But this more than any other invention democratized visual effects and made them mainstream not just for high-budget films, but for television, as well. It was the 90s, so you’d need some video tape recorders and a controller since all this beauty would be going to video tape. The Video Toaster was a complete bundle: a full-sized card to add video connections, a real-time four-channel video switcher, a bundled LightWave 3D modeling / rendering / animation package, frame buffer-based effects, character generation, overlays, animated transitions – the works. And the Amiga’s innovative on-board graphics chipset helped, too. Oh yeah, bonus – the Amiga’s system clock ran conveniently at double the NTSC color carrier frequency for easy sync.
AMIGA LIGHTWAVE 3D PRO
(Even in 2023 dollars, that’s only $5,470.53, or roughly the price of a set of Apple Pro wheels and a video cable or whatever.) You would need an Amiga 2000, but even that was not a wildly expensive machine at the time. Announced in 1987, the first edition was a US$2399 Amiga add-on – an insanely low price given six-digit costs of broadcast rigs at the time. NewTek founder Tim Jenison loved Vermeer and designed the first edition, with Brad Carvey (who also worked on Men In Black VFX) building the prototype.
So, a very brief history of the Video Toaster.
(Of course you recognize a Vorlon spacecraft already!) Also, way to not underestimate your audience or talk down. That video is doubly significant as it coincides with the native edition of LightWave3D.
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