Trying The Weirdest 90s CGI Programs...

[@PrintAllTheThings]

The sound that POV Ray plays immediately "whenever you run the code" is supposed to indicate that your picture is complete after hours and hours of rendering on your old 386. 😁

[@JenBytecode]

yep thought the same. nowadays it of course only takes milliseconds and we not even talking about GPU rendering here.

[@ozzie_goat]

Also it's not even "cOdE" it's closer to a markup language

[@omaribbrahim]

@@ozzie_goatnobody cares get a life

[@talkysassis]

@@ozzie_goatIt is C as I can see

[@proxy1035]

@@talkysassis it seems C inspired but it's definitely not a regular programming language. even the site itself calls it a "scene description language" so like ozzie said, it's more akin to languages like Verilog/VHDL or HTML

[@alyctro8158]

I want to see more of these. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg. It's so nostalgic to watch.

[@KhakiCap]

You totally forgot about Bryce 3D. It's basically POV-RAY but easier.

[@godnyx117]

It depends on your definition of "easier". Tbh, having a code based version allows for code generation. Like how Blender does with Python scripting... but without actually having to run scripts.

[@pauljs75]

@@godnyx117 Has a WYSIWYG UI for staging, and it's material editor is almost on a boss level for the time despite looking like one of those Nick-Toons toys in terms of buttons and sliders. Also later versions of Bryce could import .3ds or .obj files, which could make it something special as a render engine if you used something like Wings3D as a mesh editor.

[@cachorro25]

I ca e here to say exactly that

[@ViRiXDreamcore]

Oh yes Bryce was basically vaporwave aesthetic

[@BolognaLover]

Bryce 3D was my first introduction to 3D designing as a kid and I loved it. I Remember this dock with water I made and the water looked so aesthetic

[@Nickzzzera_]

2:57 IS THAT THE GIANT RAT THAT MAKES ALL OF THE RULES?????

[@cyanhacker]

Rats, rats, we are the rats...

[@FurryAnimator]

ratata! XD@@cyanhacker

[@burp2019]

@@cyanhacker WE PREY AT NIGHT WE STALK AT NIGHT

[@catronit56]

​@@burp2019WERE THE RATS

[@StafkiGTN]

Nope. That's his identical twin

[@lower_case_t]

POV-Ray is definitely still worth checking out. Some features that came to Blender only recently, like realistic caustics, have been available in POV-Ray for ages. And for some purposes, like clean description of a geometry, a script-based renderer is better suited than a GUI-based one that only focused on modelling for many years. Geometry nodes have done a lot for Blender in that respect, but I think POV-Ray still has it's justification.

PovRay is the shit, I still use it once in a while.

[@UltimatePerfection]

AFAIK, you can use POV Ray as a renderer in the modern Blender versions (although it requires some setup) - basically Blender will generate a POV-Ray script based on your scene and then launch POV-Ray to render it. Obviously you need to have POV-Ray installed and also have POV-Ray blender plugin, but you can have the best of both worlds, easy modeling in Blender and the render engine of POV-Ray.

[@flonkplonk1649]

@@UltimatePerfection i prefer Luxcore for Blender.. one of the best caustics renderers and absolutely photorealistic images for architecture! And free!

[@charleslambert3368]

@@UltimatePerfection There are CAD programs that let you do that with POV-Ray too.

[@NextWorldVR]

Instant Meshes as well, (field aligned retopology meshing tool)...

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

The app that apparently was most responsible for the look of a lot of 1990s graphics (particularly in print) was called Bryce.

[@flonkplonk1649]

Exactly 😆

[@NextWorldVR]

I suspect that you will remember VUE! VUE allowed you to do a massive gigantic granular highly detailed photoreal beautiful worlds in 3ds Max (but it still took days or weeks to render) ... It was the most amazing and frustrating thing. I am so happy and gratified to be able to do the same thing today with Unreal Engine Landscapes but in real time. I can't believe we got here so quickly!

[@Alt_Haven]

As a man who experienced this era and aesthetic, I love the idea of a zoomer breaking down an old program like this.

[@NextWorldVR]

Do you remember TOPAS? Softimage? Flying Fonts? Are you like myself so excited and happy that we got to this point within our lifetimes. Building vast complex photoreal worlds like we used to in VUE (3ds Max Plugin), but that don't take days or weeks to render a single frame, instead happening in Realtime, even as we build.

