I was reminiscing about this the other day while working on a render. I had Poser 1 but was not impressed and put it away. It wasn't until I got VistaPro that I saw the light. When I rendered a Mars landscape animation, I was blown away. I went from that to Bryce, then Raydream (remember that one?), then Cinema4d GO. I played with Lightwave, Blender, and others, but now I work exclusively with Poser and C4D. You?

povRAY + Moray then to 3DS r4 on my college tutors machine.. then... trueSpace 2 ... never looked back.

Go back to the mid-1990's. I had a program called Simply3D. (Did it run on Windows 3.1, or Win95?!) It looked so darned impressive, but I never figured it out. I bought Poser 1 in 1996, and never learned that either. Move onto Poser 4, and 1999. Off I went.

Poser 5 was my first 3D program. I saw these websites with all these great looking 3d pictures and thought it would be great to be able to do that sort of thing. When I saw how cheap Poser 5 was, I jumped on it. And I didn't even know it could do animation until I intalled it on my hard drive. It was like getting a whole other program for free.

Poser 1. Ah, the joys of mangling bald people in a 3d space...

Terragen. Then the Bryce 5 and Vue 4 demos. Then i borrowed money from my daughter to buy Poser 4

...hehe. My first was Blender. What a way to get introduced to 3d. Very powerful app for freeware, though. If I had to do it all over again I'd go for Anim8tor (also freeware) to learn the basics, maybe move on to Blender, and then read as much as possible before buying something.

Message edited on: 01/21/2005 00:34

The first time I hit RENDER was in Autocad2000, I wasn't exactly sure what it was going to do. I'll always remember Poser4 as being my first though. Well, the one that started it all. Mark

I started out with simply 3d, then terragen then poser, bryce, Vue, vista pro, and then Rhino and the last I bought was curvy.

Poser1 was my first taste of 3d but like madriver I wasn't exactly bowled over by it, then I found Bryce2 & that got me hooked forever.

Mine was a little program that run on the old APPLE II, can't remember what the name was but it created 3d wire meshes. That was back around '83.

It was in 1985 with AtariSt.A cad3d soft made by Tom Hudson,the guy who finally was in the gang where 3DStudio(Dos)was created......

I tried to figure out RayDream Designer but eventually gave up and went to the Dark Side when I got a copy of DoGA L1. Then I took the plunge and registered DoGA L2 and Vue d'Esprit 2 for Windows 95. Making cool spaceships in 3D and importing them into worlds that I made was really cool. Many years later (and countless missing hairs) I'm now using Poser 5, Vue 4, and Maya Unlimited daily on my beloved Mac platform. -scara

Poser 1. I used it to make the general outtline shapes of people and then I traced them into a comic I was working on. Or tried to. Never could get the scale just right and I really suck at trying to free hand draw stuff. But I was hooked on the idea of using 3D software.

I got hocked from a college friend that had it. He printed stuff of so I could hand draw it and then I desided to get Poser 5 and then I got hocked.

"Go back to the mid-1990's. I had a program called Simply3D." I remember that! LOL. The first one I ever used was called Dream 3D by Corel back in about 1996. Then I moved to Ray Dream, then on to 3dsMax in about 1999.

I think I got hooked because I found it mindnumbingly difficult to do. No way was a box that my kids played games on going to get the better of me. Fortunately I was just too mindnumbingly stubborn to quit.

1995
Win 3.1
486
Poser 3 (I had seen Poser 2)
Truespace 2

Ray Dream Studio 5, back in the late Nineties. From there to Poser 3 and Bryce 3.

i had simply 3d. then i got bryce two. i finally added poser 1 and thought i rocked!!

