Alias Systems Corporation (formerly Alias Research, Alias|Wavefront), headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was a software company that produced high-end 3D graphics software. Alias was eventually bought by Autodesk.

History

Alias Systems Corporation was founded by Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna, and David Springer in 1983.

In 1984, while sitting in a Detroit restaurant during the SIGGRAPH 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. PowerAnimator was used to produce Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which won the 1992 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. In June 2004, Silicon Graphics sold Alias to

the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity investment firm, for US$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, Autodesk, 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 Alias 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 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 (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

  • Autodesk AliasStudio product page
  • Autodesk Alias support page
  • Company history

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