Full Version: Off topic : very personal thoughts about actual CG consumer software

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>> Hello Tom! It's a pleasure for me to share these things. <<

Thank you for sharing lots of very informative insights !

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Hello Metin!

@You : "...Back in those days you had to take over the whole system to really get the most out of a machine. I remember our team's coder had to develop his own disk loader, his own copy protection, his own graphic routines, we even had our own music editors to create music for our games. ..."


Yeah!!!! What glorious days!!!
When writing a software, even a little software, was like leaving for a long and mysterious trip, full of surprises and discoveries !!!

How many afternoons (and nights) striving and studying with the C64 and Amiga 500!!!

When you had to take into account every single byte :)

Digress slightly...IMHO Commodore Amiga 1000, its predecessor, was one of the milestones of ALL computer science history.
I still remember its signature from the top cover!!!! Jay Miner and the paw print of his dog Mitchy!!! I weep with emotion every time I remember it.






About Blender for me : More I use it more I love it. I can't say more :)


Ciao!

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...I'm sorry if I go slightly off topic in this "off-topic" thread.... :)
But my previous post "threw" me into memories...

A tribute to a genius :

Jay Glenn Miner (May 31, 1932 – June 20, 1994) : "The father of the Amiga"

http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/comment-5.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Miner

"...Miner died due to complications from kidney failure at the age of 62, just two months after Commodore declared bankruptcy."

Ciao a tutti!

Marco (mkdm)

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Hi Marco,

Jay Miner was a legendary hero! Did you know he also designed the graphics chip of the Atari 2600? If you look at Atari 2600 games, you can already recognise his signature Amiga Copper chip color gradient.

I had my Amiga 1000 in early 1986, back when only one single store in the Netherlands had a first few imported Amiga software titles. I remember buying Activision's Hacker game for my Amiga 1000 for about € 120 (HFL / Dutch guilders back then :) ). And not long after that I got Marble Madness. I was blown away by its near-arcade quality. The Amiga took me to gamer's heaven.

The Amiga was also the first machine that allowed me to develop my first CG skills, using Deluxe Paint, which I used for about ten years to create graphics for games, television animation, interactive TV show games, commercials and more. I had a fantastic time thanks to Commodore.

Before the Amiga I loved to play C64 games on my C128, and fiddle around in the C128's BASIC V7.0, which was quite powerful.

Here are my favorite C64 games:

Agent USA
Aztec Challenge
Beach-Head 2
BC's Quest for Tires
Blue Max
Bombjack
Boulderdash (1 & 2)
Bounder
Bruce Lee
Burnin' Rubber
Commando
Commodore Soccer
Crystal Castles
Frank Bruno's Boxing
Ghostbusters
Ghosts ’n’ Goblins
Goonies
H.E.R.O.
Henry's House
Hunchback 2
Impossible Mission
Law of the West
Lazy Jones
Little Computer People
Mario Bros
Master of the Lamps
Monty on the Run
Oil's Well
Pitstop 2
Rambo
Space Taxi
Uridium
Way of the Exploding Fist
Who dares wins (1 & 2)
Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Zorro


And my favorite Amiga games:

Barbarian (Palace Software)
Barbarian (Psygnosis)
Battle Squadron
Borrowed Time
Clockwiser
Crystal Hammer
Defender of the Crown
Déjà Vu
Deluxe Galaga
Deluxe Pac-Man
Emerald Mine
Faery Tale Adventure
Flight Simulator 2
Great Giana Sisters
Hoi
Hybris
Ikari Warriors
Impact
International Karate +
Leander
Lionheart
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2
Marble Madness
Megaball
Mindwalker
Nebulus
New Zealand Story
Pacmania
Phalanx
Pinball Dreams
Pinball Fantasies
Pinball Illusions
Rainbow Islands
Rodland
Scorched Tanks
Shadow of the Beast
Sidewinder
Silkworm
Slam Tilt
Speedball
Starglider 2
Stunt Car Racer
Super Stardust (AGA)
SWIV
Sword of Sodan
Test Drive (1 & 2)
The Pawn
Turrican 2
Uninvited
Xenon
Xenon 2

Regards,

Metin

———————

visualization • pixel art • illustration • 3D design — https://metinseven.com

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Hello everyone!

Speaking about good and streamlined workflow that you can actually find around, always related to CG consumer software of course,
I've played again with Vectary, a cloud based Poly/SDS modeler, and I must say that IMHO it's awesome!

A sort of "tiny" Moi, with the same philosophy, at least for all is related to the UX.

IMHO it's a one of the few cases that reveals how the developers have worked very hard to develop a robust product with a very good UX.

Ok, Vectary in not well suited if you have to deal with large object with tons of polygons, but for small "3D print ready" object
I think that actually it's the best web App and one of the best "easy" Poly/SDS modeler in general.


https://www.vectary.com/about

Ciao!

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Hi Metin, I sure did like Deluxe Paint on the Amiga too! Another thing that was fun with the Amiga was all the interesting graphics hardware widgets available, like I remember that frame grabber/scanner where you used red/green/blue filters to get a full color image. And the Video Toaster of course!

I'd have to say my favorite games were the ones from the Bitmap Brothers.

Having done basic and assembly language programming on the C64 when I was a teenager was a big help for me when I got into programming later on.

- Michael

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Ciao Metin!

Wow...what can I say ?
Do you believe me ?
I was moved to read what you have written. Thanks a lot!

You reminded me so many things buried in my deep memory...

So many things that I loved when I was young :)

Jay Miner was one of my biggest hero....

