@@TheParetoPrinciples the best i have is this link, which youtube might not allow... the last 10 minutes are missing unfortunately... if i can track down a more complete file i'll let you know drive.google.com/file/d/17s-AgfGEapl19UbBHH8564DcmqjDFBhE/view?usp=drive_link
I miss the times when 80's and 90's CGI animations often had bizarre dreamlike worlds with completely surreal stuff going on. Nowadays with CGI being more realistic, it's just that: Realistic. No more bizarre worlds with surreal activity...
I was just thinking that. The limitations of the rendering forced things to look a certain way, and forced artists to focus on certain things, things that could be expressed with simple components. This made creations that have a certain whimsy about them - something we appreciated then as "computer graphics" and something we appreciate now as a "retro look". It's a unique feel of it's own.
well some smaller artists make them a bit again, mainly for vaporwave music videos. check out blank banschee - eco zones for example. its a whole music and artistic movement dedicated to the surreal and consumerist atmosphere of back then.
I certainly don't miss the bizarre stuff you could see on The Lawnmower Man and other movies/shows of that era. Then again, I'm more interested in how far you can push the technology today rather than dwelling in the past.
I have the same opinion you do. I think CGI is way too over polished these days, and I believe most animators rely way too heavily on rendering engines to do most of work on the appearance of the graphics.
Azariachan I respect your opinion, and you're right that people need to keep moving forward with technology, but computer animation needed to start somewhere. If it wasn't for these animations, the graphics we have today would of never of even been a thought. They would not of had an example to draw inspiration from in order to evolve into the high resolution visuals we have now. And just because people are interested in relics of the past, doesn't mean they "dwell" in it. How is it any different from retro gaming enthusiasts who love 8-bit video games and play vintage game consoles such as the NES? Do they live in the past too much? Besides, in order to change the future you FIRST need to know the past. This is just my opinion, feel free to disagree.
I like that the animators knew it was impossible to achieve photo realism at this stage so they went in the opposite direction with just showing off fantastic worlds.
My brother and I had this on VHS and we would always watch it for fun, not really understanding it was supposed to be just a tech demo of early CGI. We called it "the computer movie" and I have been looking for this for so long since losing the VHS. It almost brings tears to my eyes, reminding me of my childhood. I'm so happy this is on youtube for everyone to see.
I remember it used to have some electronic dance songs that comes with it, not knowing it was just using random bits of 3D videos of this. I can’t find the songs anymore
I feel you, dude. I feel the exact same way. I’ve spent hours and hours thinking about it, and cursing out the mere fact it’s hard. Because I solemnly agree with you, i have to write a lot. Try ancient hardware on eBay or abandonware/old versions of 3D software. There’s sites like Vetusware. Don’t ask me if it’s ridden with viruses. They’ve got the very first version of 3D Studio, don’t know when it was made but it was certainly made before Wolfenstein 3D. Unfortunately, something like a pixar computer was very rare and would be worth big bucks. If you want to do it with modern software, get Blender and fudge around with texture and lighting settings. The thing I made that looked oldest? It didnt look all whimsical like this, but it looked like a teenager in 3D graphics class back in the 90s made their major project animation. If you just want to make a whole “80s 3d animation trip”, make multiple clips with different backgrounds. Make ALL textures and models lowpoly, and relatively simple. Make the lighting in a way you find satisfactory. Do NOT look for pre made 3D models, unless it’s something like the newell teapot or “Money for Nothing” characters. And when it’s something like a wooden table or marble floor, whatever, that’s the only time it should look relatively high detail. For EXTRA good results, you should find a way to put it on a VCR and back to computer. That’s probably my most extensive of knowledge, sorry if it is genuinely pathetic
80's/early 90's CG is the rubberhose of 3d animation. Simple, sometimes bouncy objects and characters and often simple backgrounds, it's an aesthetic that will never fade
Most definitely not 90s. Toy story was released in 1995, these renders are from a decade earlier. Stephen Spielberg shoe amazing discoveries had 3d animated opening and that from 86-87
I've been thinking recently about how to create the vintage CG look with modern tools. This is my list: No high-poly models other than spheres. Use primitives as much as possible. The scene should appear mathematically-derived. Use the most basic Phong shader you have. Minimal texture mapping. No bump mapping, specular or displacement mapping. Minimal number of light sources. If using shadows, only one light should cast them. Use your most basic lighting model - no radiosity or ambient occlusion. Minimal reflective surfaces. Cubic reflection maps only (no raytracing). Use a simple gradient for backgrounds. No bone deformation. Lots of linear motion, especially on the camera. Add a post video effect that simulates the look of analog tape. Add classical music, or 80's synths (especially the Fairlight).
I must disagree with you on a few of those. That's a good way to get an "early 2000's video game" look but won't get you 80's CGI. There's surprisingly few visible polygons here. Lighting and shading don't look especially primitive either, though shadows etc are usually "off". I think most of these are actually raytraced! Remember that raytracing mostly came first; modern shading and lighting effects are fast statistical approximations of things which "happen naturally" when raytraced. Why did they use such a hellishly slow graphics method on such hellishly slow computers? Raytracing had the advantage of not being **memory** intensive. Even the biggest supercomputer only had a Raytracing can calculate intersections on raw shapes themselves, be they spheres, curves, or blobby NURBS abominations, without dividing them into polygons first. You can fit a lot more curves in memory than polygon meshes. So you see a lot of curves and primitives in old CGI. You also find procedural textures, maybe even entire procedural **objects** defined mathematically, sub-scenes glimpsed through monitors and windows, etc. What you don't get are anything that requires the computer to store large graphical textures or large object meshes in memory (except that "los angeles" thing, whose entire claim to fame was "WOW! Our computer was big enough for a BUMP MAP!") So my advice is: * Build things out of curves and primitives. * Depend on procedural textures. * No image maps, bump maps, particle effects, or anything else with thousands of individually stored coordinates. * Procedural maps, on the other hand, are perfectly fine. * Use the fancy features (shadows, refraction, reflection, complex lighting) for ONE central object which shows them off blatantly, or don't use them at all. If you want an old-fashioned raytracer, there's always POV-ray.
