PowerAnimator and Animator, also referred to simply as "Alias", the precursor to what is now

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 ...

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'' in 1988 and ending in '' Pokémon: the Movie 2000'' in 1999. PowerAnimator ran natively on MIPS-based SGI

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

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

AIX 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 memorialization, commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or Sovereign state, statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or after the end of a milit ...

''. 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 boysStan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormickand the ...

'' episodes digitally before production was moved to

starting with Season 5.

Game development

PowerAnimator was also used in game development, in particular as a part of

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, in North America on September 29, 1996, and in Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997. As the successor to the Super Nintendo E ...

'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 III: Heart of the Tiger'' * '' Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom'' * '' Quake'' * '' Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee''

References

External links

Animation Software Companies and Individuals In CGI
{{3D software 1988 software Animation software 3D graphics software IRIX software