Trippy 3D Art From the Early 90s

Trippy 3D Art From the Early 90s

 Trippy 3D Art From the Early 90s

Back in the early 1990s, 3D computer-generated art was still a new thing, a brave new breed of amateur artists emerged. They took up early 3D CGI (computer generated imagery) tools and created graphical works that they then shared on dial-up BBSes and CompuServe, an early online service.

Over the years, I’ve collected dozens of these now-vintage images, and many of them are, well, more than a little bizarre. There is something about 3D computer art that is particularly conducive to depictions of eyeballs floating in space or human-headed snakemen enjoying a sunset. Since each image starts from a completely blank digital slate, traditional concepts of culture, physics, or material engineering need not apply when it comes to crafting a CGI illustration.

Many of the images you’ll see ahead were created with a popular rendering program called POV-Ray that enthusiasts distributed for free (legally) through the BBSes I mentioned. POV-Ray used a rendering technique known as ray tracing to produce still images from pre-constructed “scenes” of 3D objects that have been modeled beforehand.

When you’re done checking out the slideshow, please feel free to share your fondest memories of vintage CGI graphics. And if you have any bizarre 3D CGI images of your own to share, by all means, let us know about them.

Snakes!

Artist: Robert A. Mickelsen
Year: 1993

Floating snake-worms with human heads? Check. A stone container holding the world’s largest floating diamond? Check. All of the above staged in front of a beautiful sunset streaked with cirrus clouds? Why yes. It’s all here, folks, in this amazing masterpiece of 3D weirdness from 1993.

Eyeball!

Artist: L.J. Altvater
Year: 1994

Disembodied eyeballs appear frequently in early 3D computer illustrations, likely because they were simple shapes to construct. Spend any time browsing vintage 3D art, and you’ll notice that the eyeballs you see are almost always floating out in space or rolling around on a table somewhere (much like they do in real life). In this case, a bloodshot eyeball floats in a green solution while surrounded by jagged, not-eyeball-friendly mountains. The visual tension is palpable.

Fish!

Artist: Mike Miller
Year: 1993

Steam trains and jumping taxidermy fish, just two things your father can’t live without next Father’s Day. Now available at Macy’s. Joking aside, the artist behind this work, Mike Miller, was a well-respected POV-Ray practitioner in the 1990s. Unfortunately, no one has heard from him since around 1995. Are you out there, Mike?

Robot!

Artist: David Hofmann
Year: 1993

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the living room of the future: a marble crypt furnished with a bulbous skull on a checkerboard table, a delightful poster of your mom, a telephone, a wooden duck, and your very own faceless golden robot to strangle you in your sleep

Faces!

Artist: Dan Farmer
Year: 1994

In this paean to bizarre, artist Dan Farmer concocts a surprise shower of fractal raindrops sprouting human faces over a desolate plain. If I write anything more, I might unwittingly get PCMag flagged as a source of random SPAM email text.

 6 Duck!

Artist: Unknown
Year: 1992

One day in 1992, an unknown artist coughed into his computer, resulting in a miscellaneous spew of 3D shapes: a red torus, a duck, an office chair, and an anthropomorphic green mouse standing on a fanciful tile floor…that just so happens to be floating in the sky. How convenient.

Rainbow Man!

 Artist: Unknown
Year: 1994

If you’ve ever wondered what 3D Rainbow Man does in his spare time, here’s your answer: he rocks on a platform of purple loneliness.

Clock!

Artist: R. Landry
Year: 1994

“Scanning. GRANDFATHER CLOCK ANALYSIS COMPLETE. Composition: 78% wood, 20% copper, 2% other materials. OK Larry, let’s get this sucker out of our gaseous scanning vat and into our portable geodesic dome.”

More Eyeballs!

Artist: Truman Brown
Year: 1993

As four disembodied eyeballs look on, a vortex of translucent teal filaments entwines a marble-textured swirl, itself surrounding some sort of lightning jar. Congratulations to Truman Brown for making me describe this abstract illustration in a painfully literal fashion.

10 Pencil Man!

Artist: Unknown
Year: 1993

While walking on the desk one day, Pencil Man happens upon a gruesome scene: a pair of detached pencil feet and the nub of an over-sharpened friend. Little does he know the same fate is about to befall him. Look out, Pencil Man! There’s a Sharpen Monster right behind you!

11 Women!

Artist: Unknown
Year: 1994

In this colorful piece, identical women in leopard-print leotards wade in a green ocean while rows of flying, spherical robotic drones look on from the distance. Nothing can help this make sense. Nonetheless, people actually traded this image on BBSes back in the day.

12 Nuts and Bolts!

Artist: David Hofmann
Year: 1993

A nut. A bolt. A tree. What do these three things have in common? They’re all relatively easy to create in a 3D computer modeling program. Of all the compositions we’ve seen, this one seems the most hauntingly beautiful, although I can’t help thinking it’s still completely meaningless. Still, one can marvel at this picture and imagine a time when computer 3D art was a new and wondrous thing. Back then, this was amazing.

Source: https://www.pcmag.com