5 ms·

An Ode to Kai's Power Goo

58 points by bado 11y ago

drglitch 11y ago
I almost got suspended from high school for using PowerGoo on a photo of my friend. Result was a trip to principal's office, a call to parents, and a day of detention. Apparently another student was "afraid i may create something horrible out of his yearbook photo" and reported me. Later, he admitted that he just used that as an excuse to try to get me suspended as a way of bullying me (i was a nerd). This was in 2000. Today, given the insanity about political correctness, i would expect nothing less of a SWAT team, 3 months of required psych counseling, and getting expelled as minimum punishment.
m_st 11y ago
Cool flashback to the nineties. I remember spending hours at school in '97 or '98 obscuring class pictures of everyone as a gag. Approved by the teacher who also loved this kind of stuff. Here's a link to the wikipedia article about the developer, Kai Krause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause He sold the software to Corel (remember them?) and bought a castle in Germany. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Breisig https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Breisig (the German article has more pictures). Would be fun to have these tools back on an iPad to play around with my kids.
- insensible 11y ago
  Perhaps you're in the market for the fractal app he helped create. http://fract.al/ http://fract.al/
  - m_st 11y ago
    Instant purchase. Thank you very much!
- Someone 11y ago
  I think you want to link to the page for the castle: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck. It has a nice picture at https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck#/media/Datei%3ABurg_Rheineck_Luftbild_03.jpg https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck#/media/Datei%3.... That definitely has everything you want in a castle (tower, walls, courtyard, situated on top of a hill), but also seems liveable, with something resembling a house built next to the back wall.
- slantyyz 11y ago
  I remember being awed by a demo of KPT/Convolver at the Toronto Macworld in 1994 or 1995. Kai was showing off how you could take a blurry satellite image of a parking lot and do a "spy movie" style zoom and enhance to reveal a car's license plate, which was impressive back then. The UI was just plain crazy, especially by today's standards.
ddmf 11y ago
Very interesting. I was actually trying to remember this piece of software just the other day because I recognised a similar effect on a tv show and wanted to replicate it...
insensible 11y ago
Just looked him up and learned that Kai lived next door to Douglas Adams and collaborated with him on book covers. http://kai.sub.blue/en/42spheres.html http://kai.sub.blue/en/42spheres.html
th0ma5 11y ago
I made student council campaign posters with stereograms back in 1995 using KPT ... and I won! Great next-level stuff for home computers back then.
webwielder2 11y ago
Apple continued some of this UI tradition for quite a while, with Aqua and stuff like QuickTime Player, then their skeuomorphic phase on both iOS and OS X. And of course, using painstakingly rendered, depthful interface elements in general is part of the same spirit. I will now list some Kai/MetaTools/MetaCreations products that were also awesome in part because of their crazy UIs. Kai's Power Soap Bryce Poser Carrara Camino
noonespecial 11y ago
Even to this day, when I'm standing over someone's shoulder "helping" them photoshop, I often say "use the Kai thingy" when I mean liquify.
spdustin 11y ago
Don't forget Alien Skin's Eye Candy, still going strong for all your burning text needs! (see what I did there?) http://www.alienskin.com/eyecandy/ http://www.alienskin.com/eyecandy/ I loved the hell out of those days.
- jonah 11y ago
  Somewhere I have an Alien Skin button I picked up at a trade show. "Computers = Ticket to Hell" I think a lot of (especially graphics) companies were more irreverent back then.
- degenerate 11y ago
  Xenofex lightning! http://i.imgur.com/m68dT43.jpg http://i.imgur.com/m68dT43.jpg
jonah 11y ago
The team from these MetaTools and related companies has gone on to permeate the industry - and others. From CoreImage to f.lux, from Sonos to Google - always interesting to see how people move through the industry.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
I loved KPT. It looked like alien software from the mid 21st century that somehow landed in the late 1990s. The UI was gloriously white and 3D way before skeuomorphism was even a word. Is there an open source version of goo? Or a description of the algorithm? It doesn't look impossibly difficult to work out, but it would be useful to know how other people approached it.
kazinator 11y ago
In 1996 I started using GIMP. It was on a Sun SparcStation 20 running RedHat 2 Linux. Can't remember whether IWarp was a feature or not yet; probably not.
VOYD 11y ago
Bring back the power tools.

