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Points for trying to do something different, but 30 years later these look rather cute and twee. Definitely part of that late 90s bright-colours-and-glass OMG I

Points for trying to do something different, but 30 years later these look rather cute and twee. Definitely part of that late 90s bright-colours-and-glass OMG Internet aesthetic, which was a kind of digital tie dye movement that eventually faded into Aqua on MacOS and the glass themes in Windows. There was a period in the mid 90s when the Kai Page Curl effect was everywhere. I spent some time with various versions of Bryce. It was good for entry-level 3D, but in the same way that everything made with KPT looked obviously KPT-ish, everything made with Bryce looked obviously Bryce-ish. It was all fractal mountains, planets, mysterious floating orbs, alien seascapes, lurid sunsets, and the occasional detailed tree if you had a couple of days of render time to spare. You were always clicking around in KaiSpace. There was no way out.

mike_hock 3y ago
You mean the era when UIs actually looked good, before the hardware was up to the task, only to regress to a style more primitive than the 90s[1] not a second later than the hardware had become capable enough. [1] The era you speak of was the early 00s.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
  I don't know what you mean by "looked good"; there's obviously a trade-off here between beauty and utility. To me, a UI "looks good" if I can immediately understand how it works, and if it presents the information in a meaningful way. To a layperson, that may look "not good"; they may prefer something with more color and detailed imagery that looks more like a real-world object, even if (possibly unbeknownst to them) it's harder to use. Of course, being able to understand how to use an interface is partly affected by what you're familiar with and, in turn, what you were exposed to in your formative years. For me, Windows 95 – early-OSX-era interfaces have 'the best' look.
  - rerdavies 3y ago
    Why must there be a tradeoff between beauty and utility? (Particularly when Kai's UIs are a perfect example of exceptional beauty and exceptional utility. All that while being extraordinarily intuitive!).
JKCalhoun 3y ago
I agree, with the luxury of hindsight, that it was a rather garish era in UI. But looking back now at his Kai Power Tools (the first I heard of him) it is clear to me he was more responsible than anyone for kicking off that whole era of wacky UI that culminated/ended with brushed metal and Apple's Aqua. So kudos to Kai for having such an outsized influence on the UI of the time.
- pixelgeek 3y ago
  Back then we would talk about UI when we meant UX. The KPT plugins had a very odd visual design but the way that you could iterate patterns and processes on an image was unheard of. People also look at the designs that the filters made and didn't think about how they could be used as selection channels and other ways of manipulating an image. Kai's original work was about using selection channels in Photoshop to create stunning effects and while you could use his tools to create a background or a texture they could also be used to manipulate the colour and tone in images in really incredible ways.
  - rerdavies 3y ago
    UI: the design of interface between software and users, with a significant body of research behind it. UX: the design of interface between software and users as defined by self-proclaimed experts with no significant body of research behind it. We most definitely did not mean UX when we talked about UI.
saberience 3y ago
I think you're being quite dismissive about what really was incredibly innovative and groundbreaking technology at the time. I went to an Apple Expo in London around the time Kai's Power Goo was released and the show floor around the MetaCreations stand was one of the busiest parts of the whole show. I'm talking about large crowds of people watching live demos of someone using Kai's Power Goo with dropped jaws. It's hard to explain how amazed we were about this software at the time. His UIs were what got me really into software as a child. Bryce and Power Goo were absolutely life-changing to me. There was NO other software out there which was so accessible and so powerful, especially to a child. If you asked someone to make you a realistic looking 3D rendered image of an alien landscape or even just a regular earth-like landscape in 94/95, it would have been a hugely complex task requiring special skills and expensive, inaccessible software. I was around 12 at this time and I remember amazing my dad with my Bryce creations. A few years later I remember warezing Maya and having no idea how to do anything, I could barely make a single textured sphere in that program, it was so complex to use and the UI was not friendly to look at. My point being that the UI may look "cute" but it was friendly and accessible and it got people being creative, unlike other 3D tools at the time which were intimidating, complex, and incredibly hard to learn. I still don't believe there is a better tool out there for making 3D landscape art than Bryce, if there is, I'd love to hear about it. I suppose young people these days will just ask Stable Diffusion "make me a cool alien landscape"
- hulitu 3y ago
  It is not only that. Kai's power goo had the best resize algorithm i have ever seen.
munificent 3y ago
> 30 years later these look rather cute and twee. This sounds like a classic example of "Seinfeld isn't funny" or "The Beatles aren't original". Yes, Kai's look feels dated and overwrought. That's because when it came out, it was so radically innovative that it created a huge graphic design fad. It was emulating nothing, and it feels cute and twee because it was so successful that it's seared in everyone's consciousness. > Definitely part of that late 90s bright-colours-and-glass OMG Internet aesthetic It was one of the primary originators of that aesthetic. Our whole mental picture of the 90s would be very different without Kai Krause.
barnabee 3y ago
I’d still take it over almost every web “UI”.
Grazester 3y ago
I remembering getting into 3D Studio Max and then being told about Bryce for making pretty landscape art. I opened Bryce and it felt so playschool like and not in a good way for someone who was accustomed to 3D studio max interface and tools that allowed so much more. Bryce was geared towards particular used I guess.

