Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Autodesk to aquire Alias

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2005, 06:41 PM:

Months later, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the idea of an Adobe Systems and Macromedia Merger. Now this news.

Linkie Linkie from Tom's Hardware

quote:
Autodesk aquires Alias

October 5, 2005 - 11:05 EST

Autodesk announced that it has acquired Alias (previously Alias Wavefront) from its current owner, Accel-KKR, for $182 million. Autodesk hopes that Alias' products, which include mainly 3D and animation software packages such as Maya and Motion Builder, will grow the firm's "expertise and offerings for the design of consumer products and automotive as well as in the media and entertainment markets." The transaction is expected to close within six months.

Founded as Alias Research in 1983, Alias is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The firm's customers include Industrial Light & Magic, DreamWorks SKG, Nintendo, General Motors and BMW. Revenues were $83 million for the most recent fiscal year ended June 30 of this year.

Accel-KKR acquired Alias back in April of 2004 from SGI for $57.5 million.

Those familiar with professional 3D modeling and animation software know Autodesk and Alias are the leaders in that field. Alias' Maya and Autodesk's Studio 3D Max have both been used on many Hollywood feature films and computer games. Now both titles will be under the Autodesk tent. That tent has already grown big with lots of other cutting edge titles, including the Discreet family of professional video and film effects products. Here's a rundown of what the two companies will combine:

Alias makes these products:
Maya
Alias Studio
Alias DesignStudio
Alias AutoStudio
Alias SurfaceStudio
Alias SketchBook Pro
Alias ImageStudio
Alias Portfolio Wall
mental ray standalone
Alias MotionBuilder
Alias FBX
Alias MoCap
Alias HumanIK Middleware

Autodesk makes these products:
AutoCAD
AutoCAD Electrical
AutoCAD LT
AutoCAD OEM
AutoCAD Mechanical
Autodesk 3ds Max
Autodesk Architectural Desktop
Autodesk AutoCAD Revit Series
Autodesk Building Systems
Autodesk Backdraft
Autodesk Burn
Autodesk Buzzsaw
Autodesk Civil 3D
Autodesk Civil Design
Autodesk Cleaner
Autodesk Cleaner XL
Autodesk Combustion
Autodesk Crisis Command
Autodesk DWF Composer
Autodesk DWF Writer
Autodesk DWF Viewer
Autodesk Field Survey
Autodesk GIS Design Server
Autodesk Gmax
Autodesk Inventor
Autodesk Land Desktop
Autodesk Location-Based Services Products
Autodesk Map 3D
Autodesk MapGuide
Autodesk Mobile Command
Autodesk OnSite Enterprise
Autodesk OnSite View
Autodesk Pre-Plan
Autodesk Pre-Plan Command
Autodesk Productstream
Autodesk QuickCAD
Autodesk Raster Design
Autodesk RealDWG—NEW RELEASE
Autodesk Revit Building
Autodesk Revit Structure—NEW RELEASE
Autodesk Stone Direct
Autodesk Stone Shared
Autodesk Stone Switched
Autodesk Streamline
Autodesk Survey
Autodesk Symbols
Autodesk Toxik
Autodesk Utility Design
Autodesk Vault
Autodesk VIZ
Autodesk Wire
AutoSketch
Discreet Fire
Discreet Flame
Discreet Flint
Discreet Lustre
Discreet Inferno
Discreet Smoke
CAiCE Visual Transportation Products
Education Products/ACES Subscription
Volo View

That's a lot of software titles. Most of it is very high end, performance computing demanded products. So in sheer market value it doesn't quite carry the weight of the Adobe/Macromedia merger. But it certainly grows Autodesk to an imposing size against other market rivals like Avid.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-05-2005, 07:22 PM:

I guess that leaves the countdown to the buyout of SolidWorks.

Hopefully this brings about better volume licensing deals... yeah, like that'll happen.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2005, 08:31 PM:

quote:
Autodesk to aquire Alias

Who? Huh? Never heard of them. The impact to my world is nill. Therefore this is unimportant.

**Considers closing the thread since this does not impact me**

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2005, 09:12 PM:

Joe, these developments may indeed impact you one way or another.

I think the moves Apple has made in recent years, in particular their development of the Final Cut Studio, has sparked much of this consolodation. Apple has a very dominant product line for video production on their platform. Other companies are now jockeying to either protect their markets or try to compete directly with Apple.

Look at all the titles Autodesk now boasts. Their consolodation of the top two professional 3D animation packages, along with their acquisitions in the film/video effects end (via Discreet) gives them a hell of a lot of technology to put together a monster production suite of their own --if they choose to do something like that. And I think they will.

Avid has been buying up other companies as well. Softimage is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Avid. It was once owned by Microsoft (purchased not long after the company's software became famous for its work on "Jurassic Park"). At that time it cost $30,000. Now the "foundation" version of Softimage|XSI 5.0 can be had for $495. That's a third of what Lightwave3D costs!

More significant are Avid's purchases of other rival companies, most notably (IMHO) Pinnacle. That company has a wide range of affordable consumer-ish titles and very expensive turnkey professional systems. Avid's merging all that stuff into their own. Avid is positioned pretty well with owning DigiDesign, the makers of ProTools.

With that being said, I'm sure Autodesk had to be a little bit concerned that Avid had some potential to do on the Windows platform for video production what Apple did on the Mac side. Of course, Avid is still developing hard for the Mac platform too. Most of Autodesk's products are written for Windows and Linux to a lesser extent (depending on the title).

To get to the point about what all this means for the rest of us, we'll likely see some brutal competition happening between Apple, Avid, Autodesk and Adobe on all sorts of graphics related software. We'll see some great new products arrive. Some companies may fold. And, of course, we're going to have to get out our wallets to buy ever more powerful hardware for all this stuff. But it ought to be pretty damned cool.

Adobe is obviously covering their core bases with the purchase of Macromedia. The software titles they own pretty much give them the entire professional print and web development market. But they have to make some serious moves to protect what little foothold they have left in video and film. After Effects gives them their best toe-hold, followed by the integration Photoshop and Illustrator offer to extend that application's staggering capabilities. But they've gotta improve Premiere and their other video oriented tools.

Adobe also has to cover its back from moves of late by both Apple and Microsoft to horn into their dominance of print and web graphics.

Microsoft was trying to launch some new "PDF killer" as part of Windows Vista. But that has been falling flat lately. The Massachusetts state government announced they will electronically archive documents only in "open formats" read:PDF. Microsoft turned around and announced they would include PDF creation in the next version of Office.

Apple's threat against Adobe is a little more severe with all the Photoshop-like functions they're wanting to work into the MacOS. Adobe has been countering both Microsoft and Apple by making their own OS-independent color control system in Adobe Bridge for their Creative Suite. Bridge also does all those great intelligent searching thingies Apple touted with the Tiger version of MacOSX.

Extra wrinkles are being added to the turmoil, via the transition to 64-bit operating systems and mainstream computers moving away from single CPUs to "dual core" and "multi-core" processors. It's about damned time on the symmetric multiprocessing support thing. About 10 years overdue if you ask me! Adobe Photoshop and a few 3D apps are the only ones that have been on time in that regard. Everyone else dragged their feet.

Anyone know of any other big software company mergers that could happen -at least in the graphics area, that is?

Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 10-05-2005, 09:15 PM:

Autodesk has been near and dear to me since my youth. AutoCAD was all over my high-school shop class computers. I learned basic modeling and mapping on 3D Studio WAY before the "Max" was added, before it was even compatible with Windows. "Max" was too much of a change in interface (not intuitive enough, coming from release 4, I thought) and I never got used to it, so I haven't used that program in years.

And I STILL have the original 320x200 version of Autodesk Animator on my desktop. It's a lot more useful to me (as a starting point, anyway) for making animated GIF's than the Photoshop/ImageReady route. Long live the FLI file!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2005, 11:29 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Joe, these developments may indeed impact you one way or another.

OK, I'll leave the thread open for now. But the moment that they DON'T impact me it gets locked!!!!

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2005, 11:39 PM:

You'll be under the threat of having to shelve your Final Cut Pro software for something coded by Avid or Adobe forever!!

Yes, forever!!! Yeearrrgghhharrrarrgghhhh!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-06-2005, 04:46 AM:

Never!

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 10-06-2005, 07:42 AM:

All I know is I've been annoyed with Autodesk since they bought (then killed) GenericCadd.

Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 10-08-2005, 04:50 PM:

Autocad seems to be dwindling I think. Most engineers I talk to use either Solidworks or Pro-Engineer. Autocad isn't as good for 3D modeling.

Autodesk must be focusing more on the entertainment industry?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-08-2005, 06:06 PM:

All I know is AutoCAD is the "industry standard" for computer aided design applications and has a much larger user base than any other professional CAD application, be it SolidWorks, Pro/Engineer, Catia or Bentley Microstation. Autodesk makes a ton off those competitors paying licensing fees to shuttle files around using their DWG and DXF formats.

Some modeling applications specialize better in other areas, or offer easier integration into other design applications. For example, Form-Z is by far the leading application used in product packaging design and retail store display design than any other.

But when it comes to commercial building design, drafting and all sorts of other mainstream drudgery, AutoCAD is the by far the most often used application to get that done.

But I do agree Autodesk is concentrating more and more on the entertainment industry. Autodesk Studio 3D Max is the leading professional level application and boasts more third party plug ins than any other 3D app made. Alias' Maya has earned a lot of hype for lots of key effects studios using it and talking about it. But the fact is all of those studios, even Pixar, have a bunch of Studio3D Max licenses as well.

More telling about Autodesk's interest in entertainment is their acquisition of Discreet. They now own the code to bleeding edge effects applications like Flame, Inferno, Smoke, etc. and have been working some of those capabilities into more affordable mainstream applications like Cleaner and Combustion.

I feel Autodesk will ultimately field some kind of video, 3D and motion graphics production suite to counter anything competitors like Apple, Avid and Adobe may offer. Autodesk needs to position themselves in this manner or they really will lapse into some kind of decline. Maybe not enough of a decline to affect their bread and butter business of selling AutoCAD. But if they don't act aggressively they're not going to be left in the game. Other players like Avid and Adobe face a similar challenge. Although it is not likely to happen at all, if Apple were to release a Windows version of Final Cut Studio it could send the efforts of Avid and Autodesk reeling.