Alias Systems Corporation (formerly Alias Research, Alias, Wavefront), headquartered in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario, Canada, was a

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 ...

company that produced high-end

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the purposes of perfor ...

software. Alias was eventually bought by

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

History

Alias Systems Corporation was founded by Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna, and David Springer in 1983. The company was initially funded by a $61,000 grant from the National Research Council, scientific research tax credits, and the founders personal funds. In 1984, while sitting in a Detroit restaurant during the

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, the founders decided to name the company Alias because its only revenue came from Springer's work on an anti-aliasing program for Silicon Graphics, Inc. In 1985, at SIGGRAPH, the company released Alias 1, which used

cardinal spline In numerical analysis, a cubic Hermite spline or cubic Hermite interpolator is a spline (mathematics), spline where each piece is a third-degree polynomial specified in Hermite interpolation, Hermite form, that is, by its values and first derivat ...

s instead of

polygon mesh In 3D computer graphics and solid modeling, a polygon mesh is a collection of , s and s that defines the shape of a polyhedron, polyhedral object's surface. It simplifies Rendering (computer graphics), rendering, as in a wire-frame model. The fac ...

es with straight lines. In 1989, Alias 2 was used to produce ''

The Abyss ''The Abyss'' is a 1989 American science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. When an American submarine sinks in the Caribbean, a US search and recovery tea ...

'' which would later win the 1990

Academy Award for Best Visual Effects The Academy Award for Best Visual Effects is presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the best achievement in visual effects. It has been handed to four members of the team directly responsible for creatin ...

. In 1990, Alias raised about $35 million (equivalent to $ million in ) through an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

. That year, Alias also released new products named Studio,

PowerAnimator PowerAnimator and Animator, also referred to simply as "Alias", the precursor to what is now Maya and StudioTools, is a highly integrated industrial 3D modeling, animation, and visual effects suite. It had a relatively long track record, starting ...

, and UpFront. The company purchased Spacemaker, separate and distinct to Spacemaker AI which was purchased by

in 2020. PowerAnimator was used to produce '' Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' (1991), which won the 1992

. 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 developing

Maya Maya may refer to: Ethnic groups * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Mayan languages, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (East Africa), a p ...

. Maya would later become the world's premier 3D animation software. On February 7, 1995,

Wavefront In physics, the wavefront of a time-varying ''wave field (physics), field'' is the set (locus (mathematics), locus) of all point (geometry), points having the same ''phase (waves), phase''. The term is generally meaningful only for fields that, a ...

, SGI, and Alias merged to become Alias, Wavefront as a division of SGI. What partially motivated this merger was

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

's purchase of Alias and Wavefront's competitor Softimage. SGI saw Microsoft's entrance into the market as a threat and merged Alias and Wavefront to compete with Microsoft. In 1998, Alias, Wavefront released Maya 1.0. On March 1, 2003, the company was honored by the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., with the stated goal of adva ...

with an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

(Oscar) for scientific and technical achievement for their development of Maya software.

Wavefront Technologies Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold computer animation, animation software used in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film, motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barba ...

founders Bill 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 the Wavefront Advanced Visualizer computer graphics system. Later, in July 2003, the company's name was changed from ''Alias, Wavefront'' to ''Alias Systems Corporation''. In June 2004, Silicon Graphics sold Alias to the

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board () is an independent organization responsible for administering defined benefit pension plan, defined-benefit pensions for school teachers of the provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of ...

and Accel- KKR, a technology-focused private equity investment firm, for

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

57.1 million. In September 2004, Alias acquired Kaydara, adding the company's character animation and motion editing products to Alias' line of software. On October 4, 2005,

, announced plans to acquire Alias. On January 10, 2006, Autodesk completed the acquisition for US$197 million in cash.

Products

Alias' best-known product, the 3D modeling and animation package

, 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 package StudioTools (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 called SketchBook Pro, and in 1992, an early Macintosh based 3D modelling and rendering package called Sketch! which was the precursor of Alias Maya. Sketch provided the basis of the core

non-uniform rational B-spline Non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) is a mathematical model using B-spline, basis splines (B-splines) that is commonly used in computer graphics for representing curves and Surface (mathematics), surfaces. It offers great flexibility and pr ...

(NURBS) editing tools, which in turn was based on a product that the company bought, and its key developer went to work for Alias.

References

External links

Autodesk AliasStudio product page

Autodesk Alias support page

Company history
{{Authority control Software companies established in 1995 Computer graphics organizations Companies based in Toronto Autodesk 1995 establishments in Ontario 2006 mergers and acquisitions Software companies disestablished in 2006 2006 disestablishments in Ontario Recipients of the Scientific and Technical Academy Award of Merit Defunct software companies of Canada Silicon Graphics