Becoming?
Mark,
Becoming a Computer Animator is a good 'history' book so to speak. It takes
you through the beginnings of the art of computer animation, and throws some
good buzz words at you. Throughout the book are actual trueSpace exercises,
which are quite good if you are just starting out because they touch on five
different areas. It also talks about different types of Computer Animation
Careers, where to go to get educated in a round-about way. I recommend it,
though I bought it primarily for the TS exercises.
As for trueSpace itself, well, yes it is a little crash prone, but that's
mainly because it's the first version of the program, and it has some work yet.
The main problem I have been having is with memory allocations. Read messages
I post in Graphics Developers Forum (trueSpace UG), and you can read all about
it. Download the Demo from there, and try it out. I am tight with Terry
Cotant of Reliable Software Solution [RSS], and he is tight with Caligari, who
developed TS. Like I said, it has some improvements to be made, but so does
every start-up product.