Low Poly Pictures

History · Updated October 16, 2026

The story of 3D Movie Maker, 1995 to today

If you were a kid in the late 90s, there's a good chance you made a movie in it: a city street, a couple of stiff-legged actors, a sound effect played one too many times, and a frame counter that climbed with every step. This is the story of Microsoft's 1995 movie maker for kids, the fans who kept it alive for thirty years, and how it ended up open source and running in a browser.

At a glance

1995: a movie studio in a box

3D Movie Maker came out in the fall of 1995 as part of Microsoft's line of creative programs for kids. Instead of menus, it opened on a place: Imaginopolis, and a 3D Theater building with a ticket booth, a lobby, a theater, a backstage area, an Ideas Room and the studio itself. You didn't open a file; you walked up to the booth and were asked whether you wanted to make a movie or watch one.

The studio worked unlike anything else at the time. You picked one of the pre-rendered sets, dropped in a 3D actor, chose an action like Walk or Dance, and dragged the actor across the stage. Every step became a frame. Movies played at six frames per second, in 256 colours, at 640 × 480 pixels, which is exactly why they look the way people remember. Then you added sound effects, music, 3D titles and, if your computer had a microphone, your own voice.

A few details people tend to forget:

The alien in charge

Ask anyone who used it and they'll mention the host: McZee, the lanky alien who greeted you at the ticket booth and showed you around (purple or blue, depending on who you ask). McZee also appeared in other Microsoft Kids programs such as Creative Writer. His voice was Michael Shapiro, who later voiced the G-Man in Half-Life. Melanie, his assistant, ran the Projects Room tutorials.

He's part of the 1995 program, so in Low Poly Pictures McZee still greets you at the ticket booth, just as he did back then.

The fans who never stopped

The program was never updated, but it never quite went away either. Fan sites and forums have been sharing movies, tips and tools for decades. Fan-made add-ons such as V3DMM (2004) let people bring in new actors and sets. A whole generation of fan movies ended up on early video sites like YouTube and Newgrounds, and the program's stiff, low-poly look became a style people love to this day.

Keeping it running got harder with every Windows version. Fans traded tips for colour settings, compatibility modes and odd errors like "Oops, we can't get information from a file." For most people, though, the CD simply stopped working, and the movies they'd made stayed on old hard drives.

2022: Microsoft opens the source

In April 2022 the software preservationist Alice Averlong publicly asked Microsoft to release the source code. A month later, in early May 2022, Microsoft's Scott Hanselman announced that it had: the Microsoft 3D Movie Maker repository on GitHub, under the MIT License. It contained the 1995 source code and the content: actors, sets, sounds, music and videos. A few things were removed because Microsoft couldn't license them, including the Comic Sans font files and a third-party 3D toolkit. Argonaut's BRender engine was included with permission.

The news made the rounds, from the front page of Hacker News to tech sites. Alice Averlong started 3DMMForever right away to make the code build with modern tools.

2024 to 2026: 3DMMEx brings it to modern computers

In late 2024 Ben Stone started 3DMMEx, a community version that keeps movies compatible with the original while making it run natively on today's systems. Over the next two years he and contributors including Mark Cave-Ayland added high-quality sound import (2024), 64-bit Windows (2025), a new cross-platform front end with Linux and Windows on ARM (April 2026), MP3 import (May 2026) and an Apple Silicon Mac build (August 2026).

2026: in your browser

Low Poly Pictures launched in October 2026. It takes the 3DMMEx engine and compiles it to WebAssembly, so the original 1995 program runs in a browser tab: the same actors, sets, sounds and music, and the same movie files. Movies you made in the 90s open and play. On top of that it adds what a browser needs: saving in the browser, downloads, video and GIF export, an optional HD look with smooth colours and sharper sets, and sharp scaling at any window size. Nothing to install, and it works on Windows, Mac, Chromebook and Linux.

Make a movie

Thank you

To the original team at Microsoft and the studios that made the content; to Argonaut for BRender; to Microsoft for releasing it all as open source; to Alice Averlong and the 3DMMForever contributors; to Ben Stone, Mark Cave-Ayland and the 3DMMEx contributors; and to thirty years of fans. Full credits are on the About page and every license is on the Licenses page.

Low Poly Pictures is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Microsoft and 3D Movie Maker are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

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