United3dArtists Archive

I'm impressed that nobody asked it already and also how I forgot.

I started 7 years ago, but I get heavy on it just 2 years.

Sorry for being so vague.

I just want to know how long you are using 3D technology. I know it from some guys because I asked them in other threads...

I stated in the late 90's with TS2 then version 3.2 for many years until I got 6.6, for a long time it was just buildings and objects for games, I didn't really go beyond that until I joined the cali forum and started doing the challenges.
My biggest moment was becoming a beta tester for Thea, in the proccess I improved with Sketchup n Blender so seeing as Thea goes open beta on Monday you'll probably see some nice stuff from me soon

1974: I try to represent the trajectory of a missile. I was fortunate to be in an experimental school. Imagine, in 1974, we had a network television and computer in each room. I was 15 years old.
1980: I program my first 3d soft just for the fun.
1992: I participated in the design of software using nurbs and ray tracing for a french company.
1996: I quit the program because I like making the artistic creation and animation. to continue programming it would have had to do just that. I made a choice and I have no regrets.
The time of the pioneers who worked alone in their garage would be difficult today because everything is changing very quickly and it takes teamwork to be innovative. But it was really exciting.

I started out in 1998 or 1999... can't remember which. It started when I bought a book on 3D animation and there was a limited edition of truespace on the included disk. I went looking around for TS at that point and found a new-in-box, shrinkwrapped copy on Ebay. I continued upgrading and buying just about every plug-in I could afford. At this point, TS is still the only program I use regularly.

I learned my first 3D application, on an Apple IIe, in 1983. I forget it's name, but it was very "brute force". I remember typing in the Cartesian coordinates (X, Y, Z values) by hand. It would allow 400 points, and 400 lines. 3D by typing was quite a task, but I really learned my way around, so I could accurately estimate views within 5°. We had to get a special printer card, from Orange Micro, that would allow us to print the correct aspect ratio, on the dot matrix printer. We used the wireframe printouts as underlays for perspective drawings, that became technical airbrush paintings.

Used several Macintosh 512 and Windows 2.0, WYSIWYG apps. Then I picked up RayDream Designer 1, and really got the hang of modeling/rendering. Found a copy of trueSpace 2, at Computer City, back in '94...

1987 Amiga "VideoScape 3D". Used graph paper for modeling. Moved
to Aegis Modeler that next year. Had a very, very early trueSpace too called
"Caligari" from Octree. Beta tested "lightWave" and Amiga VideoToaster
in 1989. Best LightWave Amiga ver. was 3.53. Had a Par Card for my
Amiga too. Recorded frame by frame perfect animations directly from
LightWave to a dedicated hard drive. Output was a very high quality
S video output. My 28mhz 68040 monster.... Ahhh the good'ol days...

I got started while earning my graduate degree in Electrical Engineering.
I was taking a course called Interactive Computer Graphics. We were using
Unix: the Solaris operating system I believe, for the most part. I was required
to build a GUI which 'did something'. So I got a book from the Computer Book Club,
I forgot the title, but it included a CD of truespace 1.0 (which I did not use), and VistaPro.
VistaPro was the application I needed, since it generated high quality landscapes.
My project was a Fire Control GUI for a missile launch system. When the target was selected,
and the missile launched, an animation was played, of the missile flying through the landscape,
to intercept the target. Little did I know, at that time, that I would be working with trueSpace
for most of my 3d work in the future.

My first serious attempt at 3D was with a programme called Visual Reality 2.0 which I got from a cheap upgrade of a program on a computer mag free disc. This was about 12 years ago. I was home looking after my baby daughter for 6 months and worked through the whole manual in her afternoon sleeps. I followed all the tutorials and at the end could do practically nothing as you had to create geometry by entering X Y and Z co-ordinates. Awful -and a complete waste of time. Needless to say this was the last version of the program before it deservedly disappeared. I also played with Vista Pro the orignal landscape program??

