Todd Rundgren Change Myself Lightwave Music Video
Created totally with NewTek's LightWave 3D modelling and rendering software and NewTek Video Toasters on Amiga computers, Todd released this video in the early 1990s, in support of what was pretty much the only "hit" single off his album "Second Wind." It received very little airplay on VH-1. So little, in fact, that most Rundgren fans have never seen it. This video was ripped to MPEG from a very high quality promotional VHS tape. This video was a monumental achievement in 3D animation for its time in the early 1990s and it was done COMPLETELY on affordable, personal computers. Todd actually used a stack of ten Amigas (because it would have taken forever to render this many frames of 3D animation on a single machine).. and was sneakernetting SCSI hard drives between them since Commodore, Amiga's maker, would not provide him with networking hardware to make the rendering of the thousands of frames in this video easier. He did most of the 3D object modelling and animation scene plotting himself. So he's not just a singer / songwriter, but a VERY talented artist and computer wizard too. He originally intended the video to be 100% 3D rendering but Warner Bros. insisted that he appear in it, so he filmed himself in front of a black backdrop and then overlayed the film of him singing the song onto various 3D objects in the final rendering (the leaf, the sailboat's sail and so on.. again, all done with NewTek Toasters in Amiga computers. Amiga World, IDG's former Amiga magazine, ran a feature story in one of their final issues about how Todd created this video. The Amigas were literally stacked up on his dining room table. NewTek still sells LightWave 3D but no longer supports the Amiga, which is, sadly, an orphaned computer platform. But this video shows what Amiga computers could do and is an absolutely gorgeous example of what a very talented artist and singer/composer could do with 3D rendering software on personal computers. Damn good song too.
Later that year, Todd gave a two hour speech at, of all places, JPL in Pasadena, CA. to an SRO crowd at the local SIGGRAPH chapter meeting, showed the video and explained how he had made it. (I was in the audience..) .. That speech was later sold on VHS tape. I have a copy, but it runs over two hours so it's way too long to digitize and upload.
Enjoy.
Length: 273
Rating: 4.70 (97 ratings)
Tags: Todd Rundgren Change Myself LightWave 3D NewTek Amiga
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