snorg wrote:

Before about 1990 or 1991 there really wasn't much available for 3D on the PC. Autocad, Turbocad, maybe other more obscure CAD packages. Povray, of course. Deluxe Paint for bitmaps and such. Nothing really animation wise, other than Disney Animator and Autodesk Animator Pro and I think certain versions of Deluxe Paint had animation features.

deluxe paint 2 + deluxe paint animation were very different products. DPA was more akin to Autodesk Animator. Brilliance.

also lets not forget stuff like;

Vista / Vista Pro was big for a while, also Scala. Sculpt 3D. Lightwave. Draw4D/Aladin. Sculpt 3D + Sculpt 4D. Fastray / Cinema 4D.

I'm just waiting for the universe to go completely upside down so I can buy an Onyx 2 rack for peanuts.

gdjacobs wrote:

I'm just waiting for the universe to go completely upside down so I can buy an Onyx 2 rack for peanuts.

Upside down how? Financially? Careful what you wish for. I think I remember seeing an Onyx 2 rack pretty cheap somewhere (compared to what it must have originally cost) but pretty sure it wasn't peanuts. But with as much power as those things need if you go looking for university cast-offs you might get one for a steal.

Nah, not in terms of finances, just in terms of the used UNIX hardware market. Of course you do have a point. One would almost need their own personal hydro plant to play around with an Onyx 2.

That or you could simply stick to using it in the winter months.

Yeah it was like "decent used car cheap". I think it was on Ian's site, now I recall. You gotta go to Edinburgh to pick it up, though, 🤣.

@Snorg THANK YOU! I'm definitely going to head on over to that Mashek website and maybe pick something up from there! I had no idea there were still so many NOS systems available!
With regard to DOS, I'll look for some of those programs. Thanks so much!

Jupiter-18 wrote:

@Snorg THANK YOU! I'm definitely going to head on over to that Mashek website and maybe pick something up from there! I had no idea there were still so many NOS systems available!
With regard to DOS, I'll look for some of those programs. Thanks so much!

You're welcome. The SGI ecosystem is different than the PC scene, for sure. Some of these systems are still used in medical imaging equipment, so there is more of a profit motive in reselling them still, whereas a PC of similar vintage would probably just be recycled for the metal content. I don't know how much longer this is going to be the case, though, where there are going to be resellers around. Reputable Systems, another reseller, went out of business a while back. Was a shame because they had better prices I think than Mashek, if I recall. Mashek is not bad, some things are priced better than others. I can't think of anywhere else in the US to get Indigo parts, for instance. I guess what I'm getting at, is if you see something you like and its a reasonable price, don't beat around the bush getting it. I could have gotten a Max Impact board set for my Indigo 2 a few years back for $100 or something ridiculous cheap, I didn't and they rarely go for less than $600-$700 these days. I would go with an Indidgo 2, Octane or O2 over a much older system, unless you get it for free/cheap. You will pay out the nose for Indigo or earlier systems in general as they are getting rarer these days. A Fuel is also an option, they tend to go in the range of $500-$900 when I see them pop up on Ebay.

Some other sites you might want to check out for SGI info:

www.sgistuff.net
www.obsolyte.com

I would go with an Indidgo 2, Octane or O2 over a much older system, unless you get it for free/cheap. You will pay out the nose for Indigo or earlier systems in general as they are getting rarer these days. A Fuel is also an option, they tend to go in the range of $500-$900 when I see them pop up on Ebay.

I'm thinking an O2 might be the way to go. They have some Onyx systems for sale as well, so maybe I'll save up for one of those monsters 😁

One caveat with the Fuel, is that they don't have onboard sound, while the earlier desktop workstations - Indy, Indigo2, O2, Octane and Octane2, at least - did. However, they use PCI expansion cards, and IRIX has drivers for the Audigy2 ZS, weirdly enough.

BloodyCactus wrote:

deluxe paint 2 + deluxe paint animation were very different products. DPA was more akin to Autodesk Animator. Brilliance. […]
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snorg wrote:

Before about 1990 or 1991 there really wasn't much available for 3D on the PC. Autocad, Turbocad, maybe other more obscure CAD packages. Povray, of course. Deluxe Paint for bitmaps and such. Nothing really animation wise, other than Disney Animator and Autodesk Animator Pro and I think certain versions of Deluxe Paint had animation features.

deluxe paint 2 + deluxe paint animation were very different products. DPA was more akin to Autodesk Animator. Brilliance.

also lets not forget stuff like;

Vista / Vista Pro was big for a while, also Scala. Sculpt 3D. Lightwave. Draw4D/Aladin. Sculpt 3D + Sculpt 4D. Fastray / Cinema 4D.

Yes, I forgot Vista Pro. That was a big one on PC back in the early 90s. I mentioned Lightwave but not the others, I thought those were only available on Amiga at first and did not become available (if at all) on PC until much later? Unless you are including Amiga as a PC in the sense that it is a "personal computer" but not an IBM/DOS PC. In which case Mac counts as well and we should mention Electric Image. What else was there for Mac? I want to say there was at least one other package for Mac in the 90s.

Oh and I forgot another important one: Animation Master. AM is in a class all its own, it is very good for character animation but not being a polygonal modeler it is quite a bit different. AM has been available on Amiga, PC, Irix, and Mac OS. For a time the product was sold as Will Vinton's Playmation, I believe that was the version that was available for Win 3.11.

When I say "PC", I mean DOS/Windows.
I totally forgot about Macs! I didn't know they were ever really used for 3D animation.
With regard to the Amiga, I'm going for a Toaster 4000 system and Lightwave.

I know newer - that is, PowerPC - Macs were used for 3D content creation. Apple sold a lot of Power Mac G4 and Power Mac G5 systems with nVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL cards in them, which are often used for exactly that kind of thing. Also, it wasn't all that hard to port Unix 3D apps to Mac OS X, since it's Unix under the hood with OpenGL. You'd just have to replace the portions that use X.

I'm not sure how many of the older, pre-OS-X Macs were used for 3D. I know 3D graphics cards didn't become standard equipment until the G4 series, at any rate.

Ok! I've heard a lot about the later PPC Macs and their various upgrades, which really interest me. Now I'm even more curious with regard to 3D graphics! Maybe I could dual-boot BeOS on it too!

jade_angel wrote:

I know newer - that is, PowerPC - Macs were used for 3D content creation. Apple sold a lot of Power Mac G4 and Power Mac G5 systems with nVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL cards in them, which are often used for exactly that kind of thing. Also, it wasn't all that hard to port Unix 3D apps to Mac OS X, since it's Unix under the hood with OpenGL. You'd just have to replace the portions that use X.

AFAIK, X is supported on the Mac: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQuartz

Jupiter-18 wrote:

@Snorg THANK YOU! I'm definitely going to head on over to that Mashek website and maybe pick something up from there! I had no idea there were still so many NOS systems available!

They are not NOS systems, they are all refurbs.

BloodyCactus wrote:

They are not NOS systems, they are all refurbs.

Oh, thanks for the clarification!