[@NextWorldVR]

This zoomer did it really respectfully too they were very surprised how much raw power there was in these early programs! The majority of the tool is there. Same with 3ds Max. This weekend I needed to turn a mesh into a height map for Unreal Engine, I use the same technique I used to in 3D Studio for DOS in the mid 90's... I used a z buffer render element and an orthographic camera to render recreating the mesh as grayscale height info!

[@chafacorpTV]

I gladly pass the torch to the new generation.

[@ruzasuka]

I sure appreciate that you even use a microphone from the 90s

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

4:05 It’s a renderer, not a modelling tool. Various modelling tools (e.g. Blender) have ways of exporting their models in a format that POV-Ray can render.

[@godnyx117]

Ooooooh! Now it makes sense! Thanks for the info! Then 90s were such a cool era!

[@darnoc4470]

So POV-Ray is basically the equivalent of a slicer in 3D-Printing i suppose? Interesting!

[@SomdudeYT]

This changed my life and cured my blindness

[@tonylazuto9001]

I've been using blender for about 15 years and it's wild to see a version so old. There are elements to the interface that I recognize from much older versions (I started around blender 2.4) that are no longer around. Neat! Great video, you should have more views

[@flonkplonk1649]

The first version of Blender was "Traces" 1989 on Amiga! Cinema4D and Lightwave started on Amiga as well..

[@oscarcacnio8418]

​@@flonkplonk1649 Oh no... Now I really want to grab an Amiga emulator to run the oldest possible Cinema4D version...

[@archivethearchives]

Blender to me was “the program that crashes for no reason and has a loathsome GUI” about 10 years ago. It has gotten so much better since then.

[@MetroidChild]

@@archivethearchives The "best" part was having the program crash 2 days into a render because you estimated the ram usage (which was impossible to know without trial and error) wrong, good times.

[@archivethearchives]

@@MetroidChild Gosh. So glad the build has gotten so much more stable and so much less absurd like that. I'm finally getting really into blender (pretty late start considering I was learning to use it about 10 years ago like I mentioned) and I have grown to admire it. At least thanks to 4.0 being a great improvement.

[@ChocoRainbowCorn]

While I do personally consider early 3D quite ugly as a lot of people also do today, I also do think it's a style and deserves to be preserved. It has it's charm which is not even nostalgia driven (I was personally born in 2002). It's kinda uncanny valley, cursed, yet still somehow looking somewhat.. Attracting I suppose? It's hard to tell but I think a lot of it has to do with the unintentional silliness of the models, especially characters from back in the day, also giving way for your imagination to fill in the gaps. Maybe also the simple colors just plastered onto geometrical shapes with games or other things that didn't try to go for realism. As much as I can't say I would play a game nor watch a movie made with such graphics back then or especially today, I do realize that a lot of people love this aesthetic and I do hope it doesn't die out. There really IS something magical to early 3D and CGI as much as the models can look really unattractive at times and it's hard to describe - I think this is that magical experience.

[@chafacorpTV]

These exact words describe my allure to some old pov dungeon crawler rpgs from the late 90s early 2000s. Its just so horrendous i cant look away.

[@hexagon1970]

"I then decided to add some text to my scene, and it immediately crashed on me" Yep, definitely Blender 😅

[@Domarius64]

Man, this was my teenage years and college years! And you werent even born - That is so cool that you felt compelled to do this. It shows its not just nostalgia, theres a unique aesthetic to things of bygone eras.

[@_edgodd]

glad to see nothing has changed on the blender crashing scene

[@blu_cardinal545]

We thought it was weird back then too. The dancing baby was creepy

[@tsm688]

The trick about POV-ray, is that no one who uses POV-ray, uses POV-ray. Most of their renders will have an asterisk which says (with elements from poser, blender, lightwave, and 13 other programs and rendered in some obscure french sounding program because pov-ray can't make any of these things. but it's still ray tracing so it counts!)

[@theanalogzone5724]

Thank you for shining some light on these old softwares. pov ray was my favorite out of the 3.

[@NolanHOfficial]

Uhhh...

[@HerraHissi]

I didn't use Blender 1.0 but the UI is very similiar to whatever version I used. I got a book from a library and followed it to make a gingerbread man. The yellow and green buttons... 90's UI design was wacky.

[@sparshrawt]

NOSTALGIA ENTERING MY BODY THROUGH EVERY HOLE I HAVE

[@EdKolis]

I remember using POV-ray thinking maybe someday in the future we'd have real time ray tracing. And here we are!

