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SGI changed my life
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These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
SGI changed my life // Roundtable
Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 10:55am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Yeah I know this is mentioned in another thread but this is a more positive story (better make a cup of tea)....
In 1990 I started a Degree in 3D Design at the University of Central England in Birmingham. A film released this year had very early CGI in it but that fact completely passed me by. I was studying furniture design and I wanted to make tables and chairs!
Cut to 1991 and my first foray into the ICT suite at the Uni (1991 remember...) and this thing with a small blue screen called a Mac...eurgh! Typed a few pages of a dissertation and shared a joke with the Indian guy who ran the faculty. A large machine in the corner of a the room with a huge (15" or more) screen which was massive compared to the mac, caught my eye and I asked what is was.....
He explained that it was part of an exchange programme with a Hong Kong Uni and that is was worth several (hundred?) thousand pounds. I wanted to know more, he showed me a car that had been rendered (only took a few days) and I was hooked, no idea why. I wanted to learn it but he told me it was too hard and that I needed to learn a coordinate based programme first. This was ESP (External Subroutines using Picasso! I had to plot coordinates in with a tablet and then type lines of code to turn shapes into extrusions etc.
Took me months to get the hang of it but after 12 weeks or so I was allowed onto the SGI machine.
And that was that.
For the next year or so I spent every spare minute learning to use Alias Studio on that machine, got pretty good, charged students for doing their models and bunked out of far too many lectures. Went to see Terminator 2 and wow, they we making these great images with the same software!
I got called into the Deans office and told to leave the SGI machine to the Industrial Design students, but no-one else in Uni was using it!!
I even got threatened with being booted off the course as there was no need for computer graphics in Furniture Design. I think this was where I started rebelling against 'practical' advice.
In 1993 I graduated with a 2:1, a thousand pounds in awards for my work and had two exhibitions; one in Birmingham (CAD-CAM '93) and another in Earls Court. I was praised for bringing CAD to the department (Mmmm, eat humble pie mr Dean) and I well and truly had the bug....
At my final exhibition in Islington, I went to see a new movie about dinosaurs, went four times in one week actually. It was very good and was called Jurassic Park. Dinosaurs looked very real and, while my friends enjoyed the action, I was in awe at how the very same computer I had used had actually made them!
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Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 11:16am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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In 1993 I began working as a teacher but just to get my overdraft paid off (what happened there!!) but I still wanted to do something with CGI. Did I mention that at this point Tron was still one of my favourite films along with the Last Starfighter and The Lawnmower Man. Tron was done on a Cray machine; a company later acquired by SGI.
My final dissertaion had been on the use of Virtual Reality as a design tool (yeah, really got the bug!) and I wanted to get into a similar area.
Teaching slowly became a career and I got into Gaming, purchasing an N64 in 1997 simply to agle at the graphics which were made possible courtesy of a custom SGI graphics chip. I wanted to make these graphics.
I had many job interviews for the game industry which, at the time, still paid over £100k salaries for CG artists. Many were horrible but I distinctly remember two interviews at Rare in Twycross. A huge company which was bought out by a software giant (I forget their name..:rolleyes:) I distinclty remember large SGI servers in their main offices, Onyx machines at Bullfrog, Crimsons at Psygnosis. Everywhere SGI hardware: big and eyecatching.
In the late 90's I got my first PC, a copy of PC format and a free 3D program. Can't remember the name, blueface SE or something. It was good and, at last I was making my own pretty pictures.
Throughout the 90's and into the new millenium I added to my collection of CGI movies constantly marvelling at the CGI work, much of which was done on SGi hardware and this further fuelled my interest in CGI. I am, to this day, hooked on the technology and its potential uses. |
Post by splinters // Apr 2, 2009, 11:20am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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And the final part of this story?
Well, you only have to look at what I have posted on this forum over the years to see where all this took me.
Sure, I am no ILM employee or world class designer but SGI undoubtedly started my love for CGI life and for that, I owe them at least a thanks.
Ironically, never gave any of this a thought until I read that the company had gone bankrupt today. It saddened me at first but the trip down memory lane was great....and I always loved that logo! |
Post by adriani // Apr 2, 2009, 11:53am
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adriani
Total Posts: 89
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...wonderful Story friend! :) I am sad too... But my congratulations for all
your kind of works! |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 2, 2009, 2:43pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Wonderful story Splinters - thanks for sharing.
Makes me fill old(er). I was starting my second career in the early 1990s. :(
Retired twice - now I play. :D |
Post by marcel // Apr 2, 2009, 3:19pm
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marcel
Total Posts: 569
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I work with computers since 1974 and saw many many things to build and then disappear. But I feel that things are going faster now. Who can say that Microsoft or Google will be there in 10 years?
the technology don't interests me since it serves to format ideas into believing that simply press a button to create. Too many people do anything and take themselves for geniuses. |
Post by CdeB // Apr 3, 2009, 2:57am
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CdeB
Total Posts: 160
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§A really interesting story...you forget how far things have developed in such a short time. I believe we still have an SGI workstation in the lab bought for image processing more than 12 years ago, I think. Not used much now, however...
As a school kid I remember having the opportunity to play a computer games on the local (Bradford)University computer which consisted of answering yes or no to questions typed out on a crude dot-matrix printer...
CdeB
PS After, my comment about places I have been in the UK in another of your threads, we were actually in Birmingham at the same time...I was there 1985-1995... |
Post by splinters // Apr 3, 2009, 5:19am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Indeed Cdeb, and if the demise of SGI has brought back a few memories and reminded how far we have come, then something good has come of it.
Who knows, we may have met back in the day and not even realised...;) |
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