Captain's Blog

[roman]

We are well under way with our work on next upgrade, this time we plan to release two products concurrently: truePlay2 and trueSpace7.6. The work should take only a few months and it makes good sense to release both upgrades simultaneously. Here is why:

truePlay2.0 will introduce fully articulated, customizable real time user avatars built on top of truespace7.5 character architecture. It will add animated facial expressions, game quality collision, improved real time DX9 engine, fully distributed physics, second generation 3D positional speech and sound as well as content server which will provide a user repository for customer avatars and private shared spaces.

truespace7.6 will introduce vertex animation, morphing tools for facial animation, blendable morph targets as well as new workspace modeling tools and faster speed in modeling. We also aim for more stable and faster workflows with optimized kernel, 2D window manager, widgets, etc. Script editor will expose better access to trueSpace animation and physics simulation functions, thus making it easy to use trueSpace7.6 for commercial quality truePlace2.0 interactive environments. There will be other improvements but I would rather under promise and over deliver unlike some previous posting I made in the past.

truePlay2.0 and trueSpace7.6 share the same code base so they will be developed and tested together. I hope you will like them both.

Even best tools mean nothing if they do not make their way into hands and hearts of talented artists. It is a distinct pleasure for me to introduce new images, all modeled and rendered in trueSpace7.5 by Griff Wason, who in my opinion is one of the world’s greatests technical illustrators and works for some of the best known companies including aircraft manufacturers, spacecraft manufacturers, electronics giants, museums magazines etc.

Griff wrote to me how he feels about truespace7.5, I am quoting him here, perhaps immodestly but words like these are what drive us at Caligari during hard work on major upgrades:

“Roman, I love tS, I love using it, creating with it, experimenting with it, challenging its capabilities. I use it all the time, I use it to make a living, and I owe you, your genius, and your team a huge debt of gratitude…. Functions and features are very important, but it is the underlying structure (the DNA - Rosetta) that steers and defines the path.”

I took the liberty of combining several Griff’s images into a low res collage below. Griff sent me more and we plan to create an appropriate display for all of them in near future.

Images are even more amazing if you consider short time for their production: Sony P200 CPU Board was done in 4 days, Le Rhone Rotary Aero engine took 3 days while traveling on assignment. Both rendered in Lightworks engine.



Fibre Optic Gyro as used in commercial GPS satellites. Completed in less than one day. Rendered in V-Ray engine.

[roman]

As David Brinkley used to say: "First, some news as of this Sunday Morning":

V-Ray1.52 was finaly shipped last week with a significant speed increase compared to V-Ray1.51. I wonder if you guys can confirm speed increase on your specific projects.

truePlay1.3 was released on Friday. Its main purpose is to enable mixed collaboration of trueSpace7.51 and truePlay1.3 clients in same shared space. We will be able to demonstrate this in our Thursday night chats which will resume as of next week. Of course we are working on truePlay2.0 which, as I posted below will be released together with trueSpace7.6.

trueSpace Ambassadors is a new program which we are launching to recognize outstanding members in trueSpace community and encourage you guys to spread the gospel amongst your friends. There will be a commercial aspect to this program with paid production contracts to Gold level members.

http://www.caligari.com/Gallery/Amba...te=Ambassadors

We are also starting External Gallery Contest which is aimed at increasing our visibility outside of core Caligari comunity.

http://www.caligari.com/Gallery/exte...?SubCate=EGall

July Gallery was a nice surprise for me. We had quite strong showing in still image category with Scott Lent car image taking a top spot. In animation category a whole bunch of character animations were submited for the first time. They are not yet a full fledged stories but I feel we are now gaining momentum in animation area. Nikolay deserves a lot of kudos for his work, which incidentaly he created very shortly after he switched to trueSpace7.5.

http://www.caligari.com/Gallery/Imag...ul/default.asp

http://www.caligari.com/Gallery/anim...te=GAnimations
.

[roman]

I see lively discussion on this topic already, here are my 2 cents. It seems that reconstituted Thursday meetings are getting more traction which is great. Currently truePlay1.3 only adds trueSpace7.5 compatibility but we added more structure to the meeting and new space from Emanuell which worked great. We plan to release truePlay1.4 with better voice soon and eventualy truePlay2.0 with fully custom, articulated avatars.

After my opening remarks (which not many people heard) we started with 10 minute real time modeling duel between Prodigy and Dele. The objective was to create a headset model from scratch. As if that was not hard enough, Prodigy dropped out of the space not just once but twice during the duel, due to his local ISP I surmiss so Dele could comfortably march to the finishing line al by himself. Undaunted, Prodigy returned again and again and eventualy finished his headset some 30 min later to a great cheering from assembled audience. Master of ceremony wisely declared both contestants to be winners for their bravery, great skills and positive attitude.

In the left image below you can see overal view of the space with podium on right and two design rings on left. If you look closely you can see almost completed Dele's headset while Prodigy's headset at this stage resembles a solid letter J as he is out of the ring at the moment and desperately trying to re-enter the space. Right image shows view toward the podium with Prodigy back in his ring (on the left) working hard and making progress on his headset.