mike_hock 3y ago

You mean the era when UIs actually looked good, before the hardware was up to the task, only to regress to a style more primitive than the 90s[1] not a second later than the hardware had become capable enough. [1] The era you speak of was the early 00s.

oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
I don't know what you mean by "looked good"; there's obviously a trade-off here between beauty and utility. To me, a UI "looks good" if I can immediately understand how it works, and if it presents the information in a meaningful way. To a layperson, that may look "not good"; they may prefer something with more color and detailed imagery that looks more like a real-world object, even if (possibly unbeknownst to them) it's harder to use. Of course, being able to understand how to use an interface is partly affected by what you're familiar with and, in turn, what you were exposed to in your formative years. For me, Windows 95 – early-OSX-era interfaces have 'the best' look.
- rerdavies 3y ago
  Why must there be a tradeoff between beauty and utility? (Particularly when Kai's UIs are a perfect example of exceptional beauty and exceptional utility. All that while being extraordinarily intuitive!).

JKCalhoun 3y ago

I agree, with the luxury of hindsight, that it was a rather garish era in UI. But looking back now at his Kai Power Tools (the first I heard of him) it is clear to me he was more responsible than anyone for kicking off that whole era of wacky UI that culminated/ended with brushed metal and Apple's Aqua. So kudos to Kai for having such an outsized influence on the UI of the time.

pixelgeek 3y ago
Back then we would talk about UI when we meant UX. The KPT plugins had a very odd visual design but the way that you could iterate patterns and processes on an image was unheard of. People also look at the designs that the filters made and didn't think about how they could be used as selection channels and other ways of manipulating an image. Kai's original work was about using selection channels in Photoshop to create stunning effects and while you could use his tools to create a background or a texture they could also be used to manipulate the colour and tone in images in really incredible ways.
- rerdavies 3y ago
  UI: the design of interface between software and users, with a significant body of research behind it. UX: the design of interface between software and users as defined by self-proclaimed experts with no significant body of research behind it. We most definitely did not mean UX when we talked about UI.

saberience 3y ago

I think you're being quite dismissive about what really was incredibly innovative and groundbreaking technology at the time. I went to an Apple Expo in London around the time Kai's Power Goo was released and the show floor around the MetaCreations stand was one of the busiest parts of the whole show. I'm talking about large crowds of people watching live demos of someone using Kai's Power Goo with dropped jaws. It's hard to explain how amazed we were about this software at the time. His UIs were what got me really into software as a child. Bryce and Power Goo were absolutely life-changing to me. There was NO other software out there which was so accessible and so powerful, especially to a child. If you asked someone to make you a realistic looking 3D rendered image of an alien landscape or even just a regular earth-like landscape in 94/95, it would have been a hugely complex task requiring special skills and expensive, inaccessible software. I was around 12 at this time and I remember amazing my dad with my Bryce creations. A few years later I remember warezing Maya and having no idea how to do anything, I could barely make a single textured sphere in that program, it was so complex to use and the UI was not friendly to look at. My point being that the UI may look "cute" but it was friendly and accessible and it got people being creative, unlike other 3D tools at the time which were intimidating, complex, and incredibly hard to learn. I still don't believe there is a better tool out there for making 3D landscape art than Bryce, if there is, I'd love to hear about it. I suppose young people these days will just ask Stable Diffusion "make me a cool alien landscape"

hulitu 3y ago
It is not only that. Kai's power goo had the best resize algorithm i have ever seen.

munificent 3y ago

> 30 years later these look rather cute and twee. This sounds like a classic example of "Seinfeld isn't funny" or "The Beatles aren't original". Yes, Kai's look feels dated and overwrought. That's because when it came out, it was so radically innovative that it created a huge graphic design fad. It was emulating nothing, and it feels cute and twee because it was so successful that it's seared in everyone's consciousness. > Definitely part of that late 90s bright-colours-and-glass OMG Internet aesthetic It was one of the primary originators of that aesthetic. Our whole mental picture of the 90s would be very different without Kai Krause.

barnabee 3y ago

I’d still take it over almost every web “UI”.

Grazester 3y ago

I remembering getting into 3D Studio Max and then being told about Bryce for making pretty landscape art. I opened Bryce and it felt so playschool like and not in a good way for someone who was accustomed to 3D studio max interface and tools that allowed so much more. Bryce was geared towards particular used I guess.