Born in 1984 and as a 3D animator I am blown away by what was being produced when I was a kid. It's actually kinda funny, but many animators these days are trying to take it back to Bryce 3D feel, and creating look-alike 80's - 90's 3d renders is quite challenging. 80's and 90's 3d has a certain aesthetic to it that isn't easily replicated. Retrospectively, I feel so fortunate to have experienced that magical era of fashion, lingo, music, moustaches, Sega, tv and sport. What a ride!
@@wilhufftarkin8543 I’m pretty sure it was a joke about the inflation rate just like how for us a gigabyte is like nothing but back like 20 years ago it was so much
Same, maybe from seeing old VHS movies and documentaries and movies in school, on TV, and at home from this Era of animation. I remember having teachers that used to constantly play science documentaries from the school libraries from the 80's or 90's and having to watch them on the old box tvs.
I was born in 2006. and I can say the same, though it's probably because here in croatia a lot of kids' shows in the early 2000's had pretty shitty 3d cgi still.
2003, and yeah same. It's very distant and liminal, and I can hardly make out the surreal images, but I remember before stuff was where it is today. Like distant memories of teletubbies and superman versus brainiac and walls and environments of cracks crags and cliffs of a monotone material I would see 8n dreams. This is a very strange feeling and I want to express some of this through art some day
2002 had awesome 3d animations You were literally born a year after a CGI masterpiece came out in 2001: Final Fantasy the Spirits Within This predates you, the "nostalgia" you feel isnt personal because you have no memory of this era...its a more general nostalgia the way one might feel "nostalgia" watching a movie from the 1940s even though we werent alive back then
I have been searching for these for some time now...I was fascinated by the 4 videos and bought them... my granddaughter, born in 1998, would view these.... she didn't know how to talk at the time... and I thought it was a great way to stimulate the mind of a baby...it had worked for my nephew who was just a bit older than her... well...once she was four and had watched them for some time... she just walked straight out of my house with them under her arm...I didn't recall the title...hence the trouble recalling them...there are new grandkids now... and I feel like they can appreciate them in the same manner... Wow...I found them!!!!
This brings back so many amazing memories! My dad was an art teacher and he bought this exact tape and others like Beyond the Minds Eye and Claymation festivals home for me on VHS...I’m so grateful to him for exposing me to dope stuff at such a young age. Love you dad, always thinking of you❤️
I've been looking for this for years, it played on my local public TV station when I was three, and I loved the penguin animation at 59:25 so much that my mom taped it for me. But that got lost at least 20 years ago. All I could remember was that it was 3D, pastel colored, had piano in the background, and was shown sometime in the 90s. Thank you so much for letting me see this clip again
Dude!!!!! I've been looking for this video EVERYWHERE, for years!!! i looked at all kinds of anthologies and while they had some familiar content, it was never quite right. oh man you have made my day!! thank you so much!!!! i haven't seen this in 20 years holy shit
Holy crap! I remember seeing that first animation with the bird and the fish at a Circuit City back in 1989. I was born in 1982 so I was only 7 years old. I remember simply liking the fact that it was being displayed on a large TV but I was also aware how this wasn't a regular cartoon. Thanks for the nostalgia.🤯😁👍
The nostalgia does cross over to a degree. What do you think of Max headroom? It was both extremely dated but I remember watching it in 1997, 10 years after it came out thinking that it was the most realistic futurism I had ever seen. Such as a live action anime.
SONG TITLES: 0:33 - “Caricature” by Craig Palmer (Track 4 from the album “Science & Technology (Medium Tempo)” by Network Music, or “Science & Technology - EP” by Network Music Ensemble as listed on iTunes) 26:04 - “Synapse” by Spencer Nilsen 44:15 - “Saigon” by Michael Krewitsky (Tracks 1 and 5 respectively from the album “Urban Lifestyles (Medium Tempo)” by Network Music, or “Lifestyles - EP” by Network Music Ensemble as listed on iTunes) FULL TRACKLIST (w/ composer): 01. Synapse - Spencer Nilsen 02. Inner City - Brian Bliss 03. High Risk - Spencer Nilsen 04. Linus - Michael Leroy Peed 05. Saigon - Michael Krewitsky 06. Club Rio - Craig Palmer
I'm amazed you were able to track them down! To add to it: the original end credits song was Ever the Optimist by Patrick O'Hearn... sadly not copied in this video. It's also sad that there don't seem to be digital tracks for some of these!
Edmund Earle Hi! I own a copy of this on VHS, and long ago, I used the Shazam app on my phone to identify the songs. The album they’re on is pretty good! Unfortunately I can’t seem to identify the two, three other network pieces used in the compilation.
@@gaogaen464 So Synapse is the correct song name, from an album called "Urban Lifestyles (Medium Tempo)", but I can't find any composer credits. I'm curious where the Spencer Nilsen attribution comes from, would be very interesting if true
vr0p The composers for all the songs are listed on the Killer Tracks (name might have changed) website. Spencer Nilsen was credited as “S Nilsen”, Brian Bliss was credited as “B Bliss” and so on.
My workmates and I used to watch these series to get ideas on how we could create animated graphics via ms-dos applications that were in use in late 80's to 90's. Crystal Topas by Crystal Graphics Inc. was the togo software back then. It doesn't have a lot of eye-popping features in its animation capabilities but that depends from user to user. Sometimes, you can achieve things you never knew the software was created originally for and it was such a satisfying experience for a lot of us.
As someone that does VFX for a living, I can appreciate the amount of work that these people put into their creations. What took them months to create can now take us an hour or two. The fact that most of them didn't even have shadows rendered because it was too computationally expensive. Some thing we take for granted now
the robogirl is just unbelievable. they somewhat managed to capture the real model and transfer it to a PC and even more something resembling motion capture is used to animate her.
I own this on VHS, but the tape is wearing out cuz I've watched it so much. You've done a great service by putting it up here. It's a shame you didn't get the end credits, though. The song that played during them was one of my favorites...
good news- I found the end credits music- it was playing on Sirius XM spa channel- what are the chances? Patrick O'Hearn: "Forever The Optimist" th-cam.com/video/4jMT5IcKXUs/w-d-xo.html
I remember all these very well.... I was mostly using VideoScape on the Amiga at the time. From Jan 1987 to Oct 1989 when I moved to LightWave/Toaster. These were and still are very good. Remember kiddies , the tools back then were incredibly archaic and if you had 6 Megs of ram you were really cooking.... The good ol' days....
