Totally Random

The program I had showed an illustrations of what the donut would look like. I never got it to finish so I think they made it all up!

maybe they had access to far more computer power than anyone of their customers actually did...

Banj wrote: When the finished image finally appeared I would look at it and think "that's a bit rubbish"

Wow, you must have been difficult to please, Banj.
If I'd seen something like that on my Speccy I would have been amazed. And with no typing either!
But you've gotta love a good old Solid Of Revolution. The wine glass was always the first thing to do. Then the torus. And then you'd get cocky and try to do the Starship Enterprise. Aaand then give up.

These days I think a dinosaur is the default thing to try when you're learning 3D software. But the giving up always follows on.

I think there was only the A600 or A1200 Amiga at the time, jeez it’s forever ago!

There were certainly PCs around at the time (in the post-Spectrum 90s) but the Amiga was quite popular with 3D graphics enthusiasts because it was used to do the FX in Babylon 5 along with an extra video card called the Video Toaster. Sadly those special effects haven't aged well.

Sounds like there's more geek about you than you usually let on, Valence
Pretending you know nothing...

I actually vaguely remember my dad having some sort of 3d rendering software on like his first mac... And yes, that's where I first enountered the word torus (I knew there was another word for donuts...). And yes I believe I might have tried t make the starship enterprise - or at least dreamed of trying. Can't remember ever getting the hang of that program either, though and it might have been at about the same time as I started coding vrml. Not sure - but with vrml there was never any rendering times (to speak of) involved which was/is nice...

Oh, I'm definitely a geek, and a proper nerd too.
I'm just an out-of-date one. My technical knowledge peaked in the late 80s/early 90s and it's been downhill ever since.

I think I was born in the wrong time as I now seem to be a decade out of phase with the rest of the world.

Valence wrote: Oh, I'm definitely a geek, and a proper nerd too.
I'm just an out-of-date one. My technical knowledge peaked in the late 80s/early 90s and it's been downhill ever since.

This is pretty much me too!

and me since around the year 2000 or so... I think it brings us back to age...

Valence wrote:
Wow, you must have been difficult to please, Banj.
If I'd seen something like that on my Speccy I would have been amazed.

The software's capabilities at that time and on a basic home computer were very impressive, and the sample files like that wine glass were pretty cool, especially as this was at the same time as films like Tron were using massively expensive machines to create their effects.

My disappointment would be down to my own attempts at doing anything with it. I remember setting up a scene with a cube and a sphere, waiting over an hour for the render to finish and was left with a black image with a white line down one side because the light was at an angle that only caught the very edge of the cube. That lead me to think "That's a bit rubbish" and put on a game. I did however keep coming back to that program every so often because of how cool it was.