Background music is Copyright © 1996, 1997 by Michael D. Walthius. All Rights Reserved.
hapter
2 covers program operation. I won't hit everything but will try
instead to cover the interesting high points. I found trueSpace's
icon situation interesting. Many icons act like drop down menus. Some
launch separate icon panels when clicked. Right clicking on an icon
will launch its property panel where various settings and adjustments
may be performed.
The icon groups are launched via the groups drop down menu. All icon
groups may be freely placed or docked with the rest of the icon
groups. trueSpace has the ability to allow the user to assign
keyboard shortcuts. The cursor is placed over an icon and the control
and F1 keys are depressed. This launches the key shortcuts dialog
box. 
If
an existing shortcut has already been assigned to the icon it will
have to be unset to be changed however additional key shortcuts may
be added without altering the existing shortcut. As many as 3
separate shortcuts may be assigned for the same icon. The key
shortcuts dialog box has a find feature for determining if a shortcut
is already in use. If a key is selected for a shortcut that is
already in use, trueSpace will prompt the user and ask if the user
wants to delete the existing shortcut. Once the save list button is
clicked a keylist.txt file appears in the trueSpace directory. This
is a simple text file that may be edited with the notepad.
It lists every shortcut. Just about any combination of any keys on
the keyboard may be used. trueSpace has 4 draw modes that are covered
in the manual. 
The
preferences dialog box is activated via the file drop down menu.
This is where the user may select the top menu location instead of
the default bottom. The tablet setting is used to make allowances for
the normal tablet limitation of one mouse button instead of two. 
The
options are discussed in the manual but I have to wonder why some of
these options are even available. For example, the titles options
will turn off the blue title bar at the top of all the dialog boxes.
I can not imagine why anyone would ever want to do that but the
feature is there if some user wants it. I would think it would lead
to more calls to tech support than anything else.
Note the texture path. A click on the change texture path will open
the Windows explorer to allow the user to navigate and select another
sub directory for textures. What is not readily obvious is that
multiple paths may be specified here. The first path can be navigated
to in the previously described manner however a semi colon can be
added after that path is established and additional paths manually
specified. The is essentially the same as editing a multiple path
statement in an autoexec.bat file. trueSpace can not open files that
have been saved in the VRML 2.0 format. Any VRML work must be saved
in the trueSpace native scene format if the user intends to work on
the scene later.
rueSpace
can open VRML 1.0 format scenes. Objects may be saved as 3D Studio
.asc, Autocad .dxf, Object Animation .can and Play Station .rsd in
addition to trueSpace's native .cob format. Objects that can be
loaded are 3D Studio .3ds, .prj and .asc, Autocad .dxf, Lightwave
.lwb and .lwo, VideoScape .geo, Wavefront .obj, Imagine .iob
(although it won't load the latest version of .iob files), Caligari
Amiga .sob, Adobe Illustrator .ai, Postscript .ps and Encapsulated
Postscript .eps. 
The
groups drop down menu allows the user to select what ever icon
groups that may be needed. trueSpace has a plethora of help stuff.
The help file seems to be pretty good however that is not all
trueSpace offers the user. trueSpace also has what they call task
tutorials. They are accessed via the help drop down menu. Each time
you launch one you get a warning dialog box telling you that the
screen resolution is inadequate. I find this a very curious thing
since the documentation has already stated on page 11 that trueSpace
is optimized for 600 X 800. 
There
are 25 of these tutorials although I think presentations would be a
more accurate description. They cover metaballs, inverse kinematics,
lathing, 3D Boolean, physical simulations such as friction, collision
detection, gravity, etc. There are no tutorial features that the user
can play with. All the user does is sit and watch a demo of the
particular features. It is very fascinating but doesn't really teach
a user how to do anything. You don't even know what is happening or
what function is being used unless you closely watch the icons to see
which one is being depressed. There is no text explanation or
anything. I found the 3D tool guide to be very useful. The icon at
the right end of the top icon bar has the big red question mark on it
provides access to the 3D tool guide. You first click on the icon
then click on an icon that you are interested in. A tutorial will run
that describes the function of that particular tool. These tutorials
are generally very good. They include text boxes that provide the
user with an explanation of what is going on. The user must click on
the continue button to proceed to the next step. The resolution
warning box also appears each time one of these tutorials is run.
