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2007 for me, I believe. Started with Studio 2 right before they switched to 3.
I was looking for something artistic for my son-in-law when I ran across Daz Studio. Downloaded it, but he was less than interested. I started playing with it and here I am 9 years later and thousands of dollars poorer for a fun "little" hobby.
I believe I started doing 3D art around March of 2016 - so around a year and seven months ago.
This is my first scene render:
One of my favorite renders so far though, is the second scene render I did. I used V4 and did a little bit of post work:
Even though it was one of the first scenes I did, it's still one of my favorites.
1982. Apple World on an Apple 2+. Had to type in the xyz coordinates to create an object.
1993. Hyperstudio on an Apple 2GS. The scripting language was 3D Hyperlogo. Wrote equations to draw a biplane and rotate/move it in 3D space. I painted the wireframe output using a paint program and then reimported into Hyperstudio to animate it. Quite a lot of work to get a short animation.
1997. Bryce 3D which I got on a CD of 3D programs attached to a book. In the same time period, I got Poser 1. Been at it ever since.
2001. Released my first 3D program Tree Magic at 3D Commune, later morphed into Shape Magic, Lathe Magic, and Roadmaker.
For my partner and I:
Pov-Ray 1992
Fractint 1992
Vista Pro 1994
Bryce 2 1997
Carrara 1998
Poser 1998
and the list went on,,,lol
I bought the full version of Martin Hash's Animation:Master for $695 back in 1994 after first reading about it in Camcorder Magazine. It arrived on several floppies. He had a demo guy who made it look so slick and easy on the video they'd send out. Found I wasn't great at modeling splines. I was doing OK at what it could do, though, but Hash had to rewrite the software due to some issues with Microsoft and changed the software from something that was easy to use to something more complex. I bought an early version of Poser at Egghead Software in 1995 or 1996. Tried for a time to get what it exported into A:M, but Poser polygon models in a spline based program didn't work too well at the huge size they came in at with A:M import tool. Tried for a long time in little spare time to get A:M to work and to figure it out. I was pitched by a local Autodesk distributor on 3DS Max and passed on it because of the cost and its steep learning curve, and my PC at the time couldn't run it as eaily as A:M. And I used to attend Lightwave User Group meetings that Dale K. Meyers (M&M's commercials original animator) would put on at a local Amiga Computer store In Madison Heights, Michigan. This was around the time the "Reboot" CG animated series was first broadcast. I brought a copy of one of the episodes for everyone to watch. Everyone was excited about the future. Then DAZ finally got rolling and I then thought I might be finally able to do something affordable! Still at it now, with just a little more spare time.
Hmmm...It was 2005. Tested Poser 3-4 and then purchased Poser 5 later. Bought Hexagon in 2006, my first DAZ purchase. Been tinkering around in this area intermittantly ever since, as RL permits. Attached is one of my first fulll scenes, with Laura, from 2007 I believe.
Thats very cute. Pictures like that always put a smile on my face.
And now I need to correct myself. Some of these boys n girls go back to the 80's! hehe
I wandered into the forums here around July 2009. Was already aware of 3D software, since I had copies of most of the products MetaCreations had developed or aquitred (never did anything much with them, but had them. At least the first versions, as they brought them out). I can remember the MacWorld back, oh, around '91 or '92(?) with a couple of youngsters at one of those little table booths in the back of the Expo hall with a software toy that generated landscapes. It was at about version 0.9, so basically pre-release, but there was a show special. They called it Bryce.
Had never heard of Studio (mainly because back when I was watching, it didn't exist yet).
I finally buckled down and got into this, because I had a publication project that I wanted to produce, and there was no way that I was going to be able to produce it with clip art. Of course, the models I needed didn't really exist in 3D either, so it wasn't until 2011 that I finally got a version of it built.
You may have missed LeatherGryphon's post, he goes back to '76.
I picked up copies of Poser 4 and Bryce in 2002 and switched to DAZ Studio a little while after it was released. I have worked with it off and on since then, mostly rendering character portraits for my pen and paper RPG's.
...I wish Amapi was still around. Would love a more stable dedicated modeller that could do polygon modelliing and had a nice easy to work with UI.
Great render... Personally, I've been into computers since Apple 2+, the first home computer. I've been into 3D since the first version of Poser and I've made so many pictures that I can't pick one favorite... I think my favorite time is NOW.. We have the technology.
I haven't been able to make my favorite piece of art but its probably because my version of DAZ is cluttered by old installations and I need to do a clean start and get rid of the thousands of old products in my library that I'll never use.. a lot like my life.. go figure.. Keep up the great work and happy rendering.. Its the journey that matters.. not the destination.
I started playing with 3D in 2002 or so, when I took a computer graphics class at Engineering school. I was mainly using POVray to render at the time, with a bit of modelling using whatever free program I had at the time.
While looking for tutorials and assets for one of my projects I discovered DAZ, but being a poor student who couldn't afford Poser (well, I had a free copy of P3 from a magazine, but you couldn't do that much with it) I simply registered to collect freebies for later.
Then a few years later DAZ launched the public beta for DS, and the rest is history...
Must of started I'm guessing around 93 or 94? Regardless, it was the year Truespace 3 was released, I purchased that and began there, moved through all the versions until they partnered off with microsoft and microsoft shut down development during development of TS 7, which they now give away free, I don't believe it was 100% complete, I believe some minor things were not finished but it was pretty much fully functional. Whatever was not finished was something I must of not used.
Most of us Truespacers went looking for a new program to use at that time, I chose Lightwave and have been doing that ever since, but I must admit readily available props at daz has made me lazy for modeling.
