Progress, Of A Sort

I've always been fascinated by computer animation, and I've enjoyed tinkering with it ever since my Amiga days, which partly explains why I just bought Carrara 6 Pro, Bryce 6.1, and a bunch of 3d models and add-ons.  The other part of the explanation is that Daz3D, the company that now develops Carrara,* was having a 50%-off sale on many of their products.  Since they offer an additional 30%-off to members of their "Platinum Club" and gave me a 30%-off coupon as a new customer,** I was able to pick up around $1000 worth of goodies for $250 or so.

Then came what always follows when you overspend at a big sale...  I had to carry it all home.   Even though Daz3D apparently use Akamai for software distribution, and there's an Akamai node at my ISP right here in Sydney, this took quite some time.

Because (a) there were dozens of individual files to download and (b) it was over 3GB in all.

My first disk drive in 1988 held 40MB and cost $400.  I just downloaded 3GB of data and burned it to a 30¢ DVD-R.  From $10 per MB to 10¢ per GB is (even before correcting for inflation) a 100,000-fold decrease in storage costs.  And a good thing too, because I just downloaded 100MB of 3d hair.

This is what I was engaged in when I discovered that as far as Windows was concerned, I no longer had a DVD burner.

Anyway, once I work out how to make it do something - anything - I'll post some piccies.

* The history of Carrara and its stablemates like Poser and Bryce is too complicated to repeat here, but you can find some of the details at Wikipedia.
** No, unfortunately this doesn't add up to a 110% discount.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 305 words, total size 2 kb.