In the early 90’s Penn State offered a 3D animation class for a few years. The lab was a small collection of Commodore Amiga computers. The fastest model was an Amiga2500 with a 25mhz 68030, 8MB of RAM and either a 20 or 40MB harddrive. Students had to share limited resources so the projects tended to be short. A few students had their own Amigas that were newer & faster models.
Impulse’s Imagine3D was the 3D package used. Electronic Arts’ DeluxePaint was the primary 2D paint program. Black Belt Systems’ ImageMasterRT was the image processor.
Images were typically rendered in 24bit colour files converted to 12bit (4096 colours) for the Amiga’s playback to VHS recorders. A few Amigas had 18bit colour modes (262144 colours). That was fantastic compared to the 8bit modes (256 colours) offered by typical PCs & Macs of the day.
Stacks of floppy disks grew like weeds.
I found that I still have several of the VHS tapes with 3D projects on them. I transferred some to the computer, added a new intro, and uploaded the compilation to vimeo.
One project features a couple of red Alpha Fighters. Another something from Transformers. The “Apocalypse Later” project boasts an SDF1. AL won 2nd place in the animation category at the Penn State Student Film Festival in ‘94. It was the only computer animation entered, all others were more traditional forms of animation.
One of the students modeled a fantastic transforming Valkyrie. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the project in any of my VHS stash. While most models were done by eye, his valkyrie was very precisely measured and constructed, very detailed.
Jaeson K.