Several years later I got tS3.2 on a magazine with an offer to upgrade to tS4.3. I realized with tS I could actually create something besides frustration. Got v5 and then did not upgrade again until 6.6.Started using it at work and after seeing results boss paid for Proteam membership and the courses really helped me go forward. My main problem is time...as you can see by the slow progress of WIPS. tS is now the main tool I use for scientific illustration at work, for home use I have invested in Vue Esprit (again from magazine upgrade) and jumped in v. early at a low price with 3D-Coat (then 3D-Brush) (Due to good hint on Caligari Forums ). As long as my computers run tS I won't be looking elsewhere....

Steinie's Timeline: (as close as I can recollect...)

I started at the same time cavemen discovered tools and bugs.
We lived in a text based world with things like, gopher, veronica, a text only internet, Datasette 1530, SAM, Fred Fish and Zork.

Ansi Graphics became enjoyable when printers became monitors. Just as Man learned to walk upright Computer Desk were invented so he decided to sit down again. Cheetos, Freetos, Dr. Pepper and Computer graphics were born!

Soon my intelligence allowed me to learn Gold Disk Movie Setter. I could now animate my stick men!
Another dimension was discovered and my brainwaves tried to comprehend Silver->Turbo Silver->Imagine.
Wow look at all the chrome balls I made!...but rendering took three moon phases...

Soon after in a dark cave a dongle-less version of "Lightwave" appeared on my Amiga.

There must be more then this...at least I think there must be...(a robot's voice interjects here but the Moody Blues already did that ...)

One night a knock on my door...a hand with a 5.25 inch floppy appears containing "Caligari"
I ask how much? They answer $2000. Let me "look" at it. Cool but the interface sucks. This was my first realization that Bugs and Caligari meant the same thing!

Years go by and my Amiga becomes a PC, Caligari becomes trueSpace and Octree becomes Caligari, Man becomes dumbfounded. The interface looked cool and I wanted to look cool too. Man and bugs have united.
ts2, ts3, ts4, 4.2, 4.3, 7, 7.1, 7.5, 7.6. 7.61
The end.

Mine's uneventful really but I'm bored so what the heck....

Discovered povray sometime in the 90's, I was hyped but the program just sucked because it was all text input, most of you that fooled with it realize that though.

Joined a Total Conversion group for the game Duke Nukem 3d as a level designer and the guy who was making the new monsters for the game showed me one of his creations one day....I was blown away and I asked him what program he used to create them in and he said it was a program called trueSpace 3.x (this was when 3 was still new and the current version), need less to say I was amazed.....and very much hooked!

Purchased a copy of tS3 and joined the trueSpace mailing list immediately and #Truespace on irc. Purchased truespace 4, then 5 and well....here I am today!
Its been a happy day ever since.

Hail trueSpace!

Rob

I started with tS2.0 when I was in highschool (second year-1998). That was the first time I saw trueSpace. I was impressed and wondered how it works and what does it do :) So I started to investigate the program, learned and made some scenes through the rest of highschool and stayed with it more or less until now. My main fun and interest was just modeling static scenes, but I experimented with almost everything, except scripting. The most early version I managed to see was tS v1.06, it couldnt perform boolean ops and so :) very cool stuff though. I have never had ts5 only (I kept 4.3 in that times and had no reason to upgrade and I was in the army that time for a year :D )
I will keep with tS as long as I can and still believe that Roman will do something with the situation (or anyone else that has the power). I will upload some of my old work later, if you would like to see.

And one more thing: thanks for this place :) I saw already some of the old nicknames I used to know. Because I was in trueSpace IRC channel on Galaxynet. It was pretty cool place where ppl chat about projects, news, galleries and gave support to ppl seeking help too, which I liked very much. So who remembers me - Hi guys!

Colourful answer
The year 2000 I was new with this with CGI so I went for a course with the following programs: Multigen creator, Programming with C++ and Simulating with Vega/Lynx. I don't know if these programs still are in the market. For about 4 years after this course I got a free TS3 with a magazine and which I upgraded to TS6.6. I would like to work with it more what I do. My work as a teacher occupies lots of time. I'm still learning TS6.6 which is my favorite today despite it's hopeless future.
Since I'm working as an artteatcher I like to have more colour!!!