History
Alias' best known product, the 3D modeling and animation package 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, e.g. Maya2008. Other significant 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 back in 1992, an early Macintosh based 3D modelling and rendering package called Sketch!, etc.
On March 1, 2003, the company was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar for scientific and technical achievement for their development of Maya software. Wavefront Technologies founders Bill Kovacs and Roy A. Hall received a 1997 Academy Award for the creative leadership (Kovacs) and the principal engineering (Hall) efforts that led to the Wavefront Advanced Visualizer computer graphics system.
Later in 2003, the company's name was changed from Alias|Wavefront to Alias. 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.
Read more about this topic: Alias Systems Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)