The Amiga platform with ALL its hardware and software features was really an amazing piece of human ingenuity!!!
Agnus, Blitter, Copper, Denise, Paula...these were the names of the magic inside the amazing Amiga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Chip_Set

Wanderful days...amazing inventions...

And how can we forget "Intuition"...the dress of the Amiga's OS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS)

How many days and night studying the Amiga system... I was amazed by what Jay and the other guys did!!!

...so many memories.

Ok...it's better that I stop here this conversation...so many memories...

Jay Miner and his guys created the magic.
Speaking about personal computers and computer science I really no longer seen anything like the Commodore Amiga.


Chapéu Mr. Miner. Chapéu.

Marco (mkdm)

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Ciao Michael!

Thanks also to you!

Deluxe Paint...what a wanderful software!!!
Hundreds and hundreds of hours practicing with it!

And with all the amazing endless list of productivity software that the Amiga system could offer.

Like you, I started to learn programming with the C64 in basic and assembly and also my first steps into the CG world.

But was with the Amiga that I learned almost all the things that helped me so much for what has become my job.

And along with programming, the Amiga has allowed me to enter completely into the amazing world of CG, both 2D and 3D.

How we can forget :
Imagine, Lightwave 3D, Pixel 3D Pro, Maxon Cinema (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sznxh3kMu4Y) and many many other...the list is so long!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_productivity_software

I'm sorry if I may sound a bit repetitive but...I really no longer seen anything like the Commodore Amiga.

Ciao :)

Marco (mkdm)

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Atari was also a piece of cake! ;)

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So lot's of us are kids of the Amiga ? , that explains a lot about the mood here !
I too started with deluxepaint, then I did my first 'sphere on checkerboard" with Imagine.
One day I manage to get a copy of lightwave 4 or 5 (mmm not a very legal version :S), and there was this scene in the content directory :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMQfvEeJZVQ

... and I knew at that moment what would be my job :O)

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> Atari was also a piece of cake! ;)

For sure, i started with an Atari 800XL and had also a graphics tablet for it. Later then
i switched to an ATARI 512 ST.

What probably a lot people don't know is that the Amiga from the Amiga Company
was conceived at Atari. I still have somewhere in my basement the original Amiga
Joysticks from the Amiga Company, long before the Amiga Computer came out.

I got interested in 3D in 1984, when in Germany they aired a documentation
about the big CA Studios in America and Japan and all the cool guys and girls
from that time, like Jim Blinn, Ed Catmull etc. I still have that VHS tape! :-)
Should i find a Youtube link i post it.

And one cool guy, Tom Hudson who published his code in Atari Magazines became
later the father of the popular 3dsMax Software.

Regards
Stefan

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> Should i find a Youtube link i post it.

Found the link, but unfortunately blocked... :-(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cm5LSHpG14

Regards
Stefan

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Hello PaQ!

@You : "...So lot's of us are kids of the Amiga ? ...
...and I knew at that moment what would be my job :O)"

Oh yeah!!
Also for me was almost the same story :)
But thanks to C64 first and to the amazing Amiga I knew that my job would be programming.

But CG both 2D/3D is one of the passions of my lyfe.

I think that my heart was "rendered" with an Amiga :)

Jay Miner...what a wanderful thing he did!

Ciao :)

Marco (mkdm)

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Hi Stefan!

@You : "...ATARI 512 ST..."

Yes! Wanderful machine!!

I didn't have one but I read many things about it and also it was an excellent piece of HW/SW of that age.

Reading all these things is a wanderful journey :)

Imho for long long time we don't see nothing so good, well done, fun, ingenious and fascinating, after the "dead" of that computer age.

Thanks at least to people like Michael and few others we can have little piece of cake with Moi and few other things.

Thanks to everyone for this wanderful (for me) conversation.

Have a nice day :)

Marco (mkdm)

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Hi Marco,

> Imho for long long time we don't see nothing so good, well done, fun, ingenious and fascinating, after the "dead" of that > computer age.

Indeed!

> Thanks at least to people like Michael and few others we can have little piece of cake with Moi and few other things.

Agreed, we can't thank Michael enough that he created such a beautiful, easy to use and affordable tool like MoI, for NURBS modeling.

Regards
Stefan

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Hi,

i want to show you one picture wich i made in 1986 on the Atari ST, with Neochrome,
for our local Atari Dealer.

Neochrome had no text tool, if i remember correctly. I drew all the pixels by
hand with a mouse. Original image 320x200 Pixels, 16 colors! :-)



Regards
Stefan

Image Attachments:
Dataplay.png 

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Thanks for sharing Stefan!

Very beautiful image :)

...when every pixels had a "story" behind!

What really matters is "passion".

Have a nice day to all moiers.

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Spectrum 512 was a very cool graphic soft who overpass the graphic capacities of the Atari!
Has a cool manual!
http://doudoroff.com/atari/spectrum.html






GFA Basic a terrific language!
The golden age! :)

PS GFA basic exists now for PC Windows 32 bits ;)
http://gfabasic32.blogspot.fr/p/about.html

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Hi Marco,

> Very beautiful image :)

Thank you!

> ...when every pixels had a "story" behind!

Well a little story... when i made a slide show with a couple of images
(including logos of various computer brands), for our Atari Dealer
i got my first job offer in this field from a big Pharmaceutic Company
in Germany. :-) But at that time i worked in shift and did not do it.

Maybe i should have started to do freelancing, then i would be
probably no hobbyist today.

Regards
Stefan

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Hi Pilou,

> GFA Basic a terrific language!
> The golden age! :)

And if i remember correctly it was invented by some german Atari Users/Programmers. :-)

And the cool thing was also they had a GFA Basic Compiler, to run code natively.

Regards
Stefan

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