Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a division of

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

which offers animation and visual effects products, and was formed by the combination of multiple acquisitions. In 2018, the company began operating as a single operating segment and reporting unit.

History

Discreet Logic

Montreal-based Discreet Logic was founded in 1991 by former Softimage Company sales director Richard Szalwinski, to commercialize the 2D compositor Eddie, licensed from Australian production company

Animal Logic Animal Logic is an Australian animation and visual effects digital studio based at Disney Studios in Sydney, New South Wales in Australia, Vancouver in Canada, and Rideback Ranch in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1991, Animal Logic has ...

. Eddie was associated with Australian software engineer Bruno Nicoletti, who later founded

visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action foota ...

software company The Foundry, in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, England. In 1992, Discreet Logic entered into a European distribution agreement with Softimage, and shifted its focus on Flame, one of the first software-only image compositing products, developed by Australian Gary Tregaskis. Flame, which was originally named Flash, was first shown at NAB in 1992, ran on the

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and sof ...

platform, and became the company's

flagship product A core product or flagship product is a company's primary promotion, service or product that can be purchased by a consumer. Core products may be integrated into end products, either by the company producing the core product or by other companies ...

. In July 1995, Discreet Logic's

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 investme ...

raised about US$40 million. On May 26, 1995, the company acquired the assets of Brughetti Corporation for about CDN$1 million, and in October acquired Computer-und Serviceverwaltungs AG, located in Innsbruck, Austria and some software from Innovative Medientechnik-und Planungs-GmbH in

Geltendorf Geltendorf is a municipality in the district of Landsberg in Bavaria, Germany. World heritage site It is home to one or more prehistoric pile-dwelling (or stilt house) settlements that are part of the Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps ...

, Germany. After a 2-for-1

stock split A stock split or stock divide increases the number of shares in a company. For example, after a 2-for-1 split, each investor will own double the number of shares, and each share will be worth half as much. A stock split causes a decrease of mark ...

on October 16, 1995, a secondary offering in December 1995 raised an additional $28 million. On April 15, Discreet invested $2.5 million in privately held Essential Communications Corporation.

Kinetix

Autodesk originally created a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

multimedia unit in 1996 under the name Kinetix to publish

3D Studio Max Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capab ...

, a product developed by The

Yost Group Yost may refer to: Buildings * Yost Ice Arena, the University of Michigan ice hockey arena *Yost Tavern, a historic building in Montgomery, Ohio *Yost Theater, a historic theater in Santa Ana, California Places in the United States *Yost, Virgi ...

. In August 1998, Autodesk announced plans to acquire Discreet Logic and its intent to combine that operation with Kinetix. At the time, it was its largest acquisition, valued at about $410 million by the time it closed in March 1999 (down from an estimated $520 million when announced). The new business unit was named the Discreet division. The combined Discreet-branded product catalog then encompassed all the Discreet Logic products, including Flame, Flint, Fire, Smoke, Effect, Edit, and Kinetix's product, including

, Lightscape,

Character Studio Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics software, 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, 3D models, models, 3D computer game, games and 3D rendering, images. It is developed ...

Media and Entertainment

In March 2005, Autodesk renamed its business unit Autodesk Media and Entertainment and discontinued the Discreet brand (still headquartered in Montreal). Through the years, Autodesk augmented its entertainment division with many other acquisitions. One of the most significant was in October 2005, when Autodesk acquired Toronto-based

Alias Systems Corporation 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 Syste ...

for an estimated $182 million from

Accel-KKR Accel-KKR is an American technology-focused private equity firm with over $14 billion in total assets under management. The firm invests primarily in middle-market software and technology-enabled services businesses, providing capital for buyo ...

, and merged its animation business into its entertainment division. Alias had been part of SGI until 2004. In 2008, it acquired technology of the former Softimage Company from

Avid Technology Avid Technology is an American technology and multimedia company based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and founded in August 1987 by Bill Warner. It specialises in audio and video; specifically, digital non-linear editing (NLE) systems, video edi ...

. In 2011, Autodesk acquired image tools and utilities that use

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

called

Pixlr Pixlr is a cloud-based set of image editing tools and utilities, including a number of photo editors and a photo sharing service. It was acquired by Autodesk in 2011. The suite is intended from the range of simple to advanced photo editing. It ...

Industry usage

By 2011, these products were used in films that won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for 16 consecutive years. Much of ''

Avatar Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appeara ...

s visual effects were created with Autodesk media and entertainment software. Autodesk software enabled ''Avatar'' director James Cameron to aim a camera at actors wearing motion-capture suits in a studio and see them as characters in the fictional world of Pandora in the film. Autodesk software also played a role in the visual effects of '' Alice in Wonderland'', '' The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'', ''

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1'' is a 2010 fantasy film directed by David Yates from a screenplay by Steve Kloves. The film is the first of two cinematic parts based on the 2007 novel ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow ...

