 | |
| Formerly |
|
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1983; 43 years ago (1983) inToronto, Ontario |
| Founders |
|
| Defunct | 2006 (2006) |
| Fate | Acquired byAutodesk |
Alias Systems Corporation (formerlyAlias Research,Alias|Wavefront), headquartered inToronto, Ontario, Canada, was asoftware company that produced high-end3D graphics software. Alias was eventually bought byAutodesk.
Alias Systems Corporation was founded by Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna, and David Springer in 1983.[1] The company was initially funded by a $61,000 grant from theNational Research Council, scientific research tax credits, and the founders personal funds.[1]
In 1984, while sitting in a Detroit restaurant during theSIGGRAPH conference, the founders decided to name the company Alias because its only revenue came from Springer's work on an anti-aliasing program forSilicon Graphics, Inc.[1]In 1985, at SIGGRAPH, the company released Alias 1, which usedcardinal splines instead ofpolygon meshes with straight lines.[1]In 1989, Alias 2 was used to produceThe Abyss which would later win the 1990Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.[1]In 1990, Alias raised about $35 million (equivalent to $73.3 million in 2025) through aninitial public offering. That year, Alias also released new products named Studio,Alias PowerAnimator, and UpFront. The company purchased Spacemaker, separate and distinct to Spacemaker AI which was purchased byAutodesk in 2020.[2] PowerAnimator was used to produceTerminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which won the 1992Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.[1]
In October 1990, the company purchased Full Color Computing, Inc., a provider of high-end photo retouch and color prepress software.
In 1995, Alias begins developingMaya. Maya would later become the world's premier 3D animation software.[1]
On February 7, 1995,Wavefront, SGI, and Alias merged to become Alias|Wavefront as a division of SGI. What partially motivated this merger wasMicrosoft's purchase of Alias and Wavefront's competitorSoftimage. SGI saw Microsoft's entrance into the market as a threat and merged Alias and Wavefront to compete with Microsoft.[1] In 1998, Alias|Wavefront released Maya 1.0.[1]
On March 1, 2003, the company was honored by theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with anAcademy Award (Oscar) for scientific and technical achievement for their development of Maya software.Wavefront Technologies foundersBill Kovacs and Roy A. Hall previously received a 1997 Academy Award for the creative leadership (Kovacs) and the principal engineering (Hall) efforts which led to theWavefront Advanced Visualizer computer graphics system.
Later, in July 2003, the company's name was changed fromAlias|Wavefront toAlias Systems Corporation.[3] In June 2004, Silicon Graphics sold Alias to theOntario Teachers' Pension Plan and Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity investment firm, forUS$57.1 million.[4]
In September 2004, Alias acquired Kaydara, adding the company's character animation and motion editing products to Alias' line of software.[5]
On October 4, 2005,Autodesk, announced plans to acquire Alias.[6][7] On January 10, 2006, Autodesk completed the acquisition for US$197 million in cash.[8]
Alias' best-known product, the 3D modeling and animation packageAlias Maya, was delivered in 1998 and has released a major upgrade every 9–12 months. The last release made by Alias was Maya 7.0. Since the purchase by Autodesk all versions after 8.5 use a year-based naming convention, such as Maya2008.
Other products include; the industrial design packageStudioTools (formerly known as Studio, or just "Alias"), which is used extensively in the automotive, aerospace and industrial design industries, a 2D drawing and sketching application calledSketchBook Pro, and in 1992, an early Macintosh based 3D modelling and rendering package called Sketch![9] which was the precursor of Alias Maya. Sketch provided the basis of the corenon-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) editing tools, which in turn was based on a product that the company bought, and its key developer went to work for Alias.
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