a Human or an Earthling rather than English, Kiwi and so on. I'm with John Lennon when he said "Imagine there's no countries". Nationalism has it's place but seems to me to be a waste of a lot of energy - we're all from the same planet and the same gene-pool after all!
Re: "I do mostly 2D work these days" - funnily enough I am tending that way myself. I use The GIMP for making my own textures for my 3d stuff and so as I've become more proficient with it I find I probably use the GIMP more than any other app. I'm keen to get into matte painting with it too.

Thanks for the welcome - I think I like it here!!

[Gamerprinter]

Ah, I think in terms of heritage more than nationalism - I am half Japanese, Irish, Scottish, with a wee bit of German (Pennsylvania Dutch). I like to know where you come from, not who you're fighting for.

GP

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild Wzrd! Nice 3-d pics you got there. Been all over the north Island and parts of the south island as well, and fell in love! In fact, I'm hoping to do Phd work in Auckland. As an Oregon ex-pat currently residing in the lower levels of Hades (aka the OC California), the prospect of moving to New Zealand just seems like a breath of fresh air. Look forward to seeing your first map!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[wzrd]

Ah, I think in terms of heritage more than nationalism - I am half Japanese, Irish, Scottish, with a wee bit of German (Pennsylvania Dutch). I like to know where you come from, not who you're fighting for.

GP

Excellent GP - that's a good way to put it. Lineage is very important to Maori people - and Hobbits!! The great thing about a lineage like yours is you get to celebrate that many more traditional festivals!

@ Arsheesh - Hi and thanks for the welcome and the kind words about my 3d pics. Great to meet a fellow GIMPer. So your one of the lucky few who've visited our magical islands? Try not to tell too many folk how great it is here or they'll all want to come over and turn it into another California!! I have a few friends in Oregon and the Pacific NW and though I've never seen that part of the world from all accounts it's an area with many similarities to NZ.

Re my first map: I've been making some progress with it and I'm hoping to post a WIP here soon so you'all can tell me how to improve it!

Thanks again
wzrd