Alias (company)
Alias Systems Corporation is a Canadian software company based in Toronto , which has made a name for itself in the development of 3D software. Founded in 1983 as Alias Research and 1984 as Wavefront Technologies , the companies merged in 1995 under the umbrella of Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) to form Alias | Wavefront and are now called Alias®.
Company history
1983-1989
Alias was founded in 1983 by Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna and David Springer. The name (1984 at a SIGGRAPH conference) comes from anti-aliasing , as they offered anti-aliasing software for SGI users at the time. In 1984, Wavefront Technologies was founded in Santa Barbara, California by Mark Sylvester, Larry Barels and Bill Kovacs because they could not find suitable software for creating computer graphics in film and television.
In 1985, Alias entered into an important collaboration with General Motors in which the young company was supposed to develop an integration of NURBS in General Motors' spline- based CAD application.
Alias wanted to use SGI's high-performance computers for its application and therefore got in touch with SGI. SGI suspected that every time an application was sold by Alias, the customer would also buy one of their computers. SGI thus became the main hardware supplier for Alias and its customers. Apart from General Motors, smaller production houses, Kraft Foods and Motorola were important customers of Alias until 1986 . Alias won $ 400,000 in 1986 for computer-controlled television equipment that would allow the world to see what the Hubble Space Telescope sees from space. In 1985 Alias released software ( Alias / 1 ) which - based on cardinal splines - created lines and surfaces that were much more precise than was possible with polygons. The second version, Alias / 2 , released in 1986, was groundbreaking in the area of Computer-Aided Industrial Design (CAID).
Alias / 2 was a huge success for the company and in 1988 it was used by many large companies in the auto and entertainment industries. Steve Williams (Alias) moved to Industrial Light & Magic (ILM ) in 1989 and was involved in the creation of the creatures for the film Abyss . The B-spline technique from Alias 2.4 was used for modeling (on SGI workstations).
1990-1999
In 1990 Alias introduced AliasStudio and PowerAnimator . ILM used the PowerAnimator to create the chrome copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 - Judgment Day . In comparison, Schwarzenegger was $ 200,000 a minute and the digital copy was $ 460,000 a minute.
IBM bought shares in Wavefront because IBM wanted to gain a foothold in the field of film and industrial design , which until then had been determined by SGI computers. Wavefront brought out the Composer (mixing and special effects) in 1991 , while Alias made its software available to Mac and Windows users.
In 1992 AutoStudios (creating car designs) from Alias and Kinemation (3D character animation system) and Dynamation (editing movie scenes) from Wavefront were released. In 1993, in close cooperation with the car manufacturer Ford , StudioPaint (now integrated in StudioTools ) was created, a drawing program specially designed for sketching and rendering vehicles.
In 1993 development began on Maya , the successor to PowerAnimator, which at that time was used by ILM for the visual effects in Jurassic Park .
In 1995 it was decided to merge Alias and Wavefront Technologies . The company has since been known as Alias | Wavefront . In July 2003, the renaming of "Alias | Wavefront" to "Alias" was announced.
takeover
The company recently made around 80 million US dollars in annual sales (as of 2004/2005). On 4 October 2005, a purchase agreement for 128 million dollars for the previously privately held shares of the company was the listed company Autodesk Inc. signed. On January 10, 2006, Alias was acquired by Autodesk Inc. for $ 197 million.
Products
Maya
For Maya , a NURBS -based visualization program for 3D animations and visual effects, Alias was the first Canadian company to receive the Good Design Award from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2003. In March 2003 Alias | Wavefront was also awarded the Technical Achievement Oscar in Los Angeles for the development of the Maya software and its 3D animation and effects package . The software is used in numerous Hollywood productions in the area of special effects , game development, advertising and the production of interactive 3D content.
StudioTools
Another successful product from Alias was StudioTools , the leading CAID ( Computer-Aided Industrial Design ) software for automobile manufacturers and industrial designers. Rhinoceros 3D and ICEM Surf are direct competitors in this area . As part of the takeover by Autodesk, the StudioTools were initially renamed Autodesk AliasStudio, before being split up into the products Autodesk Alias Automotive , Autodesk Alias Design and Autodesk Alias Surface .
SketchBook Pro
SketchBook Pro is a drawing and sketching program that is specially designed for intuitive operation with a graphics tablet or tablet PC . All important functions can be called up in an area at the bottom left / right of the work surface using marking menus . With the help of pressure-sensitive tools such as a digital pencil, airbrush and other important sketching tools, this program can be used to create digital sketches and to quickly visualize ideas and conceptual designs. Advantages of digital sketches include working with layers and almost unlimited repeatable erasing and undoing. Alias SketchBook Pro has received multiple awards from the trade press, including Macworld and Computer Graphics World for innovation .
Since the takeover, SketchBook Pro is no longer sold under the Alias brand, but only as Autodesk SketchBook Pro .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Press release: Autodesk completes acquisition of Alias ( Memento of December 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Technical Achievement Oscar