It's been a long road... getting from there to here. :p
For those who don't know, I've been modeling in trueSpace for well over a decade, though I've done most of the real work in the past seven years. I won't bore you with the saga, but suffice to say I've had some good times, some not so good times and some downright awful times. But, enough about modeling in trueSpace, that's the past.
Again, not boring you with the saga, but, as most people who know 3D art know, trueSpace went bye-bye a few years ago. Obviously, I could keep using it, but the software has a lot of issues. So, over the past few years, I've been trying various free software packages, but I've not been really happy with any of them. Late last year, a friend e-mailed me and told me he was upgrading Lightwave and asked me if I wanted Lightwave 10 for free. Naturally, I said “yes,” as this is $1500 software and it's professional level software. So, I've had Lightwave for a few months now.
Of course, the problem with new software is that you have to learn how to use it, which means tutorials (especially for those of us who got didn't get a manual with our software.
) Now, there are tutorials and there are tutorials. Most are boring, but some are not. The best ones are where you make something you will actually use in renders and scenes. For a Trekkie, there's no better tutorial than one that teaches you to build the classic USS Enterprise.
My friend Gerard “Taranis” Duffy has written a tutorial showing just that. And, being the nice guy he is, he has released it for free. I actually started on this last weekend, though I didn't do anything more than get my blueprints ready. Then I took a week off until I actually started building this ship on Monday. So, here's 3 days of work from someone who has never modeled anything in Lightwave before (yes, the tutorial is that good.):
So, anyway, this is what I'll be working on from now on. Any of my open trueSpace projects will likely either not be finished or will eventually be restarted in Lightwave.