Despite technical problems it seems most of us had reasonable fun, we kept displaying our "great sense of humor" and informal collaboration continued unabated, in fact when I returned two hours later I could take the snapshot below. In it, you see at this point Prodigy went far above and beyond contest specifications, taking his headset design to new heights, adding Elton John glasses and funny looking head (whoever that is, he has a healthy head of hair) with most helpfull comments and a strong collaborative support from other participants.

I loved the fact that people who came wanted to collaborate in 3D, not just chat (though we had a few memorable lines). For the most part I was counting 16 to 18 participants even late into the meeting. Please also note live video screen in the back which was quite usefull, we had no shortage of volunteer camerasnowmen. And what is that transparent avatar doing there?

[roman]

After our Thursday meeting I heard that some script guys scheduled their own improptu community meeting last Tuesday. I dropped briefly on the meeting and was very impressed with what I saw.

Dele was leading the meeting explaining his scripting methods using a poor man 3D Powerpoint which worked just fine. Dele also added 3D bulleting board to the meeting space, complete with live counter of attending participants. In the past we would need programmers to make these types of additions, today skilled users can shape the comunity life in the way they can not on 2D Forum like this one.

I took a few pictures. Check out the bulletin board on the right and a bunch of avatars following Dele's presentation on the left.



These two screen grabs are my favorites, they remind me of a real life conference room, try to do that in Webex



I have enormous respect for guys like Dele, Emmanuel, Marcel and others who are pushing the envelope (though they can be a pain at times too). While I understand that many trueSpace users are focused on rendered illustrations, design or videos and do not share yet the excitement of real time collaboration, let us keep in mind the ultimate goal of trueSpace: to build a community of 3D graphics professionals for the age of web.

I do not see how we can fulfill this goal without having a true 3D real time collaboration in a shared space.

I never understood why 3D computer graphics should be forever subservient to Print, TV or even Film (though I like movies just like the next guy). Print, TV and Movies are strong and viable markets today (that is where the "big boys" make their living) but they will not be here tomorrow, if you look closely you can see they are vanishing in front of our eyes already. I admit I do not feel too sad about that, it does not help that Hollywood media Moguls who have monopolies on these industries are also responsible for the sorry state of broadband in USA. Just today I received an offer from Verizon to "enter broadband age with incredibly fast 760Kbps access, 30x faster than dial-up". This in heart of Sillicon Valley, while people in South Korea, Japan or for that matter Slovakia can already enjoy affordably priced 100Mbps.

[roman]

It has been a while since last blog. We are hard at work on trueSpace7.6. We are currently focusing on simplyfing UI, improving workflows, improving speed and stability, all issues not super glorious but very important as TS7.6 code will be the basis for truePlay2 as well as gameSpace2. Unfortunately some of this is not easy to convey in pictures. However I am fortunate to be able to show wonderfull new artwork from Marcel Barthel blurring the distinction between off line and real time rendering. In case you are not sure all images below are real time grabs from workspace



These are some earlier stages of Marcels progress. I like the two small images a lot, despite gloomy stone structure of church ruin the light betrays a wonderfully warm feeling, at least to me. Kind of like Ron Fricke camera in Koyaanisqatsi which transforms what should have been a grim social message inside car factory into a visual feast.



And here are two videos proving that this is indeed real time animation. First one shows animated leaves on trees with chirping birds and quiet music. A sanctuary in a pagan place of worship

motio.wmv

Second animation shows the speed of physical simulation in this space. For TS7.6 we are working on distributed physics so you get this kind of performance in truePlace2 shared spaces. Animation is a bit long but notice the real time shadows in second half, these are not pre-baked shadows. [Edit] I see someone is comparing these favorably to animation in high end games, keep in mind guys that there is no optimization here in the engine or content like game guys do it for better performace, this is standard customer created content.

physt.wmv

[roman]

I do not have new TS7.6 images this week but I want to report that work on TS7.6 is going well. We are doing a lot of "plumbing" work I referred to in my previous post and it just takes time. Nevertheles, exciting new functionality is being developed and as soon as it is presentable, I will give you a sneak peak.

Everyone talks about "customer created content" these days. In our community, every customer is a content creator and no other CEO is more gratefull and aware of our users content than I am. As we are crossing 1000th Forum member mark I want to remind everyone that we are a community of 3D graphics professionals, not a consumer community and I consider membership here a pretty exclusive one.

Our Forum members are the leaders of trueSpace comunity. In my eyes leaders of Forum are those active members who create sub-groups on their own, such as Speed Modeling contest members or more recently, Tuesday night Scripting Live! meetings which became a very cool place, I did not miss one in a long time.

I decided to include images demonstrating these meetings. The first is a TNL! meeting of animators from a short time ago, as you see our meeting place is getting more spiffy and I am pleased to see the attendance going steadily up.