58 points by bado 11y ago

I almost got suspended from high school for using PowerGoo on a photo of my friend. Result was a trip to principal's office, a call to parents, and a day of detention. Apparently another student was "afraid i may create something horrible out of his yearbook photo" and reported me. Later, he admitted that he just used that as an excuse to try to get me suspended as a way of bullying me (i was a nerd). This was in 2000. Today, given the insanity about political correctness, i would expect nothing less of a SWAT team, 3 months of required psych counseling, and getting expelled as minimum punishment.

m_st 11y ago

Cool flashback to the nineties. I remember spending hours at school in '97 or '98 obscuring class pictures of everyone as a gag. Approved by the teacher who also loved this kind of stuff. Here's a link to the wikipedia article about the developer, Kai Krause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause He sold the software to Corel (remember them?) and bought a castle in Germany. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Breisig https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Breisig (the German article has more pictures). Would be fun to have these tools back on an iPad to play around with my kids.

insensible 11y ago
Perhaps you're in the market for the fractal app he helped create. http://fract.al/ http://fract.al/
- m_st 11y ago
  Instant purchase. Thank you very much!
Someone 11y ago
I think you want to link to the page for the castle: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck. It has a nice picture at https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck#/media/Datei%3ABurg_Rheineck_Luftbild_03.jpg https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck#/media/Datei%3.... That definitely has everything you want in a castle (tower, walls, courtyard, situated on top of a hill), but also seems liveable, with something resembling a house built next to the back wall.
slantyyz 11y ago
I remember being awed by a demo of KPT/Convolver at the Toronto Macworld in 1994 or 1995. Kai was showing off how you could take a blurry satellite image of a parking lot and do a "spy movie" style zoom and enhance to reveal a car's license plate, which was impressive back then. The UI was just plain crazy, especially by today's standards.

ddmf 11y ago

Very interesting. I was actually trying to remember this piece of software just the other day because I recognised a similar effect on a tv show and wanted to replicate it...

insensible 11y ago

Just looked him up and learned that Kai lived next door to Douglas Adams and collaborated with him on book covers. http://kai.sub.blue/en/42spheres.html http://kai.sub.blue/en/42spheres.html

th0ma5 11y ago

I made student council campaign posters with stereograms back in 1995 using KPT ... and I won! Great next-level stuff for home computers back then.

webwielder2 11y ago

Apple continued some of this UI tradition for quite a while, with Aqua and stuff like QuickTime Player, then their skeuomorphic phase on both iOS and OS X. And of course, using painstakingly rendered, depthful interface elements in general is part of the same spirit. I will now list some Kai/MetaTools/MetaCreations products that were also awesome in part because of their crazy UIs. Kai's Power Soap Bryce Poser Carrara Camino

noonespecial 11y ago

Even to this day, when I'm standing over someone's shoulder "helping" them photoshop, I often say "use the Kai thingy" when I mean liquify.

spdustin 11y ago

Don't forget Alien Skin's Eye Candy, still going strong for all your burning text needs! (see what I did there?) http://www.alienskin.com/eyecandy/ http://www.alienskin.com/eyecandy/ I loved the hell out of those days.

jonah 11y ago
Somewhere I have an Alien Skin button I picked up at a trade show. "Computers = Ticket to Hell" I think a lot of (especially graphics) companies were more irreverent back then.
degenerate 11y ago
Xenofex lightning! http://i.imgur.com/m68dT43.jpg http://i.imgur.com/m68dT43.jpg

jonah 11y ago

The team from these MetaTools and related companies has gone on to permeate the industry - and others. From CoreImage to f.lux, from Sonos to Google - always interesting to see how people move through the industry.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

I loved KPT. It looked like alien software from the mid 21st century that somehow landed in the late 1990s. The UI was gloriously white and 3D way before skeuomorphism was even a word. Is there an open source version of goo? Or a description of the algorithm? It doesn't look impossibly difficult to work out, but it would be useful to know how other people approached it.

kazinator 11y ago

In 1996 I started using GIMP. It was on a Sun SparcStation 20 running RedHat 2 Linux. Can't remember whether IWarp was a feature or not yet; probably not.

VOYD 11y ago

Bring back the power tools.