It all started with Autodesk Animator. I had gotten my first computer in 1991, and while in the store I saw the package. I was absolutely amazed that you could do animation on the computer. Not long after that I became disabled ... and in a position where I had to find something that would allow me to earn good money from home. 3D animation and multimedia was the "next great thing", so with help I got a (then) powerful 486 66 mHz computer and 3D Studio release 2 (DOS version). I was hooked from the moment I rendered my first metal sphere. 8-)

AutoCAD Release 13 with a couple of add-ons called Accurender and Facade. Had them at work and got to play around a bit doing renders and a couple of animations.

I started with Simply 3D too! I still pull meshes from its' extensive catalogs for use in other programs.

Paint Shop Pro 6! LOL I was using tubes to make my images "look" 3D...for crying out loud:-) Then, I stumpled across a site that was using Poser to create psp tubes. And I started doing a search (how they do'd dat?) on how to create realistic looking people... and remember seeing the texture and interview by Curious Labs that Syyd Raven created and there was an included link to Renderosity! I was in complete awe. So basically, Syyd and Renderosity was my inspiration to Poser 4. Next, I started spending all my money buying from here and it created some kind of addiction. I learned a little about lightwave from Dan Alban and I thought I was cool because i made a snowman in lightwave and imported it into Poser. (laughing) Last year I decided to learn a powerful app. My choices where Cinema 4d, Houdini, and Maya. After researching, I decided to try to learn Maya 6 with the learning edition. It's really fun! But I don't like the watermark thingy. I hope to learn Cinema and Houdini someday.

1. Caligari 24 on the amiga.

I got Poser5 in May 2004 after stumbling across renderosity so I blame you lot ;D (although to be fair I've been intriged by 3D art ever since I saw Luxor from pixar) I've been completely addicted since day 1 and learn something new about it every single day :P Now I use Poser5, Maya6 Unlimited, Vue5, Bryce4, PSP8 and PhotoshopCS. Anyone remember what money looks like? All mine seems to have run off hehehe

(Shaking the cobwebs out, and jogging the memory). My first exposure to "professional" quality Computer Art came when I was a student in a Video Product & Technology course at a private vocational school. (1989-1990) They started a new program in Computer Art & Animation. I watched in fascination as they hooked up the computers in the new lab. I was hooked, and determined to return to the school to take the Computer Art Class. I relied heavily on financial aid, and was forced to wait about a year to return to school. We learned some very expensive programs: Tips, Topaz and Rio. These were professional quality 3D programs capable of "Broadcast Quality" work. At least one of those programs cost $20,000. I got to be pretty good with the software, but never managed to get a job with those talents. I've since forgotten most of what I learned.

Bryce 2, bought on a whim cause the advert was so pretty. Then on to Raydream, Truespace 2 to 5. Was always dissatisfied with them on some level, either interface or lack of good selection tools etc.. so took the plunge to Lightwave (5.6 back then. Now you couldn't pry that Lightwave dongle out of my hands. Really got introduced to what you could do with a raw 3d render through Renderosity though! What could be accomplished with a little Photoshop postwork was a revelation to me as I browsed through the Poser galleries...Then of course I started collecting good models as others would rare books or works of art.

Go WAY back to the late 80's where the first app that I used was a little thing called Swivel 3D/MacRenderMan created by a startup called Pixar... It was tough to use and not a very powerful modeler, but the possibilities were endless with Renderman. Very simple models became these beautifuly textured pieces and I was hooked. Soon came Electric Image, ShowPlace, Typestry, Lightwave, 3D StudioMax, and finally Maya. It's been a fun ride!

I came in through the back door. For me it was a 3D module called TIN for ArcInfo (a GIS program - computer mapping) in 1989. Then to Vista Pro, and later 3D analyst for ArcView (more GIS), then VirtualGIS and Stereo Analyst, onto World Construction Set V4. I was hooked, from there Poser2 to 4 to 5 along with trying 3ds Max (never liked the interface), Rhino, Virtual Nature Studio (VNS), Cinema 4D, and Carrara. Now it's mostly VNS, Carrara, Poser, and C4D at home, and of course GIS 3D at work. Some day I may actually get good at it .... nope, don't think so. But it's great fun. I still remember trying Corel 3Dream for a couple of hours (not reading the manual/help of course), and being unable to do anything!

