Digital Art Zone

Saw an Ad for Bryce 1in Macworld in 1994 and pre ordered it. Been at it ever since…

Back in the early 90’s, a friend of mine got ahold of 3D Studio - the DOS version, not 3DS Max. He used it to make simple, crude animations of Warhammer 40,000 ships, vehicles, and what would later be called Wraithguard. I was hooked.

Valandar - 26 December 2012 05:11 PM

Back in the early 90’s, a friend of mine got ahold of 3D Studio - the DOS version, not 3DS Max. He used it to make simple, crude animations of Warhammer 40,000 ships, vehicles, and what would later be called Wraithguard. I was hooked.

Ahh, DOS. Now that’s going back some. I fondly remember when Windows was something you ran *in* DOS rather than vice-versa. It always amazed me how much they could squeeze out of only a few kilobytes.

Of course, all this left me wondering exactly where we went wrong. Back in ye olde times you could fit you OS, your applications and all the documents you’d ever need on a 250Mb hard drive. These days you wouldn’t even be able to install the OS. Is it lazy programming that caused the massive spike in disc space? Are we going to be needing petabyte solid-state drives |in the future just for the OS? Technology has come a long way, but I can’t help thinking we left something useful behind at the same time.

Okay I’ll admit it was for erotica… the possibility of posing naked 3D bodies however I wanted. Of course once your hooked on 3D and start buying all sorts of content at the latest sale… Victoria and Mike are high maintenance when it comes to their wardrobe collection and hair styles… ironically ..now I don’t hesitate to delete parts of my porn movie collection to make room for my ever expanding 3D runtimes.

Originally I got into digital art for games I made back in the 80s, and I’ve followed art software from the mighty Melbourne Draw on the ZX Spectrum!

3D intrigued me.  I had, again on the ZX Spectrum, a program called VU 3D.  I was amazed!  Then I lost interest.

Had my sweaty mitts on Lightwave for the Commodore Amiga at work during lunch breaks and I found myself staying after work so that I could play.  I worked for a game company, so all kinds of goodies were around.  I was a coder at the time, so didn’t make the graphics.  I was just astounded at software that was THIS powerful.  I had a program on the Atari ST at the time and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but I loved it.

Then when I got my PC I had a copy of Bryce 2 from a magazine.  Slow, very slow, but at the same time mesmirising, watching that scanline go down the screen, building up my image.  Absolutely incredible.  Obviously I got bored of watching that and went to do other things while it rendered eventually, but I think that was when the 3D was seriously stirring inside me.

Eventually I signed up to beta test the original Daz Studio.  Played with that and loved what I was seeing, but it didn’t last long, I reformatted the pc because of a virus and for some reason didn’t get back into 3D at all until a couple of years ago.

Why do I do it now?  Well I read what Sickleyield wrote about the depression, and I think that’s a big reason for me to stick with 3D, it takes my mind off how much I don’t like myself and gives me a way to channel my thoughts and feelings in an artistic fashion.

And I know I’m still a noob!

I first became interested in 3D when I played “Elite” on the BBC Micro in the ‘80’s.  I remember drawing a 3D space shuttle using MOVE and DRAW commands after drawing it out on graph paper.

For anything better I had to wait until the 90’s when I got Imagine on an Amiga 1200.  It was the first time I’d seen ray-tracing and I thought it was amazing.  I did a lot of animation using Deluxe Paint on the Amiga too.  I also looked enviously at Lightwave which was being used for Babylon 5 at that time.  Imagine never really worked for me on the PC (at that time a blisteringly fast 486-DX2), but I do remember trying a couple of other programs.

The turning point for me though was getting free copies of Poser 1 and then later Cinema 4D with graphics magazines.  I later got Poser 3, then when Poser 5 was released I bought it and joined up at Daz and Renderosity.  Since then I’ve bought more content that I could possibly admit to, and upgraded to Poser 6, 7 and Pro 2012.  Also had a couple of years with Bryce before finding Vue 4, then Vue 6, Vue 7 Infinite and now Vue 9.

I find it amazing just how many of us go all the way back to the 6800 based systems, some of us even with the very same software.

Pendraia - 24 December 2012 02:11 PM

Mattymanx - 23 December 2012 10:41 PM

SickleYield - 23 December 2012 09:25 PM

Pendraia - 23 December 2012 06:59 PM

Mattymanx - 23 December 2012 05:50 PM

Back when Morrowind was newer, someone on the official MW forums requested a mod of a dress here in the store.  I looked through the store a bit and realized this had to do with Poser, which I had seen before but saw no purpose for.  To help make a long story short, I came across Puntomaus’ own 3D gallery and I knew I had to try it out.

Matty started a thread over at an elder scrolls forum and the rest is history…there was a group of us who all started playing with DS at the same time. Matty posted lots of links to tutorials and we all learnt together.

Great days.

Yeah, those were fun day when we were all just starting out.  There have been a lot of changes since then but the fun has not stopped.

Pendraia - 23 December 2012 06:59 PM

My addiction is all Matty and Neil’s fault…they introduced me to it! At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…lol

Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law!

 

...ah, who am I kidding?  GUILTY!!!

Much the same way, especially Neil. Plus I’ve always loved computer art.