Autodesk Media and Entertainment

Autodesk Media and Entertainment, Inc.

Type	Subsidiary of Autodesk, Inc.
Industry	Computer software
Founded	Montreal, Quebec (1999)
Headquarters	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Key people	Martin Vann, VP Worldwide Sales Marc Petit, VP Product Development
Products	3ds Max AutoCAD Flame Inferno Maya MotionBuilder Smoke Softimage
Website	www.autodesk.com/me

Autodesk Media and Entertainment, formerly Discreet, is based in Montreal, Quebec as the entertainment division of Autodesk. This division produces software used in feature films, television commercials and computer games. It also provides products for management and distribution to complement its primary product line. It also resells harddisks and sells certain Linux software which is only with bundled computers.

History

Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a division of Autodesk which provides animation and visual effects products^[1] and was formed by the combination of multiple acquisitions.

It originally created a San Francisco multimedia unit in 1996 under the name Kinetix to publish 3D Studio Max, a product developed by The Yost Group.^[2]

In August 1998, Autodesk announced plans to acquire Discreet Logic ^[3] and its intent to combine that operation with Kinetix. At the time, it was its largest acquisition.^[4] The new business unit would be named Discreet.^[5]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences granted in 1998 an Academy Sci-Tech Award to Gary Tregaskis, Dominique Boisvert, Philippe Panzini and Andre LeBlanc, the original designers and developers of the core Discreet Logic products, Flame and Inferno. ^[6]

The combined Discreet-branded product catalog then encompassed all the Discreet Logic products, including Flame, Flint, Fire, Smoke, Effect, Edit, and Kinetix's product, including 3D Studio Max, Lightscape, Character Studio.

Montreal-based Discreet Logic Inc had been founded in 1991 by former Softimage, Co. sales director Richard Szalwinski, to commercialize the 2D compositor Eddie, licensed from Australian production company Animal Logic.^[7] Eddie was the brainchild of Australian software engineer Bruno Nicoletti, who later founded well-known sfx software company The Foundry, in London, England. In 1992, Discreet Logic entered into a European distribution agreement with Softimage, and shifted its focus on Flame, one of the first software-only image compositing solution, developed by Australian Gary Tregaskis.^[8] Flame, which was originally named Flash, was first shown^[9] at NAB in 1992, ran on the Silicon Graphics platform, and became the company's flagship product.

In March 2005, Autodesk renamed its business unit Autodesk Media and Entertainment and discontinued the Discreet brand.^[10]

Through the years, Autodesk has augmented its Entertainment division with many other acquisitions. One of the most significant one was in October 2005, when Autodesk acquired Toronto-based Alias,^[11] and merged its animation business into its Entertainment division. Today, the division's main products^[12] are Maya, 3DS Max, Softimage, Mudbox, MotionBuilder, the game middleware Kynapse, and the creative finishing products Flame, Flare, Lustre, and Smoke.^[13]

Current Products

Software currently produced by the division includes Combustion, Maya, Softimage, 3ds Max, Inferno, Flame, Flare, Flint, Smoke, Lustre, Backdraft

Historical Products

• Discreet Frost, introduced in 1996, a SGI-based template-based on-air graphics system for news, weather and sports ^[14]
• Matchmover, now bundled with 3DS Max, Maya and Softimage, Retimer and VTour. All acquired from RealViz
• Media Cleaner, a video-encoder for the Mac, and Edit, acquired from Media 100 in 2001^[15]
• Lightscape,^[16] a windows-based real-time radiosity solution acquired in 1997,^[17] now incorporated in 3DS Max
• Discreet Plasma, released in 2002, a simplified version of 3DSMax for Adobe Flash authoring^[18][19]
• Discreet GMax, a simplified version of 3DS Max customized for game modders
• Autodesk Toxik, introduced in 2007, a compositing software that allowed users to coordinate work on a production.^[20] The software could only be bought for a minimum of 3 PCs, underlining its focus on collaborative, database-driven workflow. With its collaborative functions and databases removed, and renamed "Composite",^[21] it is now bundled with Maya 3ds Max, and Softimage.

Creative Finishing Products

Flame, Flare, Flint and Inferno (IFF), Smoke are software for visual effects and non linear editing originally created on the MIPS-Architecture computers from SGI, running IRIX.

By mid-1995, Flame had become a market leader in visual effects software, with a price around 175,000 USD, or 450,000 USD with a Silicon Graphics workstation. Time with the software was typically rented at a post-production house with an operator.^[22]

Flint was a lower-priced version of Flame with removed functions. In 1995, the company introduced Inferno, a version of Flame destined for the film market, with a price of about 225,000 USD without hardware. Flare, a software-only version of Flame, was introduced in 2009.^[23]

Autodesk Smoke is a non-linear editing software closely related to Flame. 2009 the first member of the Flame family to make its way onto the Mac.^[24]

In September 2010, Autodesk introduced Flame Premium, a suite contains Smoke, Flame and Lustre with a retail price of 125,000 USD. ^[25]

Notes

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External links

• Official home page.
• Discreet Logic Inc. Company History
• AMPAS Scientific and Engineering Award
• 1998 Academy Awards