SGI: Computer Graphics

Fascinating screenshots, thank you for posting them. The interface is elegant and many of its fundamental design elements are still a staple of modern 3D apps decades later.

I'll always love the hard-edged, instantly-recognizable CG appearance that vintage apps tended to produce. Like watercolor or bronze, 80's and early 90's CG had a look all its own, but the focus in recent decades has been photorealism. I'd love to see some talented artists produce a new movie using the tools and techniques of twenty years ago.

the only real change was GI which could be simulated by clever light placement before to some degree (much faster rendering as well).
the big difference are the textures; those were often smaller and not so detailed but an old program with today's textures looks just as nice as a "modern" app.
poweranimator's renderer for example is still better than maya's might ever be so as usual it's up to the artist and not so much depending on the software.

assuming skills are there you can produce the 90s look with modern apps and a modern look with old apps and so on ...

It's not better than Mental Ray though, surely? Since Maya started shipping with Mental Ray I don't think they've bothered with the Maya renderer very much...

You just mis-spent my afternoon This isn't a screenshot and it's on an HP workstation but uses the dials and buttons and a digitizer and the application was available for Irix. A demo is on the Hotmix 18 CD ... but not the demo itself, a link to the demo. I've been hunting for years for the Real Thing ... there's got to be one out there somewhere.

Still, it's vintage and that granite ball thingy floating in midair screams SGI



Yeah. Search for "Oakland Bay Bridge" and see what you come up with ... they built the Golden Gate bridge in under five years in the thirties with slide rules, but that was before the invention of the MBA.

yeah mental ray is better. i meant maya's default renderer. however mental ray is so slow so it's not a real option

hamei, where do you come up with these!


That's what render farms are for...

hehe with other renderers those are even faster. mental ray is slow in comparison, no matter where you run it.

Ah, but if you want the results you've got to be willing to put in the clock cycles...

Er, right. I can't help but think of the time somebody suggested that they preferred to walk instead of flying around Second Life because they "enjoyed the exercise." To which a fellow resident replied, "They're avatars. They don't need a sodding fitness regime!"

I wonder what Second Life would be like if it rendered in Mental Ray. Probably way more scenic and unusably slow...

well the other renderers don't look bad either. each has its pros and cons.

It is with great deliberation that I never research it because I'm afraid if I learn what I'm missing out on by sticking with Maya 6.5 on IRIX I'll, well, basically quit using Maya 6.5 on IRIX. And I don't want to do that. So, here I am with my head in the sand..

haha, no worries, i meant other renderers for irix

Probably the reason I don't notice the slowness of Mental Ray is because it renders faster than I model. And the nice thing about my Octane's two CPUs is that batch renders don't slow the modeling window down at all...

heheeh that's usually the case for everyone

anyway it gets nasty when you're testing materials or lights and need a test render often.

Rendering is where having multiple CPU's really makes a difference, in Maya make sure "Auto Render Threads" is selected and the number is set to however many CPUs (or cores) are available...

hehe again, it's about relative speed. i only said that mental ray is slow in comparison hence it doesn't matter how many cpus you use because other renderers will always be faster.

Thanks Fötz for the new information and screenshots!