Some years later, around 1990, Thornton discovered the Commodore Amiga personal computer β not for gameplay, music sequencing, or personal computing, but for creating digital models. βSuddenly I had a lot more control. Before, I would build models and paint them, then I had to hand them over to someone else to light and do the motion-control work,β he says. β[The practical models] never really looked the way I wanted them to look. So, being able to do that in the computer was liberating in a sense. Just like that, a lot of the limitations we had with traditional models disappeared.β
As did the high cost of the equipment. βWe no longer needed tens of thousands of dollars worth of motion-control equipment to do shots, or expensive cameras, film, and all the other things that go with it,β says Thornton. βAt the time, it was costing thousands of dollars to do a typical spaceship shot. Suddenly I was doing it inside the computer for far, far less.β
Then, another game changer occurred that would have a big impact on Thornton and his work: NewTek introduced the Video Toaster as a companion to the Amiga, and included was LightWave, a 3D modeling, rendering, and animation package. Thornton and his longtime friend and neighbor, Paul Beigle-Bryant, both bought one. βIt was full 24-bit. Whereas Sculpt 4D could only render in something like 4,096 colors, LightWave was rendering in millions of colors. So, you could do much more realistic renders. I challenged myself to see if I could build a spaceship in the computer like I was building in miniature.β Using LightWave and Sculpt 4D, he did his first test.
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