Oh I love the weird feeling I get from seeing these, a sort of fever dream-type of anxiety mixed with nostalgia lol. Something about the old, bulky and surreal animations just hits right in the feels and makes me miss my childhood
The 80s had a sense of extreme futurism that the actual future just can't deliver so far. 🛸♾️👽 It's as if we are repeating history before the 80s. This is so very cool and spacey at the same time.🌌 I loved this! I remember seeing in the mid 2000s early pixar animations on my "The Incredibles" DVD. So fun... This is better than that! I was born in 1996 by the way, but as an adult of the future... its like I'm trade winds between this cool age in 1988 and a dystopia that is since 2017... 😞 Anyways, beautiful epic video! 😮
Amazing, I remember when I was a kid and fascinated immensely by early 3d animation. It may not look as realistic in today's standards, but I find a certain charm to it.
The reason 3d animation moved toward realism, is that if you can produce a realistic model, you can produce anything. Rendering in the 1990's with Ray Tracing could produce pictures that looked real, but they were "perfect". A watch couldn't be that shiny for example.
Can you imagine showing one of these animators what computers can do in real time now? Admittedly it took a lot longer to get there than I would have thought, but we got there.
Wym. If these animators were using these tools in 1988 they probally are the developers of modern day animation tools or work at Profesional animation studios. Never understood these comments lmao
These are raster graphics which were not that slow to do even back in those days if you had the right gear. These were probably done with silicon graphics supercomputers meant for computer graphics, which cost a quarter of a million dollars back then. The power was probably equal to a high end computer made in 2015. The tech was there, it was just expensive.
I remember this and this I think I had it on laser disc or video disc. This was back when I had my Amiga computer. Loved that thing it was way ahead of its time especially if you had the Newtek Video Toaster board.
I had this program on laserdisc with digital surround sound. This was a few years before the advent of the CD, and the laserdisc was the first home video medium to offer digital sound. I had an audio engineering background, and I created a 14-channel A/V system, and the sound of this disc was amazing.
I love it when the VCR skipped at 1:11, that really brought me back to the 80s. As a kid I used to watch any computer animation I could find and I recognize almost all of these, thank you for this!
I was born in '85 and grew up watching The Mind's Eye and Beyond the Mind's Eye. It's fun to consider our technological leap since then, the way we've adapted to create and interpret mediums since then, and how we still clearly don't understand anything about anything.
THIS was the tape I had! Watched it a lot as a kid, couldn't find the name of it again and knew it wasn't Minds Eye or the other compilations. thanks for the upload
1988? It's the year I was born. Despite the technical limitations of the time, I am impressed with the level of diversity and creativity in the animations, even with their limitations. For the period, I consider it very advanced and ahead of its time.
Yeah imagine back then the entry level home pc was an XT or 80286 with 640x480 resolution at best... damn. 80386 anf 80486 are the highend expensive stuff.
This is so cool!! Being an animation enthusiast I'm absolutely fascinated with these things. I love seeing how 3D animation has evolved since then. Also, we need more modern animations with surreal and dreamlike worlds.
"Breaking the Ice" is a pretty good example of an early CGI film. It had a good story and brilliant visuals. Even though the bird could've drowned after the ending but I guess that makes it even more romantic.
I think part of the point is that it takes advantage of the limitations of the medium to fool the viewer. We assume the transparent sheet is the surface of the water, frozen or not, but the animation betrays our expectations and reveals it's just a sheet of ice, and the two species live in the same medium. It's neat
@@nightseekerklemont7225 i can see why you think that.... i could be wrong. i guess its just counter intuitive for me that the birds seem to be able to swim like fish underwater. also the fact that there is no water surface to be seen after the breaking of the ice
I remember the BBC showing this back in the late '80s and I was completely mesmerised by it. It was all new, novel and not to mention strange at the time where I wanted more after seeing what was done in the original Tron movie. Nowadays we just take it for granted, especially now that it is much more life-like. Heck, even today's console and PC games now look far more superior in terms of CGI and yet all done in real time without any rendering.
Wow. I was in high school when this documentary aired. My physics teacher played it in class. I loved it so much, my teacher made a copy of it for me. I was already into computers at that time and couldn't wait to be able to re-create the glass spheres demo. It took a few years. Thank-you for sharing this on TH-cam.
I have an autistic brother that still watches these exact animations today. There are a lot here that I have seen in my childhood. My brother got so attach to these animations we saw that he converted most on vhs to live out that same nostalgia when we were kids. He also recognizes some of the works from Thomas Dolby and the gate to the minds eye stuff. It's a bit interesting that youtube recommended me this out of nowhere.
I don't know where I got it or why I had it but I had this on VHS and watched the living crap out of it in high school. I've been learning Blender the last year and it has made me super nostalgic for this video, and it just popped into my feed today. Thank you so much for whoever uploaded this!!!
It's funny how as technology advances, things tend to be less imaginative, less inspired, same happens with illustration, As an illustrator myself I see what I do and my contemporaries do. Right now you've got limitless resources to create and yet, it's rare to see something charming and inspired coming off artists. I'm not saying everything is shit, maybe it has to do with the inhumane deadlines we are under. I still believe that limited resources makes your mind take effort in what you create... I dunno. Or maybe it's just nostalgia with boomer goggles combined.
I don't think it's nostalgia. At least not entirely. I was born in '01 and this has that "nostalgic" feeling that most art and media from I'd say between the late 60s to about 1997 has. It's fun, calm, warm, innocent seeming, not overwhelming when it's exciting. I think people got all depressed for some dumb reason lately and it's ruining their work. I dunno.
