When I used it (gasp, on a Mac) was around 96 to 97 but most likely we just had an old version, didn’t really have much of a budget.
I recall in college playing with a program called 3D Studio Max. Could do crazy cool stuff in it but the learning curve was steep and this was just a free time playing around thing.
Of course everyone had the full suite of adobe stuff, pretty much just for the sake of it. I tried doing some videos in After Effects and that was also very complex to learn, never got very far with it. I’m sure I only ever brushed the surface of what Photoshop could do too.
probably was only available on a Mac. For a long time none of those were available on Windows mostly due to font incompatibility. Fonts are still an issue on Windows machines especially in the printing industry. That’s the main reason Mac dominates it.
Tried and gave it up for the same reason, to complex. Developed by programmers without iser input.
Yes, it’s very powerful and even myself can’t say I have fully mastered it. Many have tried to replace it without success. Nothing like it exists on the market. Knoll brothers developed a classic and everlasting masterpiece.
Guess it depends on how many cams you have. Unlimited cams can often be gotten for $99 a year. Single cams if you pay a year at a time are like $30 to $40 I think.