Bio of Chris Egerter - co-founder and principal of Egerter Software

Egerter Software was formed in 1992 by two brothers, Barry and Chris Egerter.  After working on several freeware games using STOS by François Lionet on the Atari ST, Chris moved to the PC platform and found there were no similar tools available. 

Once learning how VGA and SVGA 2D graphics were made on the PC, the brothers quickly set out to make a set of tools that could be used to create realtime graphics.  The WordUp Graphics Toolkit (WGT) was born, which included a sprite editor, tiled map editor, and a set of libraries for displaying graphical content.  The toolkit was available for Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, and later Watcom (using DOS4GW) and MSVC.  It was a huge success since nothing like it was previously available.

At this time Chris took interest in the demo scene, which allowed unlimited creativity.  From 1994 to 1997, Chris created 7 demos while learning assembly and 3D graphics.  Most of these were released under the Kosmic Free Music Foundation label (KFMF), which was group of musicians that produced free music.   Trip was the first known demo to run on Windows using DirectX, an impressive achievement that paved the way for future artists.

In addition to non-interactive demos, several Winamp Plugins were created which react to music in realtime.  These included the now famous Dancing Can, which was the first 3D Winamp plugin ever created (but only worked on early 3Dfx cards), and Rave which has been used by DJ's in actual raves.

In the process of creating demos and visualizers, a new 3D engine was born which could be used across many of the productions.  This engine became known as Power Render, and 7 years later has dropped its demo scene roots and has become a full blown general purpose commercial 3D engine used in many fields.  Power Render is now used for computer games, screen savers, military simulations, architectural walkthroughs, theme park rides, museum exhibits, and many other unique applications. Power Render is now in the developmental phase of the 7th major version.

Power Render has been an important piece of software with over a 10 year history.  It was available before DirectX and OpenGL were used for PC graphics.  It has seen many hardware and software companies come and go (ie 3Dfx, and countless 3D engines).  It has constantly grown and embraced new rendering technology as it becomes available.  The flexibility and scalability of Power Render is simply unmatched. 

Other credits:

Power Render 3D Engine (you are here)
Lead programmer, Adventure Pinball, developed Digital Extremes and published by EA
Lead programmer, Dunamis fighting game, Century 3 Universal Studios (cancelled, c'est la vie)
Contract work for Vivendi Universal (tools), Activision (Heavy Gear)
Flip 'Em 3D
Wordup Graphics Toolkit
World Quest
Demos: GooRoo Nation, Flight, Santro, Egg Music Disk, Little Green Men, Dragon, Dreams, Trip, Dance Move Shake
Winamp Visualizers: Dancing Can, Rave, ToonAmp, Dance Floor
Celldweller Remix Competition, Top 15 in Round 1
Celldweller Remix Competition, Top 15 in Round 2