JustinFlood.com

Photo of the day: Low Rider

Every few days I love to post a really great photograph here on the blog in the hopes that it gets all of you to go out and make some really great art of your own.

I’m an artist of all different mediums, I like to draw, paint, do 3d renderings, and I really enjoy photography. I find the creation of art really rewarding, and I feel for people who feel like they don’t have an artistic side. If you’re one of those people I think photography might be a good way to start expressing yourself.

You don’t need thousands of dollars or expansive vistas like the one in the photo here. But I would suggest starting with a fairly good prosumer level camera. Go on Ebay or craigslist, and get yourself a used Canon Digital Rebel XT or XTi for $300-$400, and go out and take pictures. Set it to automatic at first, and then when you start to get the hang of things, start to experiment!

I think a lot of you will be amazed at just what you can create!

Caligari releases TrueSpace 7.6 as freeware!

Some of you may not know, but I’ve always had a hobby of doing 3d art.  I love the medium of CG, and I love what people have done with it.   When I started out in 3d, the first package I ever used was Caligari TrueSpace v2.  This was not however the first package I tried.  I was given an old copy of 3d studio for DOS by an art teacher of mine, and gave it a shot.  To be fair, I had no training on the software, but I wasn’t able to create so much as a sphere with a light shining on it.  It was horrid!

So cut to a year or so later, and I had picked up a demo on a magazine CD of Truespace 2.  The first time I ran the app, I was already creating.  The whole process was incredibly intuitive.  You click on the Sphere icon to make a sphere,  you click on the workspace and drag to create and size the sphere.  Simple!  After the demo ran out,  I picked up a copy of the full version, and my love of 3d bloomed.

Nowadays Ive graduated to more powerful (and expensive) packages,  but I have always thought TrueSpace was a great beginners tool, and far more usable than the current best open source tool, Blender.  The only problem was that TrueSpace ran about $595.  Not terribly expensive in a field of competitors than tend to cost in the thousands, but still out of reach of the mainstream.

shot of the Truespace 7.6 UI, featuring full hardware acceleration

Cut to early 2008.  Caligari, the makers of TrueSpace were bought by Microsoft, and today, Microsoft and Caligari have announced that the newest version of TrueSpace,  TrueSpace 7.6 is now available as FREEWARE.

YEP FOR FREE, FREE AS IN BEER.

Microsoft is releasing it allowing for people to create 3d models for Virtual Earth,  but beyond that, it’s fully functional rendering and animation system.  If you have even the slightest interest in 3d, and your system can run the software,  I wholeheartedly suggest you go and download this.

So without further ado,  click here to grab your copy!

For more info about what the software can do : Click here