In The Beginning...

[Michael J. Brown]

...there was 3D Studio Viz (and a fistful of other ill-equipped visualization software). But of course back then we didn't realize with what great disdain the future of CGI would make us look back and turn our noses up at those first works of the mid to late '90s. We thought we were really doing something with our ratraced shadows and scanline rendering (when Mental Ray was still a stand-alone product not yet owned by Autodesk). Back in the day when you had to always make sure that whatever you did could fit onto a 1.44MB diskette.

 

Anyway, what I'd like to see - what I've kicked off with some of my own stuff from back in the day - are examples of everybodies very first Arch CG works. Dig as far back as you can. The worse (quality-wise) the better.

 

As one peruses the Finished Works or even the WIP sections of CGarchitect, the almost consistently high level of work being produced by people is amazing. It's become almost the norm to see excellent work on a daily basis. But what I want to see - what I think a lot of folk would be interested in seeing - is what other peoples very first works looked like.

 

Most especially if, like myself, you started in this industry around the mid to late '90s. I'm not saying that if you're new to this your posts are not welcome, they are. But there's something to be said for those who pioneered in the industry. Before there were such wonderful number-crunching algorithms as GI and Caustics. I have taught 3D CGI for 10 years. And I'll tell you that a good portion of my students who have never done anything in 3D before my class produce 1st time works that would make the first 5 years of my creative development look like a total waste of time. Their success as 1st-timers is due in part to my instruction, but in very large part to the ease with which a decently lit scene can be produced in 3dsMax these days vs. the initial versions of 3D Studio VIZ some of us remember - where the only way to light a scene was to fake everything. Back before we discovered that omni lights are 'the devil'.

 

Anyway, I digress. Enough said. Here are a few of mine. These aren't my very first works (lost those all in a hard drive failure over a decade ago). But they're the earliest I could scrape up. So post some of your ealiest works here too.

 

Year: 2001

Software:

- 3D Studio VIZ 3i

- RPC trees, people, plants & water spouts (Yes, I was an RPC early adapter - I won't touch those things nowadays)

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Edited August 19, 2010 by renderhaus

[kippu]

sadly i have also lost mine , do you remember fakiosity and delfoz ring of lights

[Justin Hunt]

I have my very first animation sitting on a ZIP disk somewere, it was a catipiller eating a magic mushroom and turning into a butterfly.

 

Just looking at those, I think I am still using that wood texture these days

 

jhv

[Lester_Masterson]

I am aging myself, but some of my first work is on 5¼" floppies (which I still have), but sadly do not have (or wish to have) a 5¼ FDD.

 

On a side note, I do remember my first AutoCAD drawing I created. A side view of a Lamborghini Miura way back in 1986. yikes!!!

[Michael J. Brown]

Yeah, my first foray into 3D was via AutoCAD. Back before AutoCAD started using GUI buttons for everything. The interface was royal blue with white letters and pseudo 'drop-down' menus. Most commands were typed-in.

 

I actually constructed several buildings in 3D using almost 100% keyed-in cartesian coordinates. All of that just to get it to spit out a 'hidden line' view which I then hand colored via airbrush, prismacolor pencils and/or markers.

[anejo]

I would post some of my old work, but unfortunately that computer and those floppies that those images were on are now buried in some landfill. Electronic recycling was not an option back than.

btw-I got a tear in my eye while reading your post. just kidding

[hockley91]

In architecture school we were still using Autocad R12 in the mid 90's. I had seen a little bit about DOS 3D Studio. I believe one of my old classmates was messing with 3D using Form Z. That was back in 1995. He had the Discovery model from 2001 and we were all in awe as he rotated it and zoomed in and stuff.

 

My first 3D project was in architecture school in fall of 1996. A few of us started playing with animations and renderings. I was working in Autocad and then I would work in Truspace. It was awful. Truspace just didn't do what I wanted it to do and it was a pain. I did make a few renderings from it and used it on my project, but I kind of gave up on it.

 

Then in the spring of 1997 (after graduation), a fellow intern brought DOS 3D Studio with him and I remember he and I staying up really late one evening after work and we were installing and trying to get the dang SVGA video card to work with it. I remember once we got 3D Studio working we were elated, like we had just gotten to the top of a HUGE mountain.