Don't sell yourself so short, that's a beautiful and tragic reflection on the state of things. These works are born purely of their own vision, where today creators feel pressured to fit into neat little boxes, lest they be ostracized and blackballed by their peers. I feel this even when looking at today's "weird" creators; the desire to be relevant and appealing instead of timeless and challenging. Kubrick was hated for his landmark films on release, called a pervert, sadist, psycho, but only in retrospect did we all come to realize how brilliant he was. As long as we keep to our neat little boxes, we will never have another Kubrick. _"But that's just what people want, now. People wonder why jazz is dying."_
I think everyone back then was just excited to be able to animate stuff that would have been impossible using claymation and practical effects. They were like 'look what crazy shit we can do now'. 3d animation has now been toned down and turned into a commercial product, but when I started I just wanted to do crazy shit like set up hundreds of rotating glass prisms and orbs and shine light through them to make wacky effects. Props to these early pioneers for working all this stuff out, the refined software packages we have today are built off the hard work of these dudes.
I had a Mind's Eye VHS with many of these animations when I was a kid. My dad worked at a video rental store and got it as a demo. The first 20mins of this is very nostalgic for me. Thanks for the upload preserving this treasure!
I had this on VHS and even brought it into high school, once when the teacher had nothing planned (probably partied the night before) the class watched it
I remember when I was younger thinking that any CGI, no matter how basic, was really cool. Because back then it was a rarity. When the PlayStation 1 came out, having CGI videos within games was always so cool because not only was it new, but it felt like a multi generational leap in graphics. Consider for example being used to playing a 2D game like Final Fantasy 6 to then seeing the opening CGI intro to Final Fantasy 7. It wasnt just a slight upgrade in graphics, it was a monumental leap. And it was inspirational, imagining what could be possible with the future of gaming.
Crazy how many objects were using techniques like gourad shading and tessilatiing at that time. I remember rendering a 5 second animation late 98/early 99 and it took the better part of the entire day to fully render.
Update: sydtech has a more complete upload of this, including the end credits which are def worth watching: th-cam.com/video/MWu0vc280WY/w-d-xo.html&
Can you upload the video on the google disk? It's not possible to see it since some phony SME blocks the stuff with its small selfish author rights
@@TheParetoPrinciples the best i have is this link, which youtube might not allow... the last 10 minutes are missing unfortunately... if i can track down a more complete file i'll let you know
drive.google.com/file/d/17s-AgfGEapl19UbBHH8564DcmqjDFBhE/view?usp=drive_link
@@estefez Thank you!
I miss the times when 80's and 90's CGI animations often had bizarre dreamlike worlds with completely surreal stuff going on. Nowadays with CGI being more realistic, it's just that: Realistic. No more bizarre worlds with surreal activity...
I was just thinking that. The limitations of the rendering forced things to look a certain way, and forced artists to focus on certain things, things that could be expressed with simple components. This made creations that have a certain whimsy about them - something we appreciated then as "computer graphics" and something we appreciate now as a "retro look". It's a unique feel of it's own.
well some smaller artists make them a bit again, mainly for vaporwave music videos. check out blank banschee - eco zones for example. its a whole music and artistic movement dedicated to the surreal and consumerist atmosphere of back then.
I certainly don't miss the bizarre stuff you could see on The Lawnmower Man and other movies/shows of that era. Then again, I'm more interested in how far you can push the technology today rather than dwelling in the past.
I have the same opinion you do. I think CGI is way too over polished these days, and I believe most animators rely way too heavily on rendering engines to do most of work on the appearance of the graphics.
Azariachan I respect your opinion, and you're right that people need to keep moving forward with technology, but computer animation needed to start somewhere. If it wasn't for these animations, the graphics we have today would of never of even been a thought. They would not of had an example to draw inspiration from in order to evolve into the high resolution visuals we have now. And just because people are interested in relics of the past, doesn't mean they "dwell" in it. How is it any different from retro gaming enthusiasts who love 8-bit video games and play vintage game consoles such as the NES? Do they live in the past too much? Besides, in order to change the future you FIRST need to know the past. This is just my opinion, feel free to disagree.
I like that the animators knew it was impossible to achieve photo realism at this stage so they went in the opposite direction with just showing off fantastic worlds.
My brother and I had this on VHS and we would always watch it for fun, not really understanding it was supposed to be just a tech demo of early CGI. We called it "the computer movie" and I have been looking for this for so long since losing the VHS. It almost brings tears to my eyes, reminding me of my childhood. I'm so happy this is on youtube for everyone to see.
I used to call this the computer movie too! My mom used to get these types of videos from the library and I think about them all the time
I love these computer animation vhs tapes. I still have mine in fact.
Same here. This brings back so many memories… I even remembered the weird lyrics of “fabricated rhythm” lol.
I remember it used to have some electronic dance songs that comes with it, not knowing it was just using random bits of 3D videos of this. I can’t find the songs anymore
same... the opening scene of the fish and bird just did something to me
I wish I knew how to create these weird cheap animation looking dreamy worlds like this stuff is amazing
Unity is a good place to start! It's free and pretty easy to make primitive scenes with!
Edmund Earle thanks
Rose Child Blender too.
Do blender, turn off shadows, and do the default blender render
I feel you, dude. I feel the exact same way. I’ve spent hours and hours thinking about it, and cursing out the mere fact it’s hard. Because I solemnly agree with you, i have to write a lot.
Try ancient hardware on eBay or abandonware/old versions of 3D software. There’s sites like Vetusware. Don’t ask me if it’s ridden with viruses. They’ve got the very first version of 3D Studio, don’t know when it was made but it was certainly made before Wolfenstein 3D. Unfortunately, something like a pixar computer was very rare and would be worth big bucks.
If you want to do it with modern software, get Blender and fudge around with texture and lighting settings. The thing I made that looked oldest? It didnt look all whimsical like this, but it looked like a teenager in 3D graphics class back in the 90s made their major project animation.
If you just want to make a whole “80s 3d animation trip”, make multiple clips with different backgrounds. Make ALL textures and models lowpoly, and relatively simple. Make the lighting in a way you find satisfactory. Do NOT look for pre made 3D models, unless it’s something like the newell teapot or “Money for Nothing” characters. And when it’s something like a wooden table or marble floor, whatever, that’s the only time it should look relatively high detail. For EXTRA good results, you should find a way to put it on a VCR and back to computer. That’s probably my most extensive of knowledge, sorry if it is genuinely pathetic
I love these old animations they’re so
ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ．
@DaWhiteCat assthetic is dead.
