My first experience with 3D modeling dates back to 1991, with Autodesk's AutoCAD version 10 for DOS on a 486. AutoCAD was meant more for architecture and engineering than 3D graphics - it didn't have animation features or a renderer. But through AutoCAD I learned the principles of 3D, and then moved on to 3D Studio 4 for DOS, which was also made by Autodesk. Primitive by today's standards, it was the best 3D package available for the PC at the time, with features like inverse kinematics, morphing, and scripting.

Shortly after I got to college, 3D Studio MAX came out and changed everything. Its object-oriented design completely revolutionized the way 3D was done on the PC platform. Editing was done through modifiers which could be stacked many levels deep for each object, and you could go back to an old modifier at any point to tweak its settings.

I began Ornaments using MAX 1.2 running on Windows NT 4.0. By the time I'd started animating, version 2.5 came around, and I originally wasn't going to bother upgrading until I saw the new Image motion blur option. It achieved reasonably good motion blur by smearing a single rendered image rather than overlapping multiple rendered images, which increased speed significantly. I was able to apply Image motion blur to every object in the scene with minimal cost at render time.

2.5 also allowed for animation of individual vertices of an object, and had slightly faster OpenGL performance, among other new features. No 3rd party plugins were used in the creation of Ornaments, nor was Character Studio or IK.

All editing was done by rendering preview AVI's through OpenGL and laying them out in Adobe Premiere. Since I was carefully coordinating the music and action, a lot of time was spent at this stage to get the timing right. After I was satisfied with the video and music synchronization, I rendered to Targa image files.

Sound Forge proved invaluable for sound recording and editing. Using its pitch-bend feature, I created a doppler effect for the train and tinsel sliding sounds. I really appreciate its speed, stability, and no-nonsense interface.