 

I then stopped using Truspace and learned how to do all my modeling in Autocad R13. 3D Studio was a pain at that point, so I stuck with Autocad R13. Then in mid 1997 we got 3DS Max 1.0 and Autocad R14. We had moved on to Windows 95 at that point and we were shifting all of our workload from DOS to Windows 95. That was a big change at our office and a lot of people wanted to stay in DOS. That's pretty funny all these years later, people not wanting to work in Windows. My old co-worker still believes that things ran a lot smoother in DOS. He may be right.

 

From 1997 on I started using 3D Studio Max. Even right now from where I'm sitting I can see my 3D Viz box from 1998 with the printer port dongle you had to attach to the back of the desktop...hah!

[Devin Johnston]

Here's some stuff I did back in 2002, I have older stuff but it's at home on a zip disk somewhere. This is all scanline done in Max with omni and target lights, back in the day it was really impressive and now I just laugh at how corny it looks.

[hockley91]

Maxer, they still look good! Some people are still doing renderings like that today.....hah hah!

[Michael J. Brown]

Dang, Maxer. I was this close to posting a church interior of mine from '01. Didn't look too much different from yours. Gotta love those omnis.

 

hahaha!

[Tommy L]

I think its interesting to look at these renders in comparison to a technology they were supposed to replace....architectural traditional rendering. They dont even come close! Now it is apparent that the two stand side by side on a roughly equal quality footing (in the right hands).

Its kind of like watching cgi replace photography now, especially in product stuff. Right now he photography is still better than the 3d, but I think looking at the history of rendering buildings demonstrated here, its not going to take long.

[Devin Johnston]

In many cases the CG although maybe not as attractive as traditional rendering techniques of the past had many advantages over those older methods. You could do animations which was pretty much unheard of in the architectural field, you could change materials at will as well as the perspective view although doing that meant you'd probably have to tweak you light rig. Over all it was just more flexible which I think is what drew architects to it, I don't know about cost though I'd think it was much more expensive than traditional work.

[Justin Hunt]

When I think back at how much it did cost in those days, I can now apreiciate the leap of faith my boss took for my first job. Me freash out of collage, with about three months 3D experience having to start and run the 3D department. I hope it paued off.

 

I first learnt with Strata Studio Pro on a mac, a crazy program but I loved it.

 

jhv

[Lester_Masterson]

You wanna talk cost? One office I worked at had 5 SGI boxes (boxes being kind, these bas boys were huge and were hard to move by yourself). The newest one they got (c.1998) cost just south of $60000 and the Lightscape license was +/- $5000. By the time I left in 2003, none of the SGI's were in use. We couldn't even repurpose the 21" monitors because they ran on a proprietary frequency. WTF????

edit: One machine "was" used to keep a door open. A $40000 door stop.

[Devin Johnston]

60K......man that's freaking crazy I wish I could get my current firm to dish out money like that for equipment. I guess there was a totally different mindset back then with regards to being on the cutting edge, I mean what's considered cutting edge today, augmented reality or 3D?

[jinsley]

Great thread! I don't quite have the years behind me yet, but I thought I would toss up a few of my first... its very humbling to look back and see where you started and realize how far you have to go when you see such great images posted every day like renderhaus mentioned...

 

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[markf]

Great thread +1. It is interesting to go back and look at this stuff. Here is some of my early work from 1998-99. I sure wish I could get some work in the present. I'm getting concerned about skill atrophy. Meanwhile self studying web site design, re-doing my web site and lots of outdoor recreation. Cheers to all.[ATTACH]38803[/ATTACH][ATTACH]38804[/ATTACH][ATTACH]38805[/ATTACH]

[Tommy L]

Great thread +1. It is interesting to go back and look at this stuff. Here is some of my early work from 1998-99. I sure wish I could get some work in the present. I'm getting concerned about skill atrophy. Meanwhile self studying web site design, re-doing my web site and lots of outdoor recreation. Cheers to all.[ATTACH]38803[/ATTACH][ATTACH]38804[/ATTACH][ATTACH]38805[/ATTACH]

 

Hello Mark, just took a quick look at your website and the images in your previous post.

The first image in your residential exteriors has the same tree as your 1998 work !! Awesome~!

 

edit: in fact its in all the 1998 ones...

I still use that tree.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Tommy L

[Justin Hunt]

same with the people:)

 

jhv

[Michael J. Brown]

That was some pretty impressive stuff for '98/'99, markf.

[markf]

Hey thanks for commenting on my post! Yeah, busted on the tree and people and also on a few favorite textures. Almost all of my work has been in rocky mountain resort areas. The vast majority of trees are aspen and spruce, all of the people share a common demographic and can't appear to formal.The textures tend to include rusted metal, wood (often weathered), stone. Consequently I used the same things that worked well in lots of different projects.

