I fell in love with 3D Studio in the 90's. It was so intuitive to use compared to Lightwave3D for someone who didn't know what they were doing, but very curious and wanting to learn. A big challenge was getting it to run in windows 3.1 when that was released, but it did. Ah, and having to create a RAM drive to put the video into so you could actually watch it in real time without buffering at 320x200 (i386 days).
FWIW: John left in 1994 (same year I did) and technically Autodesk had acquired 3D Studio in 1990, though the Yost group was still developing it, so acquired is a generous term. The product was sold through Autodesk's dealer channels. The branding and marketing was all Autodesk.
John had little to nothing to do with 3D studio however, there was a mild competition within the company with two different 3D rendering (Autoshade and 3D Studio) products. I worked on both, moving from AutoFlix development to helping the Yost group test and market 3D Studio.