Poser 3, 'cause I wanted to make a clown.
Then on to others.
But Poser 3...yup, that did it.

That, and all you good people who give time, experience and, above all, patience to those of use who want to learn.
Because of you, a lot of us who otherwise would have thrown Poser out and/or gone insane, are now happily rendering our NVIATWAS, fairies, unicorns, and, of course, clowns.

Bryce 2, which I found on the shelf at my local CompUSA.

This was quickly followed by Poser 2, which I also discovered at CompUSA.

Prior to seeing these shrink-wrapped packages sitting on the store shelf, I had no idea that they existed -- or that the world and the community which they represented existed.

In fact, I stumbled across Renderosity by accident, too. Long after I discovered Poser 2.

PS -- I stuck with Bryce through Bryce 4. I have since graduated to Vue 4 Pro -- soon to be Vue Infinite.

Bryce 4 I gto it to to landscapes to add to my 2D images as backgrounds. The on a way I started fiddling with the cubes and discovered I could build expansive pool scenes. Then got Poser 4, then on to Amapi 5 and haven't looked back.

A windows 3.1 program called Lathe 3d, then many years later, Bryce 2. Cheers :)

My 1st exposure was actually with photoshop, and teh Sims, I wanted to make startrek outfits for my sims way back when it 1st came out, then on hte sims boards I heard of the poser 4 release, and then after shool got a job with a web design co and started with 3dsMax 3 then 5 now I own poser 5 and trueSpace 5.2, and am paitently waiting for the next releases :)

My story on this should also be a good lesson to any noobs out there. I discovered Poser through the evil P2P empire. Back in 2001, I was a DJ for a nightclub and relied heavily on kazaa for my music resources. At some point I did a search for a punkrock song called "Posers Must Die". The results brought up Poser4 among other things. Not knowing what it was, I downloaded it - BAD MISTAKE! I say bad for two reasons: 1 - While I saw how cool this program was, I also had to reload the OS on my computer due to the virus that came with it. Needless to say, Poser4 (the warez version) got deleted real quick. 2 - Over the next two months I became determined to buy Poser4, I just couldn't get Posette out of my head :P Why this is bad is because now, thanks to V3 and StephPetite - I'm always broke (those little tramps!). Oh, and don't get me started on P5! All that program has done is make me buy more computer hardware! On the lighter side, not only has Poser given me a rewarding hobby (though expensive), it also taught me a valuable lesson about piracy - don't do it!

thanks to V3 and StephPetite - I'm always broke Yes, they are very demanding young ladies, aren't they? With expensive tastes. They always insist on new hairdos, new clothes, and new changes of scenery to frolic around in. They can monopolize large blocks of your time, too. Very demanding.

Bryce demos got me hooked. I "cheated" by taking screen shots a split second before the watermark appeared on the image, which meant that anti-aliasing didn't complete on the very bottom line, not that you could tell. LOL ... totally unacceptable method to me now, but I wasn't "serious" yet ... just playing with computers and "the pretty colors." (Remember that phrase? Remember when we only had 256 pretty colors?) As for comp graphics in general, I got started at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco on old Macs, I don't remember the name of the paint program, but my slides of the images, although quite old, aren't bad at all, bless Apple. That school now uses SGI workstations. The students are probably snobby about Poser. :-) I got sold on Poser while viewing images made with it at Japanese sites ... sort of by accident. I was looking for 2D images but inevitably came across 3D imagery as well. Same thing happened with Vue. I was amazed at the beauty of visions of pre-Westernized Japanese landscapes that people had created in Vue.

..... Hmmm it's been a few years.
I had an Amiga 2000
The first were landscape programs, and would have been Terragen and then Vista Pro.
The first True 3D program was Imagine, very expensive, and difficult to use, for the Amiga.

