The images for the original Dream Prisoner game were created in 1994 using 3D Studio 2. Things were definitely simpler then, although it’s fair to say that even back then, I barely scratched the surface of what was possible with 3D Studio 2. Let alone, then, what’s possible with 3D Studio Max 2010.

I started out doing rendering with Persistence of Vision, a tool which requires you to specify the scene to be rendered in a plain-text source file. It was something I had seen featured in a 1993 PC Format magazine, and – for those who actually managed to create beautiful images with it – was very difficult to use. With 3D Studio you could actually visually place your objects in a scene. Still, the only tools I really used were “create box” and “compound object” which yielded very heavy scenes that would all but lock up my old 386 computer.

The images for the original Dream Prisoner game were created in 1994 using 3D Studio 2. Things were definitely simpler then, although it’s fair to say that even back then, I barely scratched the surface of what was possible with 3D Studio 2. Let alone, then, what’s possible with 3D Studio Max 2010.

I started out doing rendering with Persistence of Vision, a tool which requires you to specify the scene to be rendered in a plain-text source file. It was something I had seen featured in a 1993 PC Format magazine, and – for those who actually managed to create beautiful images with it – was very difficult to use. With 3D Studio you could actually visually place your objects in a scene. Still, the only tools I really used were “create box” and “compound object” which yielded very heavy scenes that would all but lock up my old 386 computer.

Recently, I tried my hand again at modelling a few things with 3D Studio Max, where I actually modelled polygons; a big improvement for me from the “compound objects” days. Perhaps, one day, I might have enough skills to produce a new Dream Prisoner installment…

In the scene above, I used texture mapping on books on a shelf, and modelled a table and some office chairs.