This was also the year when Pixar released Toy Story, the first 3D animated feature, and Silicon Graphics (SG) purchased Alias and Wavefront and combined them into Alias|Wavefront. The original development team working on 3D Studio was tiny with just four people – two engineers, a designer and a tech writer – and at times they would put in 110-120 hours of work per week to get the job done.Īt Siggraph in 1995 Autodesk announced 3D Studio Max for Windows which also introduced the concept undo to 3D packages, something previously unheard of. In other words software was definitely more unaffordable to individuals and smaller studios back in the day. Back in the late 1980’s the price tag for software from Alias|Wavefront and the likes, along with the Silicon Graphics Iris workstation required to run it would come at a price tag upwards of US$40,000- 50,000 (adjusted for inflation this would equate to approximately US$85,000 – 105,000 in modern prices). Although you sometimes come across people complaining online about outrageous software pricing, the price of both hardware of software has in fact come down significantly in recent years. 3DS Max has been part of Autodesk since the early days of the company, created by the Yost Group and published by Autodesk since the original 1990’s version which was simply called 3D Studio.ģD Studio was one of the first affordable and integrated modeling, rendering and animation systems for the PC, it was released at the unprecedented price of US$3,495 and has remained there ever since.

This leaves the company with Maya and 3DS Max as the main applications in the Media and Entertainment section, none of which should be expected to disappear any time soon. Softimage changed hands many times, the company was first founded by filmmaker Daniel Langlois in 1986 in Montreal and then sold to Microsoft in the 1990’s before it was passed on to Avid Technologies – its’ final owner until Autodesk announced the aquisition in late 2008 in a deal worth $35 million. With the final version of Softimage released this month, Autodesk closes the door on one of the oldest 3D applications on the market.

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