Between graphics toys such as Amorphium and Hollywood-quality high-end packages such as Maya lies Truespace, the king of mid-range professional 3D.

This release brings lots of small enhancements, from modelling to animation, plus improvements to the innovative interface.

Truespace was the first desktop 3D package to successfully offer real-time editing in part-rendered shaded mode (as opposed to mere wireframes).

It was also the first to replace the keyboard-heavy approach inherited from Cad-Cam with a highly graphical interface built around nested button bars and barely any menu commands or dialogue windows.

Existing users looking to upgrade should find plenty in version 6 to make it worth the expense. This is especially true in the modelling areas, including Nurbs trim curve extrusion, capping and curve projection.

There's a lovely range of quick and responsive methods for deforming and sweeping simple objects into complex ones, such as the spline array tools and the ability to turn any solid into a hollow shell with little more than a click.

Truespace is popular for designing 3D characters for use in games and multimedia, and it's now possible to create complex symmetrical objects, such as a person's face, in half the time by using the Mirrored modelling tools and just concentrating on one side.

Your results can be combined with photo maps of a real person's head, then manipulated using the Facial Animator. We didn't achieve a great deal of success with this feature but at least it's an option even if it can't quite compete with dedicated products such as 3D Menow.

The animation functions include a new scene editor complete with sound tracks and layer paint. All the main modelling functions can be animated, and you can attach individual sounds to individual objects in a scene.

If you have experimented with professional object-based video or web animation software in the past, you'll have little trouble getting the hang of Truespace's approach.

All the important 3D motion techniques are supported, from simple animation paths to inverse kinematics. Rendering improvements include the Lightworks 6.6 engine and 'texture baking' which turns lighting effects into ordinary textures, speeding up performance if used in busy scenes.

You can apply different shading attributes to different objects on screen, so you can leave certain things wireframe while you concentrate on others in full shaded mode. Rendering with full radiosity can still take a long time even for straightforward scenes.

Caligari is proud of its interface design, which now includes an object properties bar. This is a matter of personal preference, but we find the interface rather challenging, bordering on the incomprehensible.

There are hundreds of tiny buttons in various bars and hidden in flyouts scattered all over the screen, and certain buttons look so much like others that it's not difficult to get them confused.

You can call up all the buttons together for assigning keyboard shortcuts using the new Icon Helper, or study them at length across three terrifying pages from the Quick Guide card.

But this merely reflects the complexity of professional 3D design itself, which not even Caligari can simplify to any great extent.

The Truespace documentation assumes you already understand 3D concepts, so when you read 'Higher noise amplitude setting results in visible noise perturbations to the volumetric scattering', don't expect any further explanation.

This is not pick-up-and-go software, even for seasoned graphic designers. Learning Truespace 6 requires a lot of time and patience.

If you're prepared to put in the hours, though, you'll find no other 3D product can beat it for power and versatility at this price.

DETAILS
Price: £569.88 (£485 ex VAT); upgrade £116.33 (£99 ex VAT)
Contact: Caligari (Guildsoft) 01752 211 313
www.caligari.com or www.guildsoft.co.uk

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
120MHz Pentium or Athlon with 64MB of Ram, 50MB of free hard disk space, 3D graphics card with 16MB of video memory and Direct3D or OpenGL drivers, Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP.