![]() ![]() He felt that the concept marked a fundamental shift in how the industry viewed visual effects creation and generated a new breed of visual effects artists and animators. His vision was a software company that addressed the creation of 3-D animation software not only for, but by artists. Langlois wanted to create animated films but was dissatisfied with the existing technology, which he felt was insufficient for his needs and designed to be used by computer scientists and technologists. Softimage was founded in 1986 by National Film Board of Canada filmmaker Daniel Langlois. Some of computer graphics history I will be quoting and using from PressBook. Here is a video of Daniel Langlois interview on TV about the recent acquisition of SOFTIMAGE by Microsoft. Softimage went through a few transfers of owners from Microsoft to Avid and finally to Autodesk where it was laid to rest. I remebered it was used a lot in Game Development over in Japan at companies like Capcom and Konami and Square-Enix and it competed with Alias|Wavefront, 3DS Max and Houdini as one of the premiere 3D Content creation suites. SoftImage is offering a special bundled price starting from #15,000 including hardware, monitor and the SoftImage 3D software for NT until February 29.Softimage the once famous CG software that took Computer Character animation to the forefront by creating the famouse animations for Jurassic Park and many Games and Reboot (Animated TV Series). SoftImage 3D for Windows NT is available now for around #6,500 from value-added resellers. The software requires Windows NT 3.51 with Service Pack 2, a minimum of 64Mb of memory, 1Gb hard disk and a supported OpenGL graphics accelerator board. SoftImage has started a certified hardware manufacturer program, which so far includes Digital Equipment Corp, Integraph Computer Systems Corp and NeTpower Corp, but the firm said it will be talking to more than 20 hardware suppliers. They also claim that the cheaper hardware available for NT means that they can afford to train new animators and increase staff at a much lower cost than before. Beta user Psygnosis Ltd, a three-dimensional games company, and Jurassic Park makers Industrial Light & Magic Inc said the NT version is almost identical from a user point of view, and for some jobs such as batch rendering, the NT version actually runs quicker. It is also used for advertising commercials and interactive games such as Virtual Fighter and Daytona. The company’s software has been used in the creation of effects in such films as Jurassic Park, The Mask, Jumanji and Casper. Similarly, he insists that the company will continue to support and enhance the software for both NT and Silicon Graphics systems. He insisted that his aim was not to knock Silicon Graphics, but simply to open up choice for the users, and to enable more animators to use SoftImage’s three-dimensional animation software. Montreal-based SoftImage founder Daniel Langolois said the NT system has all the functionality of the Unix-based system, but enables users to choose much lower cost hardware as an option. The software, which traditionally ran on Silicon Graphics Inc workstations under the Irix Unix operating system, will now run on any personal computer supporting NT. Microsoft Corp’s SoftImage Inc has opened up the market for its three-dimensional modeling and animation software, Microsoft SoftImage 3D, by launching a version for Windows NT (CI No 2,831).
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