Nothing Real L.L.C was a company founded in October 1996 by Allen Edwards and Arnaud Hervas which developed high-end digital effects

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

for the feature film, broadcast and interactive gaming industries. It was purchased in February 2002 by

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

for its flagship digital effects software, Shake.Macworld , Apple buys Nothing Real
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History

In 1996, Allen Edwards and Arnaud Hervas founded Nothing Real, and released Shake 1.0 as a

command-line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternativ ...

tool for image processing to high-end visual effects facilities in early 1997. Edwards and Hervas met in 1990 working in the R&D of Thomson Digital Images, a Paris company and maker of Explore, a 3D software. In 1993, they were among the early employees at Sony Pictures Imageworks in Los Angeles, and later worked at early Weta in New Zealand on the film "The Frighteners" for

Peter Jackson Sir Peter Robert Jackson (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand filmmaker. He is best known as the director, writer, and producer of the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy (2001–2003) and the ''Hobbit'' trilogy (2012–2014), both of which ar ...

. Their experiences from both the software development and user sides led them to begin development of Shake as a high-speed, high-quality tool specifically designed for the feature film visual effects industry. Emmanuel Mogenet joined the R&D as a senior developer in the summer of 1997 as Shake 2.0 was being rewritten with a full

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

. In the fall of 1997, Dan Candela (R&D), Louis Cetorelli (head of support) and Peter Warner (designer/expert user) were added to the team. After initially working as a consultant in early 1998, Ron Brinkmann also joined that spring as product manager. This core group were all among the original Sony Imageworks employees. Shake 2.0 was first shown at the 1998 NAB conference as an

alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...

demo with a minimal set of nodes, a node view and the player. A more complete

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

version of Shake 2.0 was shown at the 1998

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

conference. Version 2 was released in early 1999 for

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

and

IRIX IRIX (, ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS architecture, MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD extensio ...

, costing $9900 US per license, or $3900 for a render-only license. Over the next few years, Shake rapidly became the standard

compositing Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live action, Live-action shooting for compositing ...

software in the visual effects industry for feature films. In 2000, Shake version 2.1 cost

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9,900 plus an annual maintenance fee of approximately US$1,500. The additional render-only license cost US$3,900. The software was available for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Irix IRIX (, ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS architecture, MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD extensio ...

and

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

's purchase of Nothing Real in 2002 changed the way in which Shake was marketed and sold. Apple released Shake for

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and lowered the price to US$4,950 with an annual maintenance fee of US$1,199. Apple continued to lower Shake's price over the years. In 2006, Apple released Shake 4.1 for US$499 with no annual maintenance fee. On July 30, 2009, Apple discontinued Shake.

Corporate facts

*Nothing Real was headquartered in Venice Beach,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

References

External links

Coverage discussing Tremor from The Register
{{Apple Software companies established in 1996 Apple Inc. software Apple Inc. acquisitions 2002 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States