[@Compassionate38]

Seeing a zoomer break down 3D movie maker from my childhood (and actually know how to navigate an old school file system) warms my cold millennial heart.

[@Cyclopz0rs]

3:07 absolute masterpiece

[@pauljs75]

Didn't get into Anim8or, Bryce, Carrara, Poser, or Lightwave. Certainly there has to be some older stuff out there under those names floating around, and those are fun and nostalgic in their own peculiar ways.

[@NathanOsman]

The thing that always impressed me the most about Anim8or was that the entire program was written by one guy in his spare time.

[@flonkplonk1649]

Lightwave, Cinema4D, Caligari, Real3D, Imagine..

[@erewhonmuesli]

I did my first 3d work in lightwave 7, twenty years ago. Tried looking into it again recently, to only learn that newtek had done largely sod all to keep up with the rest of the world, and died a quiet death. I know it's been bought out and revamped, but it's not the same, you know?

[@KC9UDX]

What's weird about Lightwave or Cinema4D?

[@johnaquino7619]

Carrara was quite intuitive, though with the help of a printed manual. These days, some of the functionality now included in Blender starts to remind me of Carrara. 🙂 (Modeling, layout, etc. set up as tabs or "rooms" and being able to orbit around a selection by grabbing and dragging the widget.

[@1ucasvb]

Love that appreciation for POV-Ray and the little render finished tune. One of my favorite programs, and I still use it!

[@craftboy338]

Oh I _grew up_ on 3D Movie Maker. I was never very good, but 90% of my videos were just a random scene followed by someone or something exploding

[@NewPlastic]

Hahaha this is so good dude, your experience with Blender 1.0 sounds like my experience with Blender today.

[@crake345]

3D Movie Maker was my shit back in the day. That's where my love of animation started.

[@correctopinion4708]

blender 1.0 crashing was the biggest foreshadowing a program could fo

[@flonkplonk1649]

My Blender 4.0 Beta doesn't crash at all.. maybe it's because of NVIDIA Studio drivers?!

[@NextWorldVR]

Don't forget 'Flying Fonts' and TOPAS!

[@presuminged2000]

I got into 3D in the 1990s with a program called Imagine 3D on the Amiga, then later on Lightwave 5 (1997) on the PC. The render times especially on the Amiga were ridiculous, it could take 24 hours or longer to render a very simple scene.

[@johanprb357]

Yup more of this please! Back in the day I tried Imagine, Real 3D and Lightwave for the Amiga, as well as 3D Studio for DOS

[@flonkplonk1649]

I had the first version of Cinema 4D on Amiga 😆

[@paulezzy9273]

Wow, did this make me feel old. In my mind, a "20 year old" would have been born in 1990 :) This was such an interesting era for computer graphics. Things evolved FAST in the 90's. It was so exciting to see what new levels of realism could be made on a computer. I'm nostalgic for these graphics, but I do not miss them.

[@MallardGryph]

elder millenial checking in and dear lord that pov-ray "render finished" sound has been absolutely burned into my brain since messing with it as a kid. Wasn't able to find the sound anywhere online so... thank u for providing

[@theomega4952]

absolutely love these old 3d designs & textures, amazing milestone of what we once had

[@StudiSuara]

Sometimes it feels weird when people say they wanna try some stuffs from the era before they were born and the stuff is the thing that I have in my childhood. I feel like "Geez, am I already that old?"

[@VaqueroCoyote]

I actually had 3D Movie Maker as a little-little kid lmao, I'm happy to know I wasn't alone in feeling creeped out or the purple guy was the material of nightmares.

[@YettyWTF]

3:12 nah that's the 11/9

[@Doc_Valparaiso]

Oh, the nostalgia. I was a teen when this came out. My one friend that actually had a decent computer (and internet!) had this. I spent HOURS making several movies. A bunch of us would sleep over at his house. Everybody was blown away by Movie Maker. But, somehow I was the only one who decided against playing Sega Saturn downstairs and stayed upstairs making movies all night. What kind of movies did I make? Dirty. Movies. Very very dirty movies. I made one about the sexy adventures of Dracula. Another one I simply called 69 pu**ies. It was simple because I put 69 cats on the screen and had them all moaning. Again, I was 15. The fact that I was still welcome back to his house was a testament to how cool his parents were.

[@danielpletikosic9021]

Should write a book like a diary

[@KonngaraFan]

Finally, some 3D modeling programs that can run on my PC!

