The Apex of Human Technological Achievement

Post your favorite 80s/90s/maybe-2000s crude computer graphics music videos. The keyword here is “apex,” so let's go all out on fully computer generated renderings, and not just green screen trickery to place the band in a room tiled with photos of their own faces. (If you must, you can break this rule at your own discretion).

Go West
https://youtu.be/LNBjMRvOB5M

Green Eyed Monster
https://youtu.be/dA_iULjsa4U

Happy 2000 (only maybe a quarter of this is computer generated, but it's my personal favorite genre of computer generated... weird geometry floating in the sky, so it gets a pass)
https://youtu.be/n4hxXHmMLKI

(this thread is probably going to be filled with "Video Unavailable" black boxes, but who cares)

I immediately thought of Polyester Girl by Regurgitator.

https://youtu.be/2BxVBziFvtU

The fundamental problem of this thread is that it opens the door to someone posting that awful Crazy Frog song and I am not sure we want that to happen… Sweet Like Chocolate would be my Go To example.

https://youtu.be/OQCQnARnKbc

I was also thinking of Waterfalls by TLC but the "girls turned into water" shtick is a surprisingly short part of the video compared to how it was in my memory.

This thread has been alive for 5 while hours and nobody has posted Money For Nothing?

https://youtu.be/oIDYl-bfvw0

Sure it isn’t 100% CG, but that’s gotta be the classic example for me

1 Like

@“chazumaru”#p80205 boy, this looks worse than I remember!

From the back-end of the window, you've got this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68ugkg9RePc

The Mind’s Eye series were 40min+ videos which edited existing CGI demos into a pseudo-narrative film with a dedicated score. Seminal work for the spread of CG in the mainstream via Laserdisc and VHS. Also a good testimony of the speed at which 3DCG has evolved in the 90s.

Mind’s Eye (1990, music by James Reynolds)

Beyond the Mind’s Eye (1992, music by Jan Hammer)

The Gate to the Mind’s Eye (1994, music by Thomas Dolby)

Odyssey into the Mind’s Eye (1996, music by Kerry Livgren)

@“saddleblasters”#p80195 i‘m pretty sure that’s not green screen, actually!

https://youtu.be/j0n9IPG3U40?t=195 (looking at the very back, where the tiling seems to stop, and how it seems to bend a bit when he stomps on it)

Discounting the green-screen stuff (for the purposes of this thread) my kneejerk answer has to be TRON, especially anything involving the tanks or recognizers. Really great example of how leaning into a very specific aesthetic can ensure that this will remain the apex of human technological achievement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQwKV7lCzEI

Also have to call out Colin's Bear Animation (mostly because I nearly fell out of my chair playing Mother 3 and hearing this song, which I previously only knew from this)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiARsQSlzDc

@“chazumaru”#p80225 these got a sequel, “Beyond the Mind's Eye.” Both they and Imaginaria (or only some from all three?) aired on YTV here under “Short Circuitz.”

Anyway, here's probably my favourite from BTME. I get the tune stuck in my head all the time and until I rewatched it this morning I'd never been able to make out what the woman was saying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipt5GHWHsw0

>!*We are of the butterfly.*!<

Also I'm glad the criteria allows for 2000s stuff, cause crude CG animation definitely did not die after the nineties. I once got a DVD of a 3D anime series called *Mr. Stain on Junk Alley* included free with one of my FMA 03 discs. But it's been a while since I watched the show, so I wouldn't know which episode to post.

Each ep is only about 7 minutes long, [so why not just watch them all](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtABcpnRh2OxEIz5dNpuNyrH2CnABQduJ)?


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@"rejj"#p80207
https://www.buttercupfestival.com/145vol3.htm

This one from 2008 (which I guess is maybe beyond the cut off) fascinates me for looking both cool and really cheap in alternating moments. But its definitely timeline wise on the edge of chintsty CGI being relegated to only the Tim and Eric domain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYOcdkGEnEw

gotta be reboot for me.

https://youtu.be/u1pc6teZGnw

oh shit, i just remembered animusic.

https://youtu.be/NtOUdIJsuBE

Parappa Adjacent

https://youtu.be/HIyaaCM7Avs

https://youtu.be/qwK9BeWxPwQ

@“NoJoTo”#p80226 Yeah you‘re almost certainly right. That tiling is just such a my-first-opengl-project-looking effect! Their video for Rydeen has (what I think is) a computer-generated piano keyboard swirling around, and it’s clear that they were trying to get as much mileage as possible out of that 10 second loop. So I liked to imagine that for the Kimi ni mune kyun video they had access to a computer, but only the budget for a single effect, and decided the best possible use of the computer was to fill a room with tiles of their faces. Of course it makes much more sense that they literally just printed out the pictures and pasted them all over the floor, which I suppose is also fun to imagine.

Does anyone have some rough estimate for how much it would have cost at the time to do that swirling piano effect in the Rydeen video, if it was in fact computer generated? This was pre-Tron! So I feel even such a simple effect had to have been crazy expensive.

Also NoJoTo, the source of your profile picture is an example of some fantastic early 2000s computer animation done by one guy who (presumably) had limited computing power. (I still continue to think about it almost every day.)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iLo7F4bI2Tg&feature=emb_title

Weird Cubivore-esque CG:

https://youtu.be/QDiSck_imgw

Can (should?) this thread also encompass that era of graphics card box art

[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/4zN5r7d.jpeg]

mecha @treefroggy??

@“Gaagaagiins”#p80483 that's mechafroggy. also treefroggy is actually a cat

@"saddleblasters"#p80480 wow that is **straight up** cubivore-esque in a way I really enjoy

@“Gaagaagiins”#p80483 I don't remember the hardcore cyberfrog era!! (Just the Sapphire Radeon waifus.)

I had never actually listened to a Hikaru Utada song before today, but I just saw this video, which is quite excellent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuyZ9f6mHZk

The costume designs and Tim Burton-esque claymation bits are all very good, which makes the crude 3D animation feel much more natural and intentional than some of these other videos that mix 3D with real humans.

It's cool to see all the stuff I associate with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu done much better almost decade earlier!

They finally made a Transformers movie based on Beast Wars, aka Beasties in Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peJd2Xyy73s

Also I had a hard time finding this thread again, I couldn't remember if the title was about the peak or pinnacle or apex of human technological achievement lol.