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 with ''
Technological Threat
''Technological Threat'' is a 1988 American animated short made by Brian Jennings and Bill Kroyer and was produced by Kroyer Films. It was an example of early computer animation, integrated with traditional animation, and is itself an allegory fo ...
'' in 1988 and ending in ''
Pokémon: The Movie 2000'' in 1999. PowerAnimator ran natively on
MIPS-based
SGI SGI may refer to:
Companies
*Saskatchewan Government Insurance
*Scientific Games International, a gambling company
*Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products
*Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...
IRIX
IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and ...
and
IBM AIX
Aix or AIX may refer to:
Computing
* AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems
*An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set
*Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point
Places Belgium
...
systems.
History
PowerAnimator was launched in 1988.
In 1997, John Gibson, Rob Krieger, Milan Novacek, Glen Ozymok, and Dave Springer were presented with the Scientific and Engineering Award for their contributions to the geometric modeling component of the PowerAnimator system. The citation was:
"The Alias PowerAnimator system is widely regarded in the computer animation field as one of the best commercially available software packages for digital geometric modeling. Used by many motion picture visual effects houses, it has been a benchmark for comparison of modeling tools and has had a major influence on visual effects and animation."
Television and film
PowerAnimator was used to create the water creature in the 1989 film ''
The Abyss'', as well as the T-1000 character in ''
Terminator 2: Judgment Day'', at a cost of $460,000 per minute. It was also used heavily for the many visual effects of the 1996 film ''
Independence Day
An independence day is an annual event commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or more rarely after the end of a military occupation. Man ...
''. PowerAnimator also served as the solution used to produce ''
South Park
''South Park'' is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Brian Graden for Comedy Central. The series revolves around four boys Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormickand th ...
'' episodes digitally before production was moved to
Maya starting with Season 5.
Game development
PowerAnimator was also used in game development, in particular as a part of
Nintendo 64's SGI-based developers kit. It saw some use for modeling, texturing, animation and realtime effects for other titles and platforms as well.
Notable titles:
* ''
Crash Bandicoot''
* ''
Casper''
* ''
Wing Commander 3
''Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger'' is the third main game in Chris Roberts' ''Wing Commander'' science fiction space combat simulation video game series, developed and released by Origin Systems in December 1994. It was a departure from ...
''
* ''
Wing Commander 4
''Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom'' is the fourth main game in the ''Wing Commander'' science fiction space combat simulator video game series, produced by Origin Systems and released by Electronic Arts for the PC in 1996 and the Sony P ...
''
* ''
Quake I
''Quake'' is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the ''Quake'' series, it was originally released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux in 1996, followed by Mac OS and Sega ...
''
* ''
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee''
References
Notes
External links
Animation Software Companies and Individuals In CGI
{{3D software
1988 software
Animation software
3D graphics software
IRIX software