[@LaughingPsycho]

I remember struggling with POV-RAY. On a different note, I used to make things on the Atari Falcon using Cyber Sculpt, which became 3D Studio, which became 3D Studio Max.

[@HarveyHirdHarmonics]

My first 3D software was Reflections on an Amiga 500. It came free with the computer as a promotion. You waited hours for a really low res, low color picture of some geometrical objects. But it was so cool at the time. When I saw that I'd get some graphics software with the computer, I first thought, yeah, nice, some paint program - hope it's at least decent if it's free. Then I realized it was a freakin' raytracing software! My mind was blown!

[@flonkplonk1649]

Same here! It was Reflections 2.0 and my Amiga had to render day and night for some text and glass spheres 😆

[@Katy133]

Thank you for the video, I love your video editing style. It was cool to see early user interface design through these programs.

[@NikoCubeRoot]

​@@ShanefulThis video looks like you have 50K subscribers

[@kayteuber3515]

thanks for using a microphone from the 90s to record your voiceover too. really adds to the video

[@flonkplonk1649]

He got style

[@Ferny1415]

"well dont, i want born yet" *i instantly age another 50 years*

[@R-Tex.]

Windows is obsessed with backwards compatibility, and i like it!

[@i.ntelligent]

About Blender. Dude, you literally voiced my own experience of my first (and second, and third) encounter with Blender. Only it was not version 1, but much later, somewhere (I think so) in 2006. Blender had already become free, but the manuals on it cost a lot. And I had experience working with 3DS MAX since the late 1990s, and here I am running Blender, and I realize... that I don't understand shit at all. I don't get it at all. Time has made up for it, but that first experience was very, very traumatic.

[@augustday9483]

I really want the 90s 3D aesthetic to make a comeback somehow. It's so beautiful and surreal.

[@ForgetfulHatter]

im only 20 seconds in and im already laughing. :) That 3d movie maker is a blast from the past. but ofc i can't help but be reminded of Jermas we're the rats.

[@porterhouse937]

God I miss the 90’s/early 00’s. I would give anything to be stuck in that era. 😢

[@JamesEmirzianWaldementer]

1:01 Windows 3D Movie Maker are actually works for the modern computer, That’s what I have seen the earlier computer animation day with very low budget video-maker.

[@chrishunter1109]

There is a GUI for POV Ray called Moray. I used it back in the days when i was young. It was a lot of fun.

[@dano7835]

Pov ray results looks amazing omg... I wish it had a visual interface

[@mathieuvart]

I grew up playing with Movie Maker around 1998-1999. I made a lot of crappy movies and had a lot of fun.

[@Uhfgood]

I used to mess around with POV back in my highschool days. POV stood for Persistence of Vision, and the "Ray" part was because it was a Ray-tracer. (Of course I didn't really know how ray tracing worked being I was only 16 or so at the time)

[@YourLifeWillForeverBeALie]

"Wow so nostalgic, I was born in the wrong generation!" -Little Timmy, born in 2015🤦‍♂

[@popcornhistory]

Just imagining how far Blender has come while still being open source. It's amazing.

[@martesflavigula]

the dream emulator music playing during the segments is a nice touch

[@angeldart3D]

Its beautiful when you saw a newborn channel that have the potential to surpass bigger channels.

[@1zymn1]

I began using Blender in 2008, so that 1.0 layout is actually familiar to me. It would be a throwback but I bet I could work with it, asides from the crashes.

[@HumanManufactured]

theres actually a pov ray addon for blender that lets you render your scene with the pov ray render engine, I used it once and then it stopped working.

[@JourneyWeave]

Great video, so much fun. Do one for retro creepy CGI !

[@aidanm5578]

As a professional child of the 90's, this was interesting. Never mucked around with these programs, but it's cool to see a younger generations take on it. Keep it up.

[@memecoinsanalysis]

this video is so fun to watch

[@brandie3344]

Someone get this guy a microphone lol

[@puzzlepuddles6712]

6:10 i've been making maps in source's hammer editor (from 2003), and i can say this is exactly how using old 3d-rendering software feels like when something goes wrong you can never find out what is making the error or how to fix it. it's the easiest way to waste your time

[@mobfilms2285]

The bad audio makes this video better.

[@x288.]

