A 3D animator’s dream

I’ve always wanted to be a 3d animator ever since I saw one of my best friends get a copy of 3D Studio for DOS (that’s right! I was still in the stone age). Before when online documentation, tutorials, tips & tricks were non existent, he had to grind it out by himself learning how the software works. No books, no readme files, nothing. I was very impressed when he made his very first animation.. a short starwars clip animating an Imperial Shuttle flying through space. Being a star wars fan, I got motivated to force myself to learn using 3D Studio (for DOS!) because I wanted to make my very own 3d wireframes of Star Wars ships.

It was pretty hard considering we never knew much about animating. I never knew what other softwares were for 3D animation. I only used 3D Studio because it was the only 3D software that was in the installer. I forgot the first animation that I did. I actually lost all copies of it because hard drives were very measly in storage capacity during that time. There was even no CD-Writer yet. I had to save all my files in my hard drive and eventually lost them when I sold my computer to someone else. I did manage to keep copies of my wireframes in a CD, when CD-Writers finally existed, but lost it cause my friend somehow lent it to someone else and forgot who it was who borrowed it. The only remnants of my 3D works are stand alone images that I rendered before for my website.

Nowadays there are lots of tools out there for 3D stuffs and they make your work much easier than before. I stopped with 3D when 3D Studio MAX came out because I was already focused with programming. I had hoped to land a 3D animation job before with ABS-CBN before but I guess I wasn’t destined to work there. The vice-president was out of the country when I went there for a supposed interview. When they contacted me back, I was back in my hometown and I decided not to go back to Manila anymore (heck! plane fares were and still are expensive!). It was supposedly a good opportunity because at that time, there weren’t that much 3D companies to work with and they were all in Manila only. Still, it was good to know the demo I passed to them was adapted into one of their abs commercial later on (even though no one knows that idea was in the first place mine! haha, you know, all 3 red/green/blue circle rotating in opposite directions, zooming out then in).

When I get to watch 3D movies like Pixar’s, I still imagine myself working in one of those companies, rendering 3D stuffs. I had hoped myself to become a 3D Animator but shifted to programming because of love (haha! long story). I’m still proud of myself that I was able to do these models … and in DOS, back when my CPU was still 486!