Glycon3D Blog

Sometimes I find myself wondering if the people at Adobe ever use their products. Of course, I know they do, but every time they "improve" Photoshop I have to take a deep breath before opening the latest version.   In my 30 years as a commercial software developer, I've seen people and companies chase down some pretty complicated concepts, under the pretense of making the next great thing. A lucky few actually see their projects through to completion, only to find that no one wants to use their creation.   And it makes a fella think... You can build the most powerful tools in the world, but if no one actually uses them, what good are they? Hey I've got a giant list of apps I've worked on, or even written myself, that I KNEW would be the next big thing!  So I'm speaking from horrible, mind bending experience here, when I say some ideas are only good on paper. These days, I try to limit how often I go down the complexity rabbit hole, by spending some time on the...

  Here's how it all went down.  In August of 1999, Starship Troopers: Roughneck Chronicles made its debut, and my world was rocked.  It had, at the time, some of the best CG work on the planet. It mixed characters from one of my favorite movies (Starship Troopers) with stories from one of my favorite books (Starship Troopers) and added its own flair to it on top. It was amazing.  As I learned more about it, it became evident they were really breaking new ground. Foundation Imaging was one of the companies behind it, with Ron Thornton at the helm. They used LightWave3D for most of the show. Check out this madness:  Many years later, I had the opportunity to work on LightWave at NewTek, and through them, I finally met Ron. Another decade later, I finally had a chance to talk to him in depth about one of my favorite shows.  One of the biggest problems, I was surprised to learn, was motion capture cleanup. The show leveraged tons of motion capture performances,...