You two were the ones that killed it
The word you mean is Stylistic.
Don't ruin it
@@llamafrhd fr!
80's/early 90's CG is the rubberhose of 3d animation. Simple, sometimes bouncy objects and characters and often simple backgrounds, it's an aesthetic that will never fade
Agreed.
I never thought of it that way but you’re totally right
try watching the first shrek movie. the shitty aesthetic extends well into the early 2000's, but by then it REALLY stands out as just terrible.
This is all 90s
Most definitely not 90s. Toy story was released in 1995, these renders are from a decade earlier.
Stephen Spielberg shoe amazing discoveries had 3d animated opening and that from 86-87
I've been thinking recently about how to create the vintage CG look with modern tools. This is my list:
No high-poly models other than spheres. Use primitives as much as possible. The scene should appear mathematically-derived.
Use the most basic Phong shader you have.
Minimal texture mapping.
No bump mapping, specular or displacement mapping.
Minimal number of light sources.
If using shadows, only one light should cast them.
Use your most basic lighting model - no radiosity or ambient occlusion.
Minimal reflective surfaces.
Cubic reflection maps only (no raytracing).
Use a simple gradient for backgrounds.
No bone deformation.
Lots of linear motion, especially on the camera.
Add a post video effect that simulates the look of analog tape.
Add classical music, or 80's synths (especially the Fairlight).
Yes to having no Ambient Occlusion! I'd also say Phong Specular Shading will do wonders...
I must disagree with you on a few of those. That's a good way to get an "early 2000's video game" look but won't get you 80's CGI.
There's surprisingly few visible polygons here. Lighting and shading don't look especially primitive either, though shadows etc are usually "off". I think most of these are actually raytraced! Remember that raytracing mostly came first; modern shading and lighting effects are fast statistical approximations of things which "happen naturally" when raytraced.
Why did they use such a hellishly slow graphics method on such hellishly slow computers? Raytracing had the advantage of not being **memory** intensive. Even the biggest supercomputer only had a Raytracing can calculate intersections on raw shapes themselves, be they spheres, curves, or blobby NURBS abominations, without dividing them into polygons first. You can fit a lot more curves in memory than polygon meshes.
So you see a lot of curves and primitives in old CGI. You also find procedural textures, maybe even entire procedural **objects** defined mathematically, sub-scenes glimpsed through monitors and windows, etc. What you don't get are anything that requires the computer to store large graphical textures or large object meshes in memory (except that "los angeles" thing, whose entire claim to fame was "WOW! Our computer was big enough for a BUMP MAP!")
So my advice is:
* Build things out of curves and primitives.
* Depend on procedural textures.
* No image maps, bump maps, particle effects, or anything else with thousands of individually stored coordinates.
* Procedural maps, on the other hand, are perfectly fine.
* Use the fancy features (shadows, refraction, reflection, complex lighting) for ONE central object which shows them off blatantly, or don't use them at all.
If you want an old-fashioned raytracer, there's always POV-ray.
@@tsm688 neat, ty i saved this for reference
ISn't this vaporwave?
tsm688 thx :). I’ve been always fascinated by the 80’s/90’s aesthetic.
Born in 1984 and as a 3D animator I am blown away by what was being produced when I was a kid. It's actually kinda funny, but many animators these days are trying to take it back to Bryce 3D feel, and creating look-alike 80's - 90's 3d renders is quite challenging. 80's and 90's 3d has a certain aesthetic to it that isn't easily replicated. Retrospectively, I feel so fortunate to have experienced that magical era of fashion, lingo, music, moustaches, Sega, tv and sport. What a ride!
84 here, yea good times! why is it tough to make this currently? it for sure has that liminal feel.
Had to mention the sega 😎🤙
I haven't seen this in over 27 years, when I had it in tape. thank you so much
u old bruh
Catherine Sayles get a life bruh
+K DeT *it was a joke bruh*
Bruh
Ok Boomer.
42:40
"that represents more than 2.6 billion bytes of data"
That's 2.8 Gigabytes...
every 60 seconds, a minute passes...
lol thats how kids in year 2050 wil talk about trillions of dollars "Thats just 1 Trump unit of currency"
@@AckzaTV what the fuck are
you talking about?
@@12GaugeEngage Orange man bad
@@wilhufftarkin8543 I’m pretty sure it was a joke about the inflation rate just like how for us a gigabyte is like nothing but back like 20 years ago it was so much
I love that the editor decided chose the shot of the default cone, cube, and sphere 3D primitives right after the line "Images that look beyond real."
I was born in 2002, and yet these bizarre dreamlike animations are somewhat nostalgic to me.
Same, maybe from seeing old VHS movies and documentaries and movies in school, on TV, and at home from this Era of animation. I remember having teachers that used to constantly play science documentaries from the school libraries from the 80's or 90's and having to watch them on the old box tvs.
I was born in 2006. and I can say the same, though it's probably because here in croatia a lot of kids' shows in the early 2000's had pretty shitty 3d cgi still.
2003, and yeah same. It's very distant and liminal, and I can hardly make out the surreal images, but I remember before stuff was where it is today. Like distant memories of teletubbies and superman versus brainiac and walls and environments of cracks crags and cliffs of a monotone material I would see 8n dreams. This is a very strange feeling and I want to express some of this through art some day
@@GnatWasJulian born 2000 and somehow anyone born past 2005 seems like a kid until I do the math.
2002 had awesome 3d animations
You were literally born a year after a CGI masterpiece came out in 2001:
Final Fantasy the Spirits Within
This predates you, the "nostalgia" you feel isnt personal because you have no memory of this era...its a more general nostalgia the way one might feel "nostalgia" watching a movie from the 1940s even though we werent alive back then
I have been searching for these for some time now...I was fascinated by the 4 videos and bought them... my granddaughter, born in 1998, would view these.... she didn't know how to talk at the time... and I thought it was a great way to stimulate the mind of a baby...it had worked for my nephew who was just a bit older than her... well...once she was four and had watched them for some time... she just walked straight out of my house with them under her arm...I didn't recall the title...hence the trouble recalling them...there are new grandkids now... and I feel like they can appreciate them in the same manner... Wow...I found them!!!!