'', ''

Inception ''Inception'' is a 2010 science fiction action film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced the film with Emma Thomas, his wife. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infi ...

'', ''

Iron Man 2 ''Iron Man 2'' is a 2010 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Iron Man. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures, it is the sequel to '' Iron Man'' (2008) and the third film in the Marvel ...

'', ''King Kong'', ''Gladiator'', ''

Titanic RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, Unit ...

'', ''Life of Pi'', ''Hugo'', '' The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn'' and other films. In November 2010,

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', ...

announced that Autodesk's 3D gaming technology was used in '' Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood''.

Products

The division's products include

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...

3ds Max Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling cap ...

(the new name of 3D Studio Max),

Softimage Autodesk Softimage, or simply Softimage () was a 3D computer graphics application, for producing 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling, and computer animation. Now owned by Autodesk and formerly titled Softimage, XSI, the software has been predomi ...

Mudbox Mudbox is a proprietary {{Short pages monitor * Autodesk Smoke - non-linear video editing software that integrates with Flame. When sold as a turnkey system, e.g. with an IBM Linux workstation, 2004 pricing started at US$68,000. A version for Mac OS X was announced in 2009, initially priced at US$14,995.

Creative finishing

;IFF Flame, Flint and Inferno (collectively known as IFF) is a series of

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 is ...

and

applications originally created for

MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...

computers from

(SGI), running Irix. Flame was first released in January 1993; by mid-1995, it had become a market leader in visual effects software, with a price around US$175,000, or US$450,000 with a Silicon Graphics workstation. Time with the software was typically rented at a post-production house with an operator. The Flame software is licensed in a variety of forms, including Flint, a lower-priced version of Flame with fewer functions, and Inferno, introduced in 1995, a version intended for the film market, with a price of about US$225,000 without hardware. Traditionally

Inferno Inferno may refer to: * Hell, an afterlife place of suffering * Conflagration, a large uncontrolled fire Film * ''L'Inferno'', a 1911 Italian film * Inferno (1953 film), ''Inferno'' (1953 film), a film noir by Roy Ward Baker * Inferno (1973 fi ...

ran on the

SGI Onyx SGI Onyx is a series of visualization systems designed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in 1993 and offered in two models, deskside and rackmount, codenamed Eveready and Terminator respectively. The Onyx's basic system architecture is base ...

series, while Flame and Flint ran on SGI Indigo² and Octane workstations. Flame/Inferno were implemented on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

in 2006. Autodesk said the use of more powerful hardware allowed complex 3D composites to be rendered more than 20 times faster than on the previous SGI workstations. The first movie to use Flame was ''Super Mario Bros.''; the software was then still in beta. The software also saw use on PBS's 1995 graphics package, designed by PMcD Design and animated by Tape House Digital. In the 1998

Academy Scientific and Technical Award The Scientific and Technical Awards are three different Honorary Awards that are given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) during the annual Academy Awards season. The Awards have been presented since the 4th Academy Awards ...

s Gary Tregaskis (design), Dominique Boisvert, Phillippe Panzini and Andre Le Blanc (development and implementation) received a Scientific and Engineering Award for Inferno and Flame. ;Flare Flare, a software-only subset of Flame for creative assistants, was introduced in 2009 at around one-fifth the cost of a full-featured Flame seat. ;Lustre Lustre is color grading

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

originally developed by Mark Jaszberenyi, Gyula Priskin and Tamas Perlaki at Colorfront in Hungary. The application was first packaged as a plugin for Flame product under the name "Colorstar" to emulate film type color grading using printer lights controls. It was then developed as a standalone software. It was introduced through British company 5D under the Colossus name in private demonstrations a
IBC
show in Amsterdam in 2001. Alpha and beta testing were held at Eclair Laboratoires in Paris. During the trials, Colossus was running on the

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

operating system, but the same code base was also used on the IRIX operating system. After the demise of 5D in 2002, Autodesk acquired the license to distribute the Lustre software, and later acquired Colorfront entirely. In the 2009 Academy Scientific and Technical Awards the original developers received a Scientific and Engineering Award for Lustre. ;Flame Premium In September 2010, Autodesk introduced Flame Premium 2011, a single license for running Flame, Smoke Advanced and Lustre together on a single workstation. At launch, new licenses were priced from US$129,000 excluding hardware, with upgrades from existing Flame licenses priced from US$10,000. Existing users of Smoke Advanced or Lustre could upgrade from US$25,000.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Autodesk Media And Entertainment Media and Entertainment 1991 establishments in Quebec 3D graphics software Companies based in Montreal Companies based in New York (state) Compositing software IRIX software Software companies of Canada Software companies of the United States Visual effects software