Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Dx Shaders, Vray Materials, LW materias,Textures and more..
Marcus Rowland
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Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Marcus Rowland »

I'm one of the odd people who found Truespace 4.3 much easier to use than later versions, mostly because I was only using it for static images for tabletop roleplaying games and don't use the animation features at all - mostly I made 3D models and exported them as graphics files with backgrounds etc from NASA and other sources, and added effects such as rain, lens flare, etc.. I got it when it was given away with a computer magazine in the nineties, and I think it's the most useful freeby I ever got from any magazine. But I tried 7.6 when it was released as freeware and couldn't get the hang of it at all, for some reason.

Here are a couple of examples of the sort of thing I did with it circa 2010:
A couple of spaceships
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff11/html/peri.jpg
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff ... ardkin.jpg
A Martian gun
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff ... arsgun.jpg

I've recently returned to using 4.3 after a decade or so, and while it's working OK I seem to have lost all of the materials files ( .MLB) other than the six or seven that came with the program. When I was originally using it I had a couple of dozen others I'd found on line, but I'm drawing a blank on them now. The clear red material in the gun picture is an example.

Can anyone point me at a source for them that still works? Alternatively, is there an easy way to make my own from texture files or other graphics?
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trueBlue
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by trueBlue »

You can try this oldie but goodie:
https://lunadude.com/rsrc_trueSpace.htm
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by clintonman »

trueBlue wrote: 12 Jan 2023, 15:41 You can try this oldie but goodie:
https://lunadude.com/rsrc_trueSpace.htm
Marcus asked me this same question in an email and I gave the same answer. Unfortunately, a lot of the links are broken, even the internet archive version has a lot of dead links..
Clinton Reese

http://clintons3d.com
Marcus Rowland
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Marcus Rowland »

It's the clear materials I'm having trouble with - for example, the rocket exhaust in the first picture was a rod of blue gem-like material with a lot of lights inside it, worked very well. The gun was a similar red material, I think they came from the same file.

Later - just took a look at the software disks on the archive and searched for Truespace

https://archive.org/details/vintagesoft ... =truespace - search I used

Found 41 results, mostly demo disks but also including

Trueclips for Windows 3.1
https://archive.org/details/TRUECLIPS
Caligari trueClips is a CD-ROM of over 200 textures and 600 professional-quality 3D objects, included with trueSpace2. trueClips is designed as a companion product to trueSpace and provides users with a rich library of nearly half a gigabyte of professionally-designed content to be used as royalty-free building blocks and materials for trueSpace creations.

https://archive.org/details/caligari-truespace2-bible
This is the Companion Disc to the book Caligari trueSpace2 Bible by Peter M. Plantec

I suspect that Trueclips is probably the one I want from the description, just downloading a disk image now. I'll say more when I've had a play with it.
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Marcus Rowland »

OK, trueclips has a lot of bitmaps and object files, but no prepared materials files - also the software won't run on my PC which isn't much of a surprise. I shall keep looking.
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Saul »

These any good?
mlb.zip
(389.71 KiB) Downloaded 91 times
Marcus Rowland
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Marcus Rowland »

Yes - book and construct have the clear materials between them, they ought to be exactly what I need - many thanks!
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Marcus Rowland »

Found some more on the Trueclips disc in the end - not sure how I missed them the first time except it was 1AM and I was half asleep.

SHINY is various smooth shiny metallic finishes in different colours
PLASTIC is smooth less reflective finishes, a bit like billiard ball colours
GLASSY is various materials with a glassy finish
There's also ROADWAY which is US road signs, which for some reason I can't get to work properly - it needs some bitmaps which I also copied across, but still doesn't work, and for some reason a copy of the WOOD file.

I recommend downloading the entire disk from archive.org rather than me uploading the files if you want these materials, since I obviously got something wrong.
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Saul »

Screenshot1.jpg
Marcus Rowland wrote: 14 Jan 2023, 16:00 Yes - book and construct have the clear materials between them, they ought to be exactly what I need - many thanks!
What you gonna do with them?
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Re: Truespace 4.3 Materials Files?

Post by Marcus Rowland »

Saul wrote: 15 Jan 2023, 02:52
Screenshot1.jpg
Marcus Rowland wrote: 14 Jan 2023, 16:00 Yes - book and construct have the clear materials between them, they ought to be exactly what I need - many thanks!
What you gonna do with them?
The general plan for the moment is to recreate some low-res monochrome 3D models (mostly of airships) in colour and high res as part of updating a role playing supplement I wrote in 1993. For example:

The original from 1993, created using an old modelling program called Zing 3D.
Image

The remake
Image
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