he
next several pages are devoted to VRML. The text includes a
discussion about HTML, URL and .wrl files. The recommendation is made
once again to save worlds in the .scn trueSpace format since
trueSpace can not load VRML 2,0 files. trueSpace has the capability
to break up worlds into several different files that inlined in such
a fashion as to allow each file load individually. This feature
allows a browser to load objects that are close to the viewer first
then load other objects later. Textures may also be inlined or not as
the user wishes. Various inlining options are available. Compression
for VRML worlds is discussed. trueSpace also has a publish feature
for VRML worlds.
hapter
3 deals with the view icon group which is located at the top of the
interface. I won't cover every single thing here but I will try to
hit the high points. The browsing and building modes are briefly
discussed. Next the fly and walk features are discussed. Here I
encountered a very strange thing. The directions in the manual didn't
initially work as they are described. However, after I upgraded to
version 3.1 they did seem to work OK. The user can go forward,
backward, up, down, tilt, etc. The fly mode is selected by a drop
down icon. In the fly mode everything works as it does in the walk
mode except you don't have to do much dragging. You just move the
mouse a small amount and the view starts changing slowly depending on
which button/buttons you have depressed. It is sort of like a
motorized mouse movement. It is very cool. The farther you move the
mouse the faster things happen.
ext
encircle and point are discussed. When encircle is selected, the
object that is selected forms the center of an orbit around which the
user may navigate via the left mouse button and dragging. Left, right
and tilt are all in play however the user cannot move any closer. The
right button provides lateral tilt. When the point feature (also
known as move to selected object) is chosen, the user flies to or
away from the selected object. It works the same with the left or
right mouse button. trueSpace has what is called eye move, eye rotate
and eye scale which are basically different techniques that allow the
user to navigate around the trueSpace world. 
Then
the manual discusses display modes such as wireframe, solid, Direct
3D, etc. Display options are discussed next. The display options
panel is launched via the file drop down menu. Most of the options
are accessed by clicking on an icon. Objects may be displayed as
faceted or smooth. Faceted causes things to go a little faster while
smooth makes the objects look better. Objects may or may not have
their textures applied to them. Performance slows even more when they
are applied. The grid or floor may be shaded or unshaded. Performance
is degraded in the shaded mode. Lights and cameras may or may not be
displayed. The lighting effect will still be apparent even when it is
deselected. The light source just won't be displayed. The texture res
setting ranges from 32 X 32 to 256 X 256. The higher the setting, the
slower the drawing and the better it looks. Although the manual is
not crystal clear on this, I do not believe this has any effect on
the quality of a rendered object. I think it is just for display
quality purposes. Next are the scene detail choices that are
available from a pop up menu. Render all means just that. All objects
are always rendered. The next 2 choices are wireframe and always
wireframe. The wireframe choice means that all objects are always
rendered except when an object is being worked on in some manner such
as being moved, scaled, etc. Then all the other objects turn into
wireframe displays until the mouse button is released at which time
they revert back to their normal rendered selves. The always
wireframe means that all objects are always displayed as wireframes
except for the one that is selected. The next 2 choices are boxes and
always boxes. These options function identically to the wireframe
option except that objects become boxes instead of wireframes. These
options are for speeding things up. There are 5 lighting options
available from the display options panel. White lights, colored
lights, daylight, VRML lights and no lights are all available just by
clicking on an icon. The no light feature would normally be used when
the user intended to create some sort of custom lights. There is a
control for level of detail scale (LODScl) on the display options
panel. This feature applies to VRML worlds. When the viewer is at
some distance from an object the LOD can be much less than it is when
close up. This setting affects when the detail becomes greater of
less. Constant frame rate (CFR) may be toggled on or off and also has
a value. Basically this feature is an attempt to compensate for
slower redraws that occur when flying over a complex object. Complex
objects cause the redraws to proceed much slower than they are when
flying over a simple object. Background colors may be specified. When
the background button just below the CFR button is clicked, the
background color panel is launched where sliders may be dragged about
or numbers specified for the background color. The changes occur
immediately. A background image may also be used. The user must click
on the background button which launches the windows explorer where
the user can navigate to any .tga, .bmp, .dib, .jpg, .txr, .tim or
.avi file. The background does not appear until the show back ground
radio box is checked or until the scene is rendered. A bilinear
filtering radio box is available for those who need it. It is used by
some Direct3D accelerators.
All pages copyright© Roger A. Moncrief, Indepth Reviews, 1996, 1997, 1998
Thanks to Judy Gefter, !LuM! and Charles Blaquiere for their advice and counsel, some I heeded and some I didn't.