If you're a 3D kinda guy, which I'm not (well, I'm getting there, but it's a slow journey) then you might be interested in this.
Apparently, Caligari is giving away their trueSpace 7.6 product for free for a limited time.
Here's the marketing fluff:
What you may not expect is that we are making trueSpace7.6 available to everyone at no charge, in a giant step forward to bring high-end 3D authoring tools to all who want them!
trueSpace7.6 is far more than a SketchUp-style 3D architectural modeling tool. Instead, it provides a complete 3D authoring environment for any type of 3D content creation, whether that's images, animations, objects for games, or content or worlds for online interactive shared spaces.
trueSpace7.6's modeling tools feature a variety of surface representations including full polygonal editing, subdivision surface modeling, NURBS, metaballs, and implicit surfaces. Those are supported by400+ modeling tools like real-time Boolean operations with full construction history so you can move subtracted parts of your design at any time during your work, or even change a subtraction to an intersection.
trueSpace 7.6 also provides advanced surfacing tools like layered materials, texture maps, normal maps, procedural materials, UVE projections, real-time DX9 pixel shaders that include shaders to simulate subsurface scattering, reflection, refraction, smoke, fire, water, anisotropicshader, metallic paint, glass ¨C and those are just the real-time shaders!
The animation capabilities are even more impressive.trueSpace7.6 supports key-frame and motion capture animation on fully hierarchical objects. Key-frame animations can be seamlessly blended with procedural animations and physical simulations, all of which can fully interact with each other. This means you can have a walking character animated by key-frames getting hit by a procedurally animated car and fly away in response to the collision thanks to physical simulation.

Real-time renderings by Marcel Barthel.
In trueSpace7.6 you can also create fully articulated characters and interact with them using full body IK with editable direct manipulation widgets for joints (including physical stiffness), and apply physics oranimated morphs for facial expressions.
If you want to create a photorealisticimagesor a video, then the built-in Lightworks high quality offline renderer will give you spectacular rendering results including soft shadows, raytracing, global illumination in form of hybrid radiosity, image based lighting, caustics, tone mapping, HDRI, anisotropic reflectance,multi-pass rendering to Photoshop layers, motion blur, depth of field, lens flares etc.
trueSpace's award-winning direct manipulation interface with its easy-to-use 2D controls and 3D widgets has always been highly praised by users and press alike.For version 7.6 we have streamlined many workflows in extensive collaboration with our Beta testers. The UI is context-based and fully configurable, including toolbars, panels, widgets, layouts and projects. With universal drag-and-drop you can simply drop your model from the 3D workspace directly into an e-mail, written document, etc, and vice versa, clicking on the object in an e-mail will automatically open it in trueSpace.
There are also a series of advanced editors. In addition to the 3D workspace and modeling editors, there are a universal 2D node link editor, a script editor,a non-linear animation editor, a material editor, a UV editor, and more. Plug-ins are now accessible from the real-time 3D workspace and we expect to release truly amazing plug-ins for trueSpace7.6 in the near future, as well as stimulate 3rd party creation of independent products both free and commercial thanks to the availability of an SDK.
Finally, trueSpace7.6 is the only 3D authoring tool on the market which will allow you do all of the above in real-time shared 3D collaborative spaces where members of the design or animation team can maintain real-time interaction from anywhere in the world.
and here's the important part:
To download trueSpace7.6, visit the link below:
http://cart1.caligari.com/web/Truespacemainreg.aspx
Also, to aid in your learning process we have made all of our video courses, previously $79 each, available at no charge, and you can download those courses here.
