SGI: Computer Graphics

Been a while since I purchased all the goods.

Been so busy didn't have time to play.

Going to finally put the adapter into the 400mhz o2 so I can use the sw1600 properly.

Then I can test all the stuff on the newly made drive.

Updates soon.

Ok so I put the adapter in the 400 MHz o2.

Pretty straightforward. I'm not sure if others removed more parts to install it. I was able to get it in there by just sliding it around Tetris style.

Only problem is that I don't have the power supply for the monitor. It came with an ac cord but the little block unit with the cable that goes to the back of the screen is missing.

I wonder how hard it is to find one?

Other pics

Fired up the 300mhz today. Hasn't been on in a while.

New errors on screen. It froze up. I assume this is ram since it says dimm.

I can't turn on the sw1600 until I get an ac adapter. I see a few on eBay but the connector on the back of the monitor looks like it takes a larger connection than the stock photos on eBay.

Any help on buying the right ac adapter for the sw1600 appreciated.

Fired up ol Softimage.

I've used softimage. Maya. Lightwave. 3Dsmax. Houdini etc for years in Los Angeles. Since 1995. What is amazing is how Maya has many more features since the irix sgi days but is basically the same program.

Softimage though, having gone through its various incarnations from irix to windows then to Autodesk is a completely different beast on the ui level.

The basic philosophy is still there. You create items and then get the info tab up to modify the attributes. But the shortcuts could not be more different. Though x,c,v are still the translate, rotate, scale shortcuts.

Most surprising though is how an old mental ray 2.1 can render smooth spline surfaces and create soft shadows. I even was able to create a fresnel looking reflection.

Really great pictures, thanks for posting!

It's interesting that Mental Ray's been around for almost 30 years and it's only at version 3.14. I guess you could say it became feature complete at an early age...

Mental Ray was a nice alternative to renderman. It fell behind due to most other render engines being far easier to learn. Though mental ray came out of box with Maya, softimage, and 3dsmax, once you needed additional tender nodes it was very expensive. Essentially was an engine for only the big vfx film and commercial houses.

Ultimately Vray, Renderman, 3Delight, and even Lightwave's fPrime kept Mental Ray from completely dominating.

Though Mental Ray's integration with XSI was so good that I was able to go back to Maya after using it in XSI and found that quite a few options were available in XSI were not available in the Maya ui. Had to Mel script certain things just to check a few boxes so you could make final gather actually use the photon cast to really smooth out the final gi solution vs ending up with splotchy flickers every where. This was changed/fixed between Maya 7 and Maya 2009.

Anyways. I'll try to do a video running through Softimage, Maya, and Lightwave on the o2 400mhz. The best o2 possible and they are actually decently usable in this configuration.

Here is an actual render from Softimage instead of a photo of the screen with my phone. Previously I couldn't get the internet to work on the o2. All fixed now.