I used Poser for a while during the version 4 era to import human models and other organics into TS as I don't do much organic modeling (it drives me nuts for some reason), I mostly do architectural modeling, I took architecture in college (mid 80's) but finally quit (it really put my math abilities to the test, math was not really my best subject, lol). There was some early pov-ray use just before truespace but I never liked it much.
I guess one of the models that I did that I was the most happiest with was a large cathedral, unfortunately it was during the switch over era from TS 7 to Lightwave, so I never finished it or all the props.
I started with Daz in march of 2015 I believe it was as just one of numerous alternative graphic programs to toy with and kind of been using it ever since.
The wife and I have both went back to school part time for Graphic Design, and we shuffle that with full time jobs right now. She is a member here as well.
ETA: capture of a pic rendered in TS of the cathedral as a early WIP, partially untextured at this point. Some props, candelabras, pews and such were completed and some not at this stage.
Second pic is some early ceiling and pillar design.
I'd played with Bryce sometime in the late 90s-early 00s, think it was a demo from a magazine cover. At the time it was little more than a curiosity. In 2007 I was using GMax to make airports for Flight Simulator. I didn't come to Poser until 2014, and that led me to Studio, which led me to Carrara (cos I hated the inability to make stuff in PS & DS), and now Modo.
I'm not sure at what stage they owned it, but I can remember seeing a render of a metal terminator skull in an advert for Caligari Truespace in the early 90's whne I had an Amiga 1200 and no money because I was a student. At the time I thought that this was the absolute pinnacle of CG art and things could never get better in terms of quality, just in speed. How wrong I was...
I'm very much a newbie compared to others. I'd dabbled a little bit with 3D and found it interesting, but my primary interest was always in coding - first with web pages and then with database-driven software. This started in around 1990 and the need for images was few for a while - stock sites met most of my requirements. It must have been some time in 2009 when I was putting together a project which needed lots of embedded images that I went off in search of a way I could create them myself. This led to Sketchup, and many, many hours spent rendering in Kerkythea. Sketchup is great for inorganic stuff like buildings and props, but not much good for living, breathing creatures. Up until August 2014 I hadn't needed many of those or had found a way around it, but one particular project that year needed images of people, and lots of them. Having investigated MakeHuman and finding it fell short at the time, I decided I was going to draw my own. Given my skill level, it's fortunate that when looking for a digital version of one of those poseable wooden art dolls I found Daz Studio instead. Less fortunate for my finances though! :)
I'm getting more out of Daz Studio than ever since I finally got to grips with blender a couple of months ago. I still code occasionally but it's a long way from being my primary interest now. These days I'm much more likely to be found modeling something, rendering or making surface materials or images pretty in Photoshop.
That would have been Truespace 4.
I got started around 2005-06, when I picked up a copy of Poser 6. Found the DAZ site, grabbed V3, M3, David, Stephanie 3 Petite, Luke and Laura, and I was officially hooked.
I tried DAZ Studio when version 1 was released, and I was not impressed, so I skipped version 2 entirely. I gave it another chance when version 3 came out; better, but still not a game-changer. Then, with version 4 -- and especially with 4.5 and beyond, I was convinced; DAZ Studio became my primary 3D tool. I still use Poser (I'm up to 11 Pro), but don't use it nearly as much as I used to.
I've also added some modeling and texture-creation applications: Hexagon and Blender; Paint Shop Pro and GIMP. I have Bryce and Carrara, but rarely use them. And I don't do post-work, because I seriously suck at it.
A few years ago, I was talking on the phone with my "agent" (she finds me work, and gets a cut; that's an agent, right?) while, at the same time, browsing a bunch of old CDs and DVDs. Suddenly, I blurted out, "Hey, I found my Morphing Fantasy Dress!" (I was convinced it had been long-since lost).
Dead silence on the line for several moments. Then: "Ken, you're going to have to explain that to me, or I'm going to start thinking you're weird!"
Sweetheart, if you don't already think I'm weird, then it just ain't gonna happen!
Same here exactly!!
I didn't realllllllly get into it until iray came out. I did renders every now and then, but they never came out very good. It was mostly an exercise in frustration until I rage quit, then calm down a week or two later and try again. Rinse repeat. Iray changed the game for me.
I played with poser many years ago but only started getting seriou about 5 years ago.
I have no artist education, having worked as air traffic control radar maintenance engineer and than in 1974 in satellite telecom doing hardware repair, software development, network engineering and customer care until retirement. I tinkered a bit with POVray in the Win98 times and soon found TerraGen, which I liked. Bryce was a dream that only came true when I could afford it at version 5. When Daz took Bryce from Corel, I started to use Studio v0.8 or so, I still use it to get some assets over to Bryce but for nothing more. I also played a bit with Carrara from v3 to v8.1 but I stick to Bryce, though neglected, it is still extremely powerfull with its two native render engines. Oh, I do miss a few things like 64 bit and for trees Carrara has an edge.
I've been 3D most of my life... Sometimes I'm a little 2D and others a bit 4D... But I've been messing with 3D since probably 2002... Technically much earlier, but it wasn't much more then trying out programs and off and on using it at work.
...I have a DVD with a backup of Truespace 7.1 on it somewhere.
heh.. started my IT career in 1973, on IBM mainframes - notably a 1401 (yes we still had one) 360/40s, a 7080 and then inti the 370 era... no need for 3d hgraphics then, but we hd an entire floor of draftsmen... was early retired from IT in Jan 2007, and from the same company I started with...
I got my first 3D program in 1989. It was called Swivel 3D. It was in black and white, not even grey scale. I used it in a Mac Plus. I graduated to Infini-D then Carrara. I also used a product from Pixar called Showplace. It was only a renderer, but used Renderman. I feel old!
2 years and one month for me. This is one of my favorites.