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The Best Graphics In 1994? Exploring Weird Spaces in Lightscape (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe to c/retrocomputing

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Post-video thoughts:

What is the situation with this on modern Linux? Something like a community edition, or is it only using the Windows version (lower hardware utilization?) via WINE?
Does modern use make any sense (size, performance, registration) beyond sightseeing? I mainly want live rendering (Godot), so I'm guessing that makes it make less sense.
Are there any model packs with models like this? Objects (low-poly room decoration etc.), or more particularly the architecture? Textureless is fine for me, vertex color or simple materials works (even if I had to do this myself from a blank model file).

I would've posted to !3dart@lemmy.world but that's dead.

There's a similar video on Animation Master as well: The 90s CGI software that fell through the cracks

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[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Blender can do all this. Using it's Eeve rendering engine which is opengl/vulkan. It even started out on Irix in the 90s as well. That is assuming you are wanting to do architectural visualization?

This specific software being SGI made. Likely doesn't have a version for any other OS. It and Irix were their babies and how they intended to fund themselves. Hardware wise, early 90s there was no windows or Mac hardware capable of this sort of thing. The best we had was software rendered limited bsp environments with billboarded sprites, aka Doom. And that was seriously taxing for those systems. It wouldn't have made sense. Non SGI hardware didn't approach that level of capability commonly till the late 90s early 2000s at the earliest even. SGI was openly struggling by 2006.

Likely your only option would be to pick up an old SGI workstation to run it on. Or emulation unfortunately.

[–] insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, I use Blender now but it's a bit painful for me to use. So it's a common thought that some old software might be usable for a simple workflow... if it could be done with proper hardware utilization and not too much overhead.

SGI made
there was no windows or Mac hardware capable of this sort of thing

Yeah. This was my thinking, that SGI-workstation-specific software would be more capable (hardware-support-wise) than Windows-specific software.

Though I'm guessing the architecture difference is just as much of a problem even if someone could work at that low-level.

That is assuming you are wanting to do architectural visualization?

I'm interested more for animation/gamedev, that's why I phrased it (3) as 'model packs' because I could see many of the large empty scenes shown being useful as a starting point for custom environments (even if it doesn't completely make sense, I'd love to put some bespoke digital creation inside a long-forgotten mall).

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Software of that vintage is notoriously bespoke and painful. Especially on niche platforms. It might make blender seem easy. Which BTW what is your pain point? Godot I've been wanting to learn etc. But blender is a prime tool to use with it. I have a decent grasp of the basics when it comes to blender, 30 years of experience.

[–] insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 week ago

Just never clicked with me, I guess. The workflow/layout, how certain things like modifiers often create mesh errors.

I mean Blender is perfectly fine for my uses, but I started with Maya (many years ago) and I think I preferred how that did things (and most things being nodes, though TBF I haven't looked into Blender's geometry nodes). Admittedly I also can't deal with Maya's bloat (or cost), and even the pre-Autodesk Linux version seem to be more data than modern Blender.

I also like some of the older tech like vertex colors and NURBS. Those aren't impossible with Blender either, though certainly don't seem top-drawer. For VC it takes a bit of setup (create it, materials, get it rendering properly in viewport shading modes) but the startup file helps with that... though I'm also relying on that for an ordered/set-width color palette, so I'm not sure if there's an easy way to change that in already saved files (and actually changing the vertex colors of the object is another, since it isn't just a color index that can be updated).