"oh sure hope this plane doesnt blow up" *litterally dies*

[@EricCartman2020]

2:13 Nice movie tho but you need to see a doctor if your PEE IS RED💀💀💀

[@_raptor4070]

this is such high quality production for a small channel like yours, i hope to see more videos from you

[@Sketchy_Dood]

Ngl that plane segment made me laugh more than it should of

[@l1z4rdon7]

3D Movie maker explains quite a few videos I've seen over the years. I remember there's an old animation program called Alice that teaches you how to create scenes and animate characters and it came with a textbook. That's where I started my adventures in 3d.

[@homg85]

3D Movie Maker, along with Fine Artist and Creative Writer were the staple of our computers in our classrooms in primary school.

[@TheLucaz37]

absolutely good video + the thumbnail IMMIDEATELY activated my brain with the old blender logo when i opened youtube

There's another program I used back in the day but it's not 90s, (I used it in the early 2000s so maybe it is?) it's called Amabilis 3d Canvas and I LOVED that software.

[@krthr]

Ah, POV Ray. It used to take almost 4 hours to render a scene at 640x480.

[@SupersGoneHyper]

I was born in 2008, so I wouldn't know what the animations were like either.

[@-Gunnarsson-]

Windows inbuilt 90s liminal spaces 🗿🗿

[@FrutigerTB]

I have the pc cd of byrce 3d (btw i still have to find a cheap version)

[@SBDBestGamers]

This was both interesting and fucking hilarious

[@chadthunderlord5830]

this is brilliant! thank you for such funny video!

[@Konyad]

We used POV-RAY in highschool but without the IDE, just a notepad and terminal

[@ShivamExplains]

Lol the humor of this guy is 😈

[@arthurmilano2920]

6:10 - 6:16 was pure destructive meme material

[@chrismofer]

grew up on lightwave 3D for the amiga 2000 which was my dads video editor (the video toaster) in the late 90s. I paid for an official amiga emulator and someday will figure out how to load lightwave onto it haha.

[@flonkplonk1649]

Video Toaster was revolutionary back then.. a lot of TV and also film studios used it. For the fraction of the cost of high end systems.

[@chrismofer]

@@flonkplonk1649 the good news is I found a copy of lightwave 3.5 as well as 4 and 5, loaded them all on my virtual Amiga and have been animating! I can even split up rendering between 6 virtual machines to speed it up

[@santyproductions359]

AH FROM 3D MOVIE MAKER I PRESENT A PORT FROM 3D MOVIE MAKER NAMED NICKELODEON 3D MOVIE MAKER WITH THE NICKELODEON CHARACTERS

[@LandonEmma]

Did you know windows movie maker 3D has been modded? It doesn’t work on many windows 11s so they fixed that issue and added mod support I’m not sure who did but I know someone did and that you can get Mario from Mario 64 in it with the music

[@ChaseMC215]

Rats, we're rats. We're the rats! We pray at night, we stalk at nighr, we're the rats!

[@ZILtoid1991]

Now try some of the old CGI programs for the Amiga!

[@urgon6321]

The absolute first 3D CGI software I've ever used was Xara 3D in 2000 or 2001. After that I tried 3D Studio Max from an "alternative source. I even managed to make something in it, but my computer was not powerful enough for it, and the software wasn't easy to use. Still it was easier than Blender. In early days it had user interface designed by people who actively hated users. Nowadays it's much, much better...

[@Dennisskater55]

This video is a gem!

[@afjer]

Ah, you think weird 90s software is your ally? You merely adopted the 90s. I was born in it. Molded by it.

[@michaelq16000]

im shocked that this doesn't have millions of views already

[@Videoneer]

omg I started with 3D Movie Maker!!

[@Grasses0n]

3D movie maker is so cool, there really is nothing like it. the 90s had the best aesthetic. It's still used a lot. A lot of people might know it from Jermas Rat video, or maybe Ding Dong VG.

[@jccw227]

I had the Nickelodeon variant of 3D Movie Maker. The big difference was it had characters from Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, and AAAHHH! Real Monsters!

[@roriekennedy6707]

"I hope this plane dosen't fall off." i was cackling

[@JadenSalads]

Dude, nice video.

[@cyschan]

omg i forgot about 3d movie maker LMAO i wanna try pov-ray too (esp considering ik abit of c++)

[@azurewarrior2000]

I've said this once before, but we need a game that uses 90s CGi as it's art-style, like how Cuphead uses 1930's animation as art-style.

[@pomponi0]

Blender was an unintelligible mess until like 2016. Much of the interface were buttons labeled with single letters and if I remember correctly you selected objects with the right mouse button