Original exposeure to 3D was via Games on my TRS80, Model 1,
I can distinctly remember those green pixel mountains on the right hand side of the runway when taking off on the Sub Logic Flight Simulator (Later Microsoft) and Playing Asylum - A very early predecessor (late 70's) to Doom.

Message edited on: 01/21/2005 14:58

Attached Link: http://www.planetquake.com/qpp/qpp2/qoole99.htm

Next up came UnrealEd, where you had to remember that you were subtracting most of your elements from an ostensibly solid world, not building them. It was about as stable as a cork in a hurricane.

After that, I started grabbing hold of programs that let me make models for all these levels (wasn't much for the cheap folks), I started doing and building stuff just because it looked cool, not necessarily for incorporation into a game mod. By the time I started contemplating something to make and animate models for the (then upcoming) Unreal Tournament 2003 mod a few of us had planned (a whole 3500-4500 working poly allowance per player-mesh! woo-hoo!), I stumbled across Poser as an option to look into. Problem is, since Poser's "bones" weren't useable anywhere outside of Poser, I couldn't use it for that... but I did get into the idea of using it for artwork, along with Bryce and later a ton of other proggies to screw around with.

/P

Message edited on: 01/21/2005 15:26

VU-3D on the Sinclair Spectrum, back in 1983. Real Primitive rotational 3D shapes in Wireframe. Bloody awful but cool at the same time. Amazing what you can do in 48K of RAM. I played with 3DSMax and Maya in my last job but Poser 4 got me hooked. I got hooked because it was exactly what I was looking for - the ability to create good looking images without the technology getting too much in the way. It allowed me to combine my traditional art skills with a 3D environment.

Terragen, then Poser 4. Now use Poser 5 and Vue 4.

Anyone remember Specular (and later Metacreations) Infini-D?

Mostly neewbies then! I harken back to Videoscape 3d, on my old amiga. The juggler demo got me hooked!

God. It was a piece of software that did booleans better then any program to date, I was so impressed on how I could boolean particles and meld things together. From there is was a few freeware programs to get a feel for things. I tried Max (one of the ones on dos) and eventually I decided after seeing Bryce 2 it was the one for me. I rendered out a few sphere's over checkered planes and I was hooked:) (I was running Bryce 2, 3, and 4 on a 233 mhz machine, the render times were killer) After Bryce I bought Poser 4, decided it was to limiting, after a brief skirmish with Raydream, I became a dedicated Carrara user for awhile (still am kind of) now I'm learning blender, I've decided the evil 3d gods can keep there money:)

I started out with trueSpace 1.0.

maxxxmodelz, my first commercial 3d app was also dream 3d. even final version of ray dream had no major differences from dream3d that came with coreldraw suite version 6. my very first 3d app goes farther back than that. writing hex coded files to create 3d images on an old xt, at , and apple II c used to piss off our computer science teacher, sit down and type hex from our heads to create graphics, and games. blew the network server trying to keep up with us.

Oh wow, poser 2, corel draw and bryce...and it took weeks...days and days of staring at the screen and wondering why I was trying to figure it all out...wow and the computers were sloooooow....graphic boards all that stuff you had to learn about only to find out that those figures feet did not move off the floor and the clothes flew off .....I agree with Phil...one had to be very stubborn to make it through the bonding process.....but with encouragement...here we all are...

My line of succession reads.... In the beginning there was Microlathe and Microlathe begat POV-ray which begat sPatch which begat Poser which begat Lightwave. and the rest, as they say, is history :-)

Bryce5 :)

I started out with amorphium because I didn't know any better in 2000, then went too bryce and poser they pissed me off because bryce didn't do people and poser4 sucked with rendering plus they didn't work together when it came to animations, from there i went to lightwave I liked lightwave but ended up going to a school that tought max so thats where I'm at, 3d max seems pretty good but i got a lot to learn