how would you make something like these old aqua wallpapers? 3d rendering? vector and gradients? i'm curious what the most "period correct" way would be. for that matter, what about the icons? the tutorials on how to make "aqua-like" pill buttons always felt wrong because the shading never quite followed the contour of the shape. how were they done back then, is it all hand-painted or is there a rendering technique i don't know about?
aha! looks like they WERE in fact 3D rendered! even to the point of using a human figure as an origin point for the camera to make it look like you were actually looking at a desk top
source: https://blog.cocoia.com/2008/the-origin-of-the-inimitable-icons/
@thedaemon is that the name of the program?
CC: @mavica_again@computerfairi.es
@thedaemon here's the original page where that was scraped from, btw :) https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/cinema4d-xl-7
@thedaemon it's hard to tell at that resolution
i wish i could find any other source about this, but it was this hard enough to find out definitively that at least the OS X icons were actually 3D rendered and not vector gradients like everybody tries to imitate them with
@mavica_again @thedaemon This is news to me, I can't wait till tonight when I can pore over all this 🤩
