Earliest ever 3d film uncovered?

Robby Ingebretsen from over at Nerds Plus Art blogged a fascinating piece back in February about possibly the first 3D rendered film to have ever been made.
The animations were made in 1972, and the rendering was done directly to film. The main man behind the work was Edwin Catmull, founder of Pixar

Roberts father, Robert Snr, had kept an original film copy of the animation, which Robert has recently discovered, digitised, and brought to the attention of Pixar and Edwin Catmull.

The quality of the animation is surprisingly good, going beyond simple wireframe graphics and into filled and shaded techniques - even 3d morphing in the opening credits - the mathematics of all for which the team pioneered and developed as the film was made.

The original video, plus behind the scenes work can be seen on Robby's blog entry.

ST Offline Tournament Rnd 17 - Ork

This round of the ST Offline Tournament features Ork, by Psygnosis (1992) and will be played at the next meeting!
Score submissions and round discussion to be found over at Atari-forum.com if you want to play along from home.

I must be frank (with a lower case 'f') and confess I haven't yet figured out how to get a working copy of the game! The Atarimania download (like all Atarimania downloads) is of an original, uncracked image of the disk. Therefore, you need the game manual to answer the copy-protection questions!
The D-Bug version does not appear to work! I've tried it in Steem and Hatari, with Tos 1.02, Tos 2.06, and EmuTOS!

Oh well, here's a screeshot! (from the Amiga version)

Next meeting Sunday 21st Aug 2011

Just a reminder that the next MACE meeting will be held this Sunday, the 21st of August at 479 Warrigal Rd, Moorabin. For further location details, see the About Us tab at the top of the page.

The game being played for the ST Offline Tournament this month is Commando. Download and score submission details here

This is what Commando looks like when you die!

Atari ST2 coming in 2011!

"Intel Core2 Quad 1066MHZ, 8GB Ram, Geforce 460"... and so on, or so reads the promo for an apparent new release from Atari in 2011, the Atari ST2.

The Atari ST2, coming to a store near you in 2011! Or is it?

But alas for Atari Enthusiasts galaxy wide the advertisement is a fake, and the glowing Atari-branded machine depicted nonexistent outside of the mind and virtual reality of German 3D artist Sven Dännart.
The painstakingly modelled and rendered images were created using Lightwave10.

We here at MACE, while very impressed with the concept, artistic vision, and execution, do not think it's anything we couldn't knock out with an Atari 520ST, a text editor, a copy of Persistence of Vision (POV) and 24,000 hours of rendering time. Back in the old days.

~~UPDATE April 2014~~
Alas it looks like the source for this post where the artist discussed this project are now gone. I can't find it in an internet archive either. All I can offer you are the following original images I found on my hard drive from when I posted this article a few years ago:

First Post

Welcome to the blog of Melbourne Atari Computer Enthusiasts, or MACE! This is our first entry, so we shall start off with the basics.
MACE meet on the third Sunday of each Month at 479 Warrigal Rd, Moorabbin for general Atari chit-chat and caper. Meetings generally start at 10:00am and go into the late afternoon.

We have a collection of Atari hardware, software (including boxed games and our old PD library), and books onsite. Our focus is on the 16/32bit home computers such as the Atari ST, TT, and Falcon, but we can also talk consoles, 8bit Atari, and even Commodore without prejudice!

Our meetings are very informal and generally take place with biscuits and cups of tea in hand! All visitors are welcome.



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