The renders were blocky. The math was sloppy. The design was gaudy. But for five glorious years, if you wanted to see a video fold itself into an origami bird and fly into the next shot, there was only one place to go.
Before HFX, mapping video to a 3D object was voodoo. After HFX, it was a slider. This directly influenced the rise of Adobe After Effects' 3D Layer system and Apple Motion's behaviors . The idea that a 2D video clip has X, Y, and Z coordinates became common sense because Pinnacle forced it into the consumer lexicon.
And yet, it worked.
This is the story of the software that turned the PCI bus into a magic carpet. To understand Hollywood FX, you must understand the technical hellscape of the mid-1990s.