Week Three - 3D History

While watching the video “Messing around in 3d Studio R4…” I started to feel very thankful for Blender. In the video, the user has to edit their 3D object in 2D space and then periodically make 3D renders of it to check their progress. I assume this is because the program, or more specifically, the computers it was used on did not have enough computing power to constantly render 3D objects and show them to the user as Blender and Unity do now. 
3DS 4 does have some of the same features that are still in blender such as the creation of circle meshes, the creation of box meshes through a tool, the editing of single vertexes in a shape, and the editing of the normals of a shape.
From what I can tell, 3DS 4 came out in 1993, the same year as DOOM and MYST, which puts the graphics of those games, especially MYST, even more into perspective.
As for other 3D modeling tools, there are various ones. I have used Autodesk Inventor in the past for rocking up engineering projects and things to be printed on a 3D printer. This program is generally used for what are normally considered less artistic projects than the ones that are commonly done through Maya or Blender. Inventor does not allow for easy sculpting but will let you stress test materials and joints and constrain objects in various ways, as well as generate dimensioned drawings of them. Another 3D modeling program is Z-Brush. I have commonly heard of Z-Brush being used for very detailed surfaces with many polygons such as creating character faces or detailed models.