This brings back so many amazing memories! My dad was an art teacher and he bought this exact tape and others like Beyond the Minds Eye and Claymation festivals home for me on VHS...I’m so grateful to him for exposing me to dope stuff at such a young age. Love you dad, always thinking of you❤️
That's awesome. It's those too few people in life that sure make an impact
144 likes. 144hz a
My music teacher made me a VHS rip of The Minds Eye in 92 i may still have it in a box somewhere. Early CGI was wild stuff.
There’s an aesthetic charm to CGI animations from the ‘80s that simply can’t be replicated today.
I think, if you would make something inspiring or touching on audiance's deep dreams, it should definility goes "unreal"
can't isn't the same as Isn't
This is 90s
@@selfishbeatsGrammar not see what are you talking about? They're statements got across
@@supme7558 it can be replicated, it just isn't replicated
The sheer ingenuity and creativity of these people is simply delightful.
In 1988, people were talking about how this shit looked ahead of it's time
In 2021, we're talking about how crazy this is for 1988.
dude this really is crazy. You hit the nail on the head.
Fun fact. Computers were so slow that rendering of this prestation started back in 1983 and finished after 5 years.
@@chat-lan-in Oh wow!
I can't believe it! I LOVED this when I was a kid!! Thank you for reuniting me with a piece of my childhood!
This is the era when the computer animation/CGI industry was in its prime. Gives me goosebumps lol
I've been looking for this for years, it played on my local public TV station when I was three, and I loved the penguin animation at 59:25 so much that my mom taped it for me. But that got lost at least 20 years ago. All I could remember was that it was 3D, pastel colored, had piano in the background, and was shown sometime in the 90s. Thank you so much for letting me see this clip again
Mind's Eye
Dude!!!!! I've been looking for this video EVERYWHERE, for years!!! i looked at all kinds of anthologies and while they had some familiar content, it was never quite right. oh man you have made my day!! thank you so much!!!! i haven't seen this in 20 years holy shit
Same. I watched this in the very early 90's on VHS tape repeatedly. I was hooked. It blew me away.
I had this one VHS as a kid and I loved it! I just re bought it on Ebay for $10!
Holy crap! I remember seeing that first animation with the bird and the fish at a Circuit City back in 1989. I was born in 1982 so I was only 7 years old. I remember simply liking the fact that it was being displayed on a large TV but I was also aware how this wasn't a regular cartoon.
Thanks for the nostalgia.🤯😁👍
These old CGI videos are always like a fever dream
I love it
Damn 80s cgi kinda gives me the creeps, and nostalgia at the same time. Even though I was born in 2005, I remember watching one back in the day.
The nostalgia does cross over to a degree. What do you think of Max headroom? It was both extremely dated but I remember watching it in 1997, 10 years after it came out thinking that it was the most realistic futurism I had ever seen. Such as a live action anime.
It might be the music giving it a creepy surreal vibe.
You probably talkin about Dire Straits money for nothing music video
Wut
SONG TITLES:
0:33 - “Caricature” by Craig Palmer
(Track 4 from the album “Science & Technology (Medium Tempo)” by Network Music, or “Science & Technology - EP” by Network Music Ensemble as listed on iTunes)
26:04 - “Synapse” by Spencer Nilsen
44:15 - “Saigon” by Michael Krewitsky
(Tracks 1 and 5 respectively from the album “Urban Lifestyles (Medium Tempo)” by Network Music, or “Lifestyles - EP” by Network Music Ensemble as listed on iTunes)
FULL TRACKLIST (w/ composer):
01. Synapse - Spencer Nilsen
02. Inner City - Brian Bliss
03. High Risk - Spencer Nilsen
04. Linus - Michael Leroy Peed
05. Saigon - Michael Krewitsky
06. Club Rio - Craig Palmer
I'm amazed you were able to track them down! To add to it: the original end credits song was Ever the Optimist by Patrick O'Hearn... sadly not copied in this video. It's also sad that there don't seem to be digital tracks for some of these!
Edmund Earle Hi! I own a copy of this on VHS, and long ago, I used the Shazam app on my phone to identify the songs. The album they’re on is pretty good! Unfortunately I can’t seem to identify the two, three other network pieces used in the compilation.
@@gaogaen464 So Synapse is the correct song name, from an album called "Urban Lifestyles (Medium Tempo)", but I can't find any composer credits. I'm curious where the Spencer Nilsen attribution comes from, would be very interesting if true
vr0p The composers for all the songs are listed on the Killer Tracks (name might have changed) website. Spencer Nilsen was credited as “S Nilsen”, Brian Bliss was credited as “B Bliss” and so on.
@@gaogaen464 nice, thanks. I also found Nilsen and prodded his brain, and he confirms!
My workmates and I used to watch these series to get ideas on how we could create animated graphics via ms-dos applications that were in use in late 80's to 90's. Crystal Topas by Crystal Graphics Inc. was the togo software back then. It doesn't have a lot of eye-popping features in its animation capabilities but that depends from user to user. Sometimes, you can achieve things you never knew the software was created originally for and it was such a satisfying experience for a lot of us.
As someone that does VFX for a living, I can appreciate the amount of work that these people put into their creations. What took them months to create can now take us an hour or two. The fact that most of them didn't even have shadows rendered because it was too computationally expensive. Some thing we take for granted now
Some of the camera moves/compositing techniques are super advanced, regardless of the technology used
the robogirl is just unbelievable. they somewhat managed to capture the real model and transfer it to a PC and even more something resembling motion capture is used to animate her.
Fair Play, starting around 34minutes.. is just awesome. Design, style, everything.
I own this on VHS, but the tape is wearing out cuz I've watched it so much. You've done a great service by putting it up here.
It's a shame you didn't get the end credits, though. The song that played during them was one of my favorites...
good news- I found the end credits music- it was playing on Sirius XM spa channel- what are the chances? Patrick O'Hearn: "Forever The Optimist" th-cam.com/video/4jMT5IcKXUs/w-d-xo.html
The end credits song is called Forever the Optimist, and it’s by Patrick O’Hearn.
