The ViewBuild project was technically started in 1996. It was initially going to be a conversion of a Commodore Amiga (for those who remember this awesome computer system) program i'd designed a couple of years earlier - to the Microsoft Windows 95 platform. The program was designed to allow you to mark out areas of the elevation of a set of plans. Once the areas were set out you could assign texture and colour to the marked out areas - you could also define scale and angle of the textures as well as set a shadow area.
End of 1996 and early 1997 something happened. That something was 3D video cards became affordable (a 4 mb video card up to that point was around $1000) the Matrox Mystique weighed in at the $400 mark. This was pivotal as until now the time to create a single image of a 3D ball could literally be measured in days and weeks let alone animating the ball. So I remember one night I had set up the computer to render a glass pyramid and i said to my friend "what if we programmed the pyramid to be created real-time?"
A night of fevered programming and a pyramid was spinning on the screen. The next question came "what if we could simulate our program in 3d?". A bit of solid drinking occurred and the answer popped out that maybe - just maybe it would be possible. The 2D program was put into mothballs and the 3D engine was started. I started designing the framework for how we would model (the control), what sort of tools we might need (toolset), the steps along the way (the process) and the areas that would need options (the flow).
2 Weeks later we had a control mechanism and a rudimentary method of adding elements to a 3D scene. The program grew and grew. We could add windows, doors, walls, floors, Textures, Colours.
I think i even went slightly mad while attempting to break down the roof-line of a house into a process of modeling. 6 weeks later and a lot of Mario 64 playing, designing, graphic work, testing - - me and my friend went to E3 in Atlanta (thank to all those there that made us feel welcome) and then a side trip to NY for some R&R. E3 was the major electronic gaming expo in the world at the time- and at the show we were converted. We met the bigwigs of what was then essentially a fledgling industry. And the one thing we thought was 3D is here and it is going to be the future.
Coming back I split from my previous company and immersed myself fully into the development of the 3D tool.
