This topic is not about when you yourself got started in 3d… it’s about when you first saw it, and knew what it was.
I suspect I’d probably seen it in commercials long before I knew what it was, but the first time I was really aware of it was when I saw this spot on Sesame Street (I was born in 1989) that showed a dancing hammer. It jumped around and pounded nails and stuff… My dad told me it had been done on a computer… I was immediately intrigued, and you can see where it went… The Pixar lamp movies were on Sesame Street, too, of course, but I don’t remember associating them with computers.
I think when it finally made a strong impression on me is when I saw Myst at a friend’s house several years later. He also had Bryce (shudder), and seeing the two of them is probably what first made me want to do it myself.
First time was in the Tron movie, I would say in 1982, I don’t remember exactly, but what got me excited about 3d was the first time I saw Imagina shorts review on TV, then the next big steps were Abyss, T2 and Jurassik Park.
I had never imagine I could do the same years later and now I’m a happy man
I guess it was when I first discovered I have stereoscopic vision.
JK
Right. Aaaaany way…
Apart from vector-graphics video games like Battle Zone and Tail Gunner,
The first 3d CG thing I specifically remember was a documentary my 7th grade science teacher showed us in class. It had a clip of a dancing figure made of primitive shapes. We were amazed.
(His wife worked at IBM. “The PC Jr’s gonna take the market by storm” He told us once. We were like “OK, if you say so”.)
The tapes were the ones with those little documentaries at the beginning about the changes from the originals, or else I wouldn’t have known what it was, but as soon as I saw that documentary I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Battle Zone. This tank game they used to have when I was a kid. All the poly’s were drawn without color. You just got the lines, and you had to shoot other tanks. It was pretty primitive by today’s standards, but back then you had asteroids and some other goofy game I can’t remember.
1975’ish I think: the million dollar man intro. But you can say I was only half aware that it was 3D.
around 1980 I saw a documentary and it featured an illusionist juggling a lot of primitive shapes. And in the same program a ‘state of the art’ animation about an ostrich like creature (just a sphere and some cones) asking his girlfriend out.
I saw Tron when I was really little, so although it was the first 3D effects I saw in a movie, I wasn’t aware of it.
I think the first movie I saw where I was aware of the 3D graphics was Flight of the Navigator (which I saw for the first time a few years later). And the first movie that really got me interested in 3D effects was probably Jurassic Park. I’ve always been interested in special effects in general, though.
