LIGHTWAVE 3D AMIGA SOFTWARE
LIGHTWAVE 3D AMIGA CODE

Juggler demo was awe-inspiring, barely anybody believed raytracing can be done on a home computer.

LIGHTWAVE 3D AMIGA CODE

Juggler demo appeared, spread on floppy disks all around the world, suddenly every aspiring coder was rushing to code his own raytracer, and Then, in 1985 Commodre Amiga came to the market and changed everything.

LIGHTWAVE 3D AMIGA SOFTWARE

It’s an interesting artifact, a true representative of its times, when there was hardly any 3D software that ran on home computers, as this traditionally required the power of mainframes and millions of dollars in hardware to operate. Fortunately, among the hard drive backups, was the Amiga software and source code of the oldest precursor to Blender, that is now, for the first time, available for everyone to download and analyze (link at the bottom of this page). We went to the storage area, but sadly Amiga wasn't there, in its place was a vintage Silicon Graphics workstation. While we talked at Blender Animation Studio, Ton said he still had hisĪmiga 2000 somewhere around. Although different in name, it was already very much in the spirit of its more famous younger brother. There, on the Amiga, 'Traces' was born, a precursor to Blender.

It was so early, that the term 'multimedia' had not been coined yet. That in 1980s was the only affordable multimedia platform in existence. This chat took us all the way back to the If you ever wondered when and where some of the most iconic Blender conventions like 'right-click select' or 3D cursor originated, it’s then, in the Amiga era, even before Blender was born.Īt the end of October 2017, after Blender Conference, I had a pleasure to visitīlender Animation Studio in Amsterdam and talk with Blender's creator Ton Roosendaal about Blender's earliest days. Suzanne is imported from modern version of Blender.īlender is one of the industry leaders, but it started quite small, three decades ago. Writing it was possible thanks to the fact, that, for the first time, the progam and source code of said predecessor are publicly available. The following article is a historical look at the era that spawned first raytracers for home computers, a predecessor to Blender among them. Blender’s prehistory - Traces on Commodore Amiga (1987-1991)

Lightwave 3d amiga