On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 9:51 PM, Matt Lind <[email protected]> wrote:
> Originally known as ‘Softimage Digital Studio’ and started in the early > 1990s for the IRIX platform (1992/1993), it was Softimage’s attempt to > merge 2D and 3D into a single seamless end-to-end environment. The drive > to develop the product was largely to circumvent the court battle Softimage > had with Discreet Logic (and later lost at a cost of $200+ million CDN). > The IRIX version required an SGI Onyx to run and was largely smoke and > mirrors, but it was enough to convince Microsoft to buy Softimage in 1994 > and later convert (rewrite) to work on the Windows NT platform to what is > known today as Avid|DS. **** > > ** ** > > After acquisition, some Avid developers jumped ship and joined Softimage > to help design DS to be an Avid killer. Softimage|DS debuted in spring > 1998 at NAB with great interest, largely from customers itching to get away > from Avid’s horrible customer service and old code base. Seeing the > writing on the wall, Avid bought Softimage from Microsoft less than 3 > months later. > Personally, I've never heard anything about a court battle between Softimage and Discreet. The only interesting bit is between the two company is that Discreet was founded by the sales director of Softimage and sold Eddie before handing it over to Softimage and going with Flame instead. I'm also not aware of any Avid developer jumping ship and coming to DS. What weird things to just drop here as facts. The more common interpretation of history is that Microsoft bought Softimage because of 3D and film VFX was cool and they were hoping the Hollywood glamour would rub on them.
