Long ago, the CGI companies sent free discs with their demos. These packages cost between 10-20K but you could just submit a request and you'd get the software

Long ago, the CGI companies sent free discs with their demos. These packages cost between 10-20K but you could just submit a request and you'd get the software to play with (very very few limitations like export resolution but the whole software was usable). They probably wanted us to get hooked too.