@@estefezSIRIUSOPOLIS SIRIUSXM was thinking about it. Estevez? A...
There were these tapes called The Minds Eye. Loved them.
I remember all these very well.... I was mostly using VideoScape on the Amiga at the time. From Jan 1987 to Oct 1989 when I moved to LightWave/Toaster. These were and still are very good. Remember kiddies , the tools back then were incredibly archaic and if you had 6 Megs of ram you were really cooking....
The good ol' days....
With as long as my modern graphics card takes to render simple animations, I can't imagine how long these took to render back in the 80's.
Early CG is always fascinating to me. It always has this quality to it that I can't describe.
Oh I love the weird feeling I get from seeing these, a sort of fever dream-type of anxiety mixed with nostalgia lol. Something about the old, bulky and surreal animations just hits right in the feels and makes me miss my childhood
The 80s had a sense of extreme futurism that the actual future just can't deliver so far. 🛸♾️👽
It's as if we are repeating history before the 80s.
This is so very cool and spacey at the same time.🌌 I loved this!
I remember seeing in the mid 2000s early pixar animations on my "The Incredibles" DVD. So fun... This is better than that! I was born in 1996 by the way, but as an adult of the future... its like I'm trade winds between this cool age in 1988 and a dystopia that is since 2017... 😞
Anyways, beautiful epic video! 😮
there is something that i can't explain to express the vibe on 80s-90s cgi
Amazing, I remember when I was a kid and fascinated immensely by early 3d animation. It may not look as realistic in today's standards, but I find a certain charm to it.
The reason 3d animation moved toward realism, is that if you can produce a realistic model, you can produce anything.
Rendering in the 1990's with Ray Tracing could produce pictures that looked real, but they were "perfect". A watch couldn't be that shiny for example.
I watched all these straight before work.
For some reason i love this CGI, i feel like the ambients, characters, effects or models somehow unique
Can you imagine showing one of these animators what computers can do in real time now? Admittedly it took a lot longer to get there than I would have thought, but we got there.
It’s only 5 years later Jurassic park came out and that took a few years to make!
Wym. If these animators were using these tools in 1988 they probally are the developers of modern day animation tools or work at Profesional animation studios. Never understood these comments lmao
@@moon47underground He meant if you time travel and show them today's technology in that time... No one knew what 2023 computers would be capable of
These are raster graphics which were not that slow to do even back in those days if you had the right gear.
These were probably done with silicon graphics supercomputers meant for computer graphics, which cost a quarter of a million dollars back then.
The power was probably equal to a high end computer made in 2015.
The tech was there, it was just expensive.
They are the people whi developed the latest graphics so maybe they are just proud of what tbey have achieved from the past.
To be able to do some of this stuff in the 80s is just insane to me. These artists were running in the dark and blazing a trail for the world.
Everything looks smooth and glittery
44:47 I love this segment. It's also got a nice beat to it.
Sounds like i use to know
I remember this and this I think I had it on laser disc or video disc. This was back when I had my Amiga computer. Loved that thing it was way ahead of its time especially if you had the Newtek Video Toaster board.
the people that actually worked in this field of study have already left our image world for an ever beyond realmless infinity
I had this program on laserdisc with digital surround sound. This was a few years before the advent of the CD, and the laserdisc was the first home video medium to offer digital sound. I had an audio engineering background, and I created a 14-channel A/V system, and the sound of this disc was amazing.
I love it when the VCR skipped at 1:11, that really brought me back to the 80s. As a kid I used to watch any computer animation I could find and I recognize almost all of these, thank you for this!
I was born in '85 and grew up watching The Mind's Eye and Beyond the Mind's Eye. It's fun to consider our technological leap since then, the way we've adapted to create and interpret mediums since then, and how we still clearly don't understand anything about anything.
THIS was the tape I had! Watched it a lot as a kid, couldn't find the name of it again and knew it wasn't Minds Eye or the other compilations. thanks for the upload
1988? It's the year I was born. Despite the technical limitations of the time, I am impressed with the level of diversity and creativity in the animations, even with their limitations.
For the period, I consider it very advanced and ahead of its time.
Dam u old lul
Yeah imagine back then the entry level home pc was an XT or 80286 with 640x480 resolution at best... damn. 80386 anf 80486 are the highend expensive stuff.
This is so cool!! Being an animation enthusiast I'm absolutely fascinated with these things. I love seeing how 3D animation has evolved since then. Also, we need more modern animations with surreal and dreamlike worlds.
"Breaking the Ice" is a pretty good example of an early CGI film. It had a good story and brilliant visuals. Even though the bird could've drowned after the ending but I guess that makes it even more romantic.
I think part of the point is that it takes advantage of the limitations of the medium to fool the viewer.
We assume the transparent sheet is the surface of the water, frozen or not, but the animation betrays our expectations and reveals it's just a sheet of ice, and the two species live in the same medium. It's neat
@@donsancho6690 are you sure about this? it looked like the bird was floating in water not floating in air.
@@nightseekerklemont7225 i can see why you think that.... i could be wrong. i guess its just counter intuitive for me that the birds seem to be able to swim like fish underwater. also the fact that there is no water surface to be seen after the breaking of the ice
I remember the BBC showing this back in the late '80s and I was completely mesmerised by it. It was all new, novel and not to mention strange at the time where I wanted more after seeing what was done in the original Tron movie. Nowadays we just take it for granted, especially now that it is much more life-like. Heck, even today's console and PC games now look far more superior in terms of CGI and yet all done in real time without any rendering.
The future looks so amazing you guys!!!1!!1!
Wow. I was in high school when this documentary aired. My physics teacher played it in class. I loved it so much, my teacher made a copy of it for me. I was already into computers at that time and couldn't wait to be able to re-create the glass spheres demo. It took a few years. Thank-you for sharing this on TH-cam.
I'm glad videos like this still exist.
Omg! Kudos for uploading this! My brother and I practically burned a hole into the VHS from watching this so much 😬😂
Do you mean you caused a dropout (or several)?