Next group of images are from yesterday Scripting Live meeting which is organized by users themselves, many of them active scripters (but not just scripters). Frootee started by demonstrating an amazing Haunted House, complete with spooky soounds, trap doors, hidden switches (OK not so hiden). Unfortunately I did not take a picture but we plan to make Haunted House live to visit by anyone with truePlay1.3 or trueSpace7.5 client.

After that Dele showed a 3D laser pointer he is working on and then MarkO invited us to his newest space which is an underwater laboratory, it actualy looks much better when you walk inside in real time than the static images below. At this point serious scripting discussion ensued but social issues such as lost and found cat were still part of the discussion. BTW the image frame around the cat is cool, you can drop images now from a 2D web site to truePlace and all of that is done just by custom scripting, there was not a line of C++ code involved.

I see the scripting comunity is becoming very strong and my hat goes off to its members who collaborate so tightly that in most cases it is actualy difficult to attribute the authorship of newly created object. What is most amazing is that this collaboration is a live interaction directly in 3D space, on many occasions going on for 5 or more hours.

[roman]

First, I am pleased to report that TS7.6 development is right on target, going smooth as a silk and I could not be happier about strong collaboration between our developers and Beta testers. Beta testers, particularly scripters, play bigger and bigger role in the development process.

I would like to share with you today outstanding work of one of our testers, Glen Gordon, aka Nightflight. Glen's proceduraly scripted shark is using animated morphs for basic motion but you can control his motion and direction in real time using sliders. When I saw it first time, the smooth motion just took my breath away. We will use similar technique for control of human characters and live avatars.



We also improved physics, adding breakable objects. Check this wmv video. Our shark is quite an eggbeater. Glen also has another version which chases after closest user avatar

Sharks.wmv

[roman]

We are nearing the end of this memorable year. 2007 was a good year for our community. We released trueSpace7.5 which despite its point numbering was a major upgrade in trueSpace line. trueSpace7.5 added very powerful character animation tools with full body IK and physically based skeletons, soft paint, displacement paint, advanced snapping and inference guides, SDS improvements, COLLADA export, V-Ray rendering was moved to workspace, we introduced a darker look and feel and much more.

With the release of 7.5 our already fledging scripter community started to thrive and it is a major factor of trueSpace7.5 success. I want to thank all the great script guys for their truly magnificent contribution to Caligari content. And that is still just a beginning, we expect even greater things from scripters once trueSpace7.6 is released.

2008 will bring product introductions at least as significant as trueSpace7.5 brought in 2007. We will be removing last legacy components left in the code, freeing it to fly with 64 bit support, even better multi-core support and significant new functionality.

I cannot yet discuss individual new features specifically, other than to say that they will be great and that they will improve functionality in all the existing main areas. trueSpace7.5 already proved that our new architecture allows us to add new functionality quickly.

What is even more important is that this architecture is open, and our growing community of developers, scripters and progressive artists will have a new kind of online 3D environment where they will be able to add their value to Caligari content and grow our comunity in important new directions.

I firmly believe that 2008 will be the year when our new architecture will fully shine making everyone in the industry take notice - and I mean everyone!

Here is a good example from Marcel Barthel demonstrating how real time graphics and real time physics can combine to produce game like scenes:

cycle2.wmv



Here's a simple little interactive Holiday scene created and scripted by Mathew Collins. It's all procedurally driven, just load the scene in TS7.5 and press the "Play Song" in the LE.

Happy Holidays.zip



Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you all!

[roman]

Dear Caligari community members,

I am pleased to announce that Caligari Corp has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. Specifically we will be working with the Virtual Earth team which is in the process of building out an immersive 3D Web experience. If you haven't seen it yet check it out using the 3D mode at http://maps.live.com

I am deeply convinced that union of Caligari technologies and the scope of Virtual Earth project and vision behind it creates the perfect home for us and new opportunities for each one of you as part of the Virtual Earth community.

You know me and my ambitions for trueSpace and web-based 3D collaboration. Let me tell you right away that there were no compromises I had to make to accommodate our vision within the Virtual Earth platform, in fact I was challenged to increase the scope of our vision. I talked to many people at Virtual Earth group and I am convinced that the technical team behind Virtual Earth has a significant, long-term commitment to the 3D Web.

At the same time you will be pleased to hear that our development team and tightly knit community of Beta testers will stay the same as before, only now we will have more resources to rely on, larger market to consider and I hope more fun doing that.

The future is bright for all of us!

Roman

[roman]

It's good to be back in the Captain's Blog! The last 4 weeks have had a lot of travelling, which has kept me away from being able to write here regularly. It's been a good 4 weeks though with a lot of new people being introduced to trueSpace.

Beta testing is continuing as normal. The latest addition is the development of the SDK. We're also testing of the morph system, as seen in this example from Prodigy which uses morphs (some driven by a timer for a breathing effect) on a model that looks like something from Bikini Bottom.

I was able to fit in time to judging the gallery, with one of the animations being produced almost entirely using the real-time renderer. The winning image shows an amazing blending between 2D and 3D, I see many community members have had fun like I did in trying to see where the 2D ends and the 3D begins!

I hope now to update the Blog more regularly once again, thank you for being patient during this exciting time!

Patrick.rar