 

Regarding quality - I was very fortunate to have a great mentor who forced the quality of my work to a level I probably wouldn't have achieved on my own. I also benefited greatly from feedback from the folks on this forum. I've posted everything I have ever done here for C&C and that has been invaluable. (side note: it seems that the "comments and critique of work" aspects of the cgarchitect site have changed and it's just not the same great feedback and help as before?)

 

If you look at the recent work sections of my site you will see that I have begun using onyx/3D trees and vegetation making use of proxies. Although some of those favorite trees still make an appearance . Also stopped including people unless it was really called for. I'm don't think I'm going to include all of that older work in my new site. Just the best of the recent work.

 

I felt I was doing good work then but felt there was higher quality work being done by others. That kept me inspired and constantly trying to improve what I was doing. Feel the same or possibly more so today. It was a great gig and the freelance work suited me very well. I hope I can hang on until (if) it comes back.

 

All of the regulars and others on this forum have contributed greatly to my past efforts. Thanks!

[hockley91]

I've uploaded some animations that I've done in the late 90's to early 2000's. It's been a joy watching these again actually. Some I haven't seen in many years. It reminds me a lot about the "old" days.

 

Being in my mid to late 20's at the time I just remember how late I was staying up back then and coming in on weekends and just kicking my butt on some of these. I had no kid's yet so I had energy out the wazoo. Now my 3 kiddos sap that energy out of me as soon as walk in the door after work. Ha Ha!

 

Here's my very first animation that I did. It was a remodel for a bank. I worked for an architecture firm and we had just started experimenting with 3D. It was early 1997 if I remember correctly. I had just started working full time and I was full of "big" ideas. I had just graduated from Architecture school in December 1996.

 

They took the drive through teller area and enclosed it to make some office space for it. It was modeled in Autocad R13 and the animation was created in Truspace:

 

http://www.envision3d.net/cgarchitect/snb_anim_1997.wmv

3.6 mb

 

This one is an interior remodel. It was modeled in Autocad R13 and rendered in Truspace for that animation. I was getting tired of Truspace and I was not working in 3DS Max. Working the animation in Truspace was a real pain and I had no idea at this point in time how much easier it was all going to be in 3DS Max:

 

http://www.envision3d.net/cgarchitect/digitaldreams_1997.wmv

4.1 mb

 

These are some logo animations that I created for the office. I had just started using 3DS Max at this point. I was having fun messing with all of 3DS Max's features so I thought it'd be very high tech to do some eye candy animations of the company logo:

 

http://www.envision3d.net/cgarchitect/has_logo_1997.wmv

10.5 mb

 

http://www.envision3d.net/cgarchitect/has_logo_2000.wmv

6.1 mb

 

This animation was a study of the facade of an office building we were designing. Again, I was extremely pleased with how 3DS Max was working. It was modeled in Autocad R13 and rendered in 3DS Max. As you will see, I was having some issues with the textures regarding normals. In any case, it was bye bye to Truspace:

 

http://www.envision3d.net/cgarchitect/corpsquare_1998.wmv

3.8 mb

 

This is an animation of a protoype elementary school. The school district had a multitude of portable buildings and they wanted to see if there was a clever way to utilize them in a low cost way in building a new campus. So, the "Village" concept was developed where there was a core building that housed the administration, gym, library and cafeteria. Then there would be a cluster of remodeled portables that would connect to the core. It never went beyond this stage and it was really a feasibility study:

 

http://www.envision3d.net/cgarchitect/saisd_prototype_1999.wmv

95.8 mb

 

Finally, this was a HUGE project for me. This was an addition to an existing school. The right side of the school was existing and it had an "L" shape to it. We flipped the "L" and essentially doubled the size of the campus. We also added a football field and the gymnasium in the rear. I was actually the project manager for the gym addition as well.

 

There were homes where the football field and addition are. The school district bought out all the homes in order to get the land!

 

As you can tell, my animations were getting more complex at this point. One thing to note in terms of production. This was the first time I worked with someone on a model. I created my portion in Autocad R14 and my co-worker did his portion in Microstation. That was a nightmare to bring the .dgn files back then. It was trial and error to get the information to translate and I vowed never to mix the two ever again. It really slowed down the workflow. To his credit he only new how to model in microstation and he did do a great job on his portion:

 

http://www.envision3d.net/cgarchitect/saisd_harrismiddleschool_2001.wmv

90mb

 

Anyway, hope you all enjoy these!

 

Adam