I watched this as a kid almost 25 years ago. Great to see it again after so long.
This inspires me SOO much.
Good lord...I had this on VHS, taped from a TV broadcast (bizarrely, with the talking parts dubbed into German)
Saw this decades ago on a PBS station. Thanks for posting this!
I have an autistic brother that still watches these exact animations today. There are a lot here that I have seen in my childhood. My brother got so attach to these animations we saw that he converted most on vhs to live out that same nostalgia when we were kids. He also recognizes some of the works from Thomas Dolby and the gate to the minds eye stuff. It's a bit interesting that youtube recommended me this out of nowhere.
I enjoy watching old cg animation me being an artist myself it can be cool insperation also its very strange surreal to watch
Please guide me on how to start my career in animation.
Please. 🙏
Cool i grew up with the Minds Eye. Thanks for bringin back the feels
Meme worthy animation turns into a work of art
This was a pack in when I bought my last laserdisc player in '96. Always loved watching it. ❤³
I have been looking for someone to post this for years! We had it on laserdisc. Thank you for sharing!
I don't know where I got it or why I had it but I had this on VHS and watched the living crap out of it in high school. I've been learning Blender the last year and it has made me super nostalgic for this video, and it just popped into my feed today. Thank you so much for whoever uploaded this!!!
I don't know why but this type of stuff always makes me feel at home
I love getting stoned and watching this stuff, it's very fun. Getting nostalgic and enjoying peace of mind is one of life's true wonders.
It's funny how as technology advances, things tend to be less imaginative, less inspired, same happens with illustration, As an illustrator myself I see what I do and my contemporaries do. Right now you've got limitless resources to create and yet, it's rare to see something charming and inspired coming off artists. I'm not saying everything is shit, maybe it has to do with the inhumane deadlines we are under.
I still believe that limited resources makes your mind take effort in what you create... I dunno.
Or maybe it's just nostalgia with boomer goggles combined.
I don't think it's nostalgia. At least not entirely. I was born in '01 and this has that "nostalgic" feeling that most art and media from I'd say between the late 60s to about 1997 has. It's fun, calm, warm, innocent seeming, not overwhelming when it's exciting. I think people got all depressed for some dumb reason lately and it's ruining their work. I dunno.
You are right bro. People just need to be a little bit more "limited" to get more dream and imagination.
Don't sell yourself so short, that's a beautiful and tragic reflection on the state of things. These works are born purely of their own vision, where today creators feel pressured to fit into neat little boxes, lest they be ostracized and blackballed by their peers. I feel this even when looking at today's "weird" creators; the desire to be relevant and appealing instead of timeless and challenging. Kubrick was hated for his landmark films on release, called a pervert, sadist, psycho, but only in retrospect did we all come to realize how brilliant he was. As long as we keep to our neat little boxes, we will never have another Kubrick.
_"But that's just what people want, now. People wonder why jazz is dying."_
I think everyone back then was just excited to be able to animate stuff that would have been impossible using claymation and practical effects. They were like 'look what crazy shit we can do now'. 3d animation has now been toned down and turned into a commercial product, but when I started I just wanted to do crazy shit like set up hundreds of rotating glass prisms and orbs and shine light through them to make wacky effects. Props to these early pioneers for working all this stuff out, the refined software packages we have today are built off the hard work of these dudes.
no i get it
I have been looking for this documentary for decades... I had a VHS copy back in the 80's and lost it long ago.
People nowadays are trying to read dreams in people's minds with algorithms
I think that 80s cgi animators nailed it pretty well lol
Oh my gosh! I had this tape. So cool to see again!
An amazing time to be alive.
1000 years from now people will envy us living through such a time
I had this back in 1988! This video changed my life!
So surreal, and so nostalgic at the same time. I wonder what kinds of computers/software were used to make these.
Probably an Amiga
@@studioviper3016 Yeah most likely, I don't know if SGI existed when this was made.
I had a Mind's Eye VHS with many of these animations when I was a kid. My dad worked at a video rental store and got it as a demo. The first 20mins of this is very nostalgic for me. Thanks for the upload preserving this treasure!
The golden age of animation and hotwheels .
that intro music is just spot on for that time period , i absolutely love it so magical and reminiscent of my early days
I still have this vhs and was wondering if anyone had uploaded it. Awesome man!
All those Mind's eye videos were amazing back then.
Who would’ve thought this would one day be used in almost every movie?
Mind-boggling effects
Honestly, i'm quite surprised of the render quality. Quite astounding for 1988!
I had this on VHS and even brought it into high school, once when the teacher had nothing planned (probably partied the night before) the class watched it
Damn, is this low key the "Fantasia" of late 80-90s era CGI?
I have been looking for this for ages, I grew up watching these. My Dad is an AV engineer and we watched shi like this all the time.
Man they made huge progresses back in the 80's. Decent 3D shading and filters. The diamond is a beautifull example 19:53 and the glass balls..
I remember buying this VHS video back in 1988. That was stare of the art!
I remember when I was younger thinking that any CGI, no matter how basic, was really cool. Because back then it was a rarity.
When the PlayStation 1 came out, having CGI videos within games was always so cool because not only was it new, but it felt like a multi generational leap in graphics. Consider for example being used to playing a 2D game like Final Fantasy 6 to then seeing the opening CGI intro to Final Fantasy 7. It wasnt just a slight upgrade in graphics, it was a monumental leap. And it was inspirational, imagining what could be possible with the future of gaming.
This is like. Limitless thing. It's like only a thin amount of reality is kept in these animations. CGI was something else back then.
I loved this video! I used to go to the video club store to rent it. 😁
Crazy how many objects were using techniques like gourad shading and tessilatiing at that time. I remember rendering a 5 second animation late 98/early 99 and it took the better part of the entire day to fully render.
this video: took months to render all scenes
my computer: renders photorealistic 3d graphics at real time.
me: watching this in 2020
If you are talking about the path tracing I think you should have to think twice.....
I loved Minds Eye back in the day. Even got my own copies of the two versions.
I don't know how I didn't get in to a career of animation.
i wish more commericals would be like the cgi commercials we see here. it's creative and the music is good