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The Advanced Visualizer (TAV), a 3D graphics software package, was the flagship product of Wavefront Technologies from the 1980s until the 1990s.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2017) |
The Advanced Visualizer (TAV), a 3D graphics software package, was the flagship product of Wavefront Technologies from the 1980s until the 1990s.
A software package famous for its use in the production of numerous Oscar-winning movies such as The Abyss , Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park .
This was widely seen as the result of Microsoft purchasing Softimage in an attempt to take over the 3D computer graphics market. Silicon Graphics responded by purchasing Alias Systems Corporation, and their two major competitors, Wavefront, and the French company TDI (Thomson Digital Images) for their Explore, IPR, and GUI technologies. Thus SGI created the super-company Alias|Wavefront.
Wavefront's programmers continued to reside in California but the management of the company was carried out in Toronto, Canada.
In 1996 Alias|Wavefront announced the release of Maya which incorporated aspects of all 3 software suites.
Wavefront was renamed to Alias Technologies and acquired by Autodesk in 2005. [1] Some of the technology under Autodesk's ownership is still sold today as part of Maya. [2]
In contrast to many modern day (2011) computer graphics animation software, TAV was a set of independent programs that each focused on one aspect of image synthesis as opposed to a monolithic product. The collection of these smaller programs formed the entire suite based on simple interchange of mostly ASCII file formats such as OBJ.
The major components of the TAV software suite included: Model, Paint, Dynamation, Kinemation, Preview, and fcheck. Composer was also available as an add-on for compositing of imagery. Many primitive utility programs such as graphics conversion were included in the toolkit and were frequently employed for batch processing via shell scripts.
The modular nature allowed these loosely coupled lightweight programs to start-up quickly with relatively small memory footprints. It was not uncommon to run several instances of the Model or Preview package, each working on different aspects of the same project.
As TAV only ran on the Silicon Graphics platform it enjoyed significant performance advantages over software-only based solutions due to its use of SGI's specialized graphics hardware supporting IrisGL, a precursor to OpenGL.
fcheck - or 'Frame Check' is an image sequence viewer. fcheck loaded image files from disk into RAM and played them back at monitor synced frame rates for real time playback evaluation. It features the ability to view the RGBA (and Z-depth in the case of RLA) channels independently, variable frame rate and the ability to draw directly into the buffer. This program still ships with Maya.
Model - a polygon and patch 3d modeler. It read and wrote OBJ files. It also had the ability to manipulate UVs, Normals and assign material associations saved in the MTL file format. Included a command language for automation in the form of scripts, or aliases. Since there was no 'undo' feature, a common automated sequence would copy data to a spare place before modifying it - in essence, the users made their own 'undo'. Alongside direct manipulation of the vertex data, procedural deformers were available to sculpt the surfaces using common geometric transformations such as 'bend'.
Paint was an image editing program for manipulation of bitmap graphics - its texture map support focused on the RLA, SGI, Cineon (now DPX) and TIFF file formats. Support for 16 bit integer textures, sequencing capabilities for rotoscoping in addition to paint cloning from adjacent frames in the timeline.
Dynamation was a particle animation and rendering program capable of importing an OBJ to interact with. It accomplished native rendering using a hardware render buffer featuring a z-buffer. It drove the animations using a combination of predefined field objects & programmatic 'expressions' as well as rigid body mesh collision support. This technology is still being used in the Maya product today.
Preview was animation package that referenced OBJ files from disk, managed hierarchies and assigned animated channel data to attributes such as translation and rotation. It allowed association of primitive non-linear deformations such as bends and waves to geometry. It lacked a native undo feature. Like Model, included a command language that allowed for alias, or script development to automate tasks such as 'undo'. Other features included placement and preview of lights, manipulation of OBJ MTL files, and facilitation of scanline or wire frame rendering via an external render module. A unique feature to draw every Nth polygon of a model, was essential for visualizing animation of 'heavy' scenes during manipulation.
Render featured raytraced-shadows, raytraced reflections, transparency, texture maps, bump mapping, Lambert and Phong shading models.
Kinemation - an 'advanced' animation system that allowed for the manipulation of geometry using Inverse Kinematics (IK), geometric skinning to 'bones' featuring lattice based deformations. The deformed meshes were exported a series of OBJ's read into preview for assembly with other scene components.
Composer, though not an initial member of the family, is a time-line based (similar to after effects) compositing and editing system with color corrections, keying, convolution filters, and animation capabilities. It supported 8 and 16 bit file formats as well as Cineon and early 'movie' file formats such as SGI movie, Indeo, MPEG video and QuickTime.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Founded in Mountain View, California in November 1981 by Jim Clark, its initial market was 3D graphics computer workstations, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time.
Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya, is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interactive 3D applications, animated films, TV series, and visual effects.
Alias Systems Corporation, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was a software company that produced high-end 3D graphics software. Alias was eventually bought by Autodesk.
The Electric Image Animation System (EIAS) is a 3D computer graphics package published by EIAS3D. It currently runs on the macOS and Windows platforms.
Preview is the built-in image viewer and PDF viewer of the macOS operating system. In addition to viewing and printing digital images and Portable Document Format (PDF) files, it can also edit these media types. It employs the Aqua graphical user interface, the Quartz graphics layer, and the ImageIO and Core Image frameworks.
Autodesk Alias is a family of computer-aided industrial design (CAID) software predominantly used in automotive design and industrial design for generating class A surfaces using Bézier surface and non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) modeling method.
Softimage, Co. was a company located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that produced 3D animation software. A subsidiary of Microsoft in the 1990s, it was sold to Avid Technology, who would eventually sell the name and assets of Softimage's 3D-animation business to Autodesk.
OpenSceneGraph is an open-source 3D graphics application programming interface, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling.
Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a division of Autodesk which offers animation and visual effects products, and was formed by the combination of multiple acquisitions. In 2018, the company began operating as a single operating segment and reporting unit.
Dynamation was a 3D computer graphics particle generator program sold by Wavefront to run on SGI's IRIX operating system as part of The Advanced Visualizer. The core software was originally developed by Jim Hourihan while at Santa Barbara Studios, a visual effects company owned by effects pioneer John Grower. The software was licensed to Wavefront Technologies in 1992, and passed through to the merged company Alias/Wavefront. It was introduced as a product at SIGGRAPH in 1993. In 1996, Jim Hourihan received a Scientific and Engineering Award for the primary design and development of Dynamation.
Radiance is a suite of tools for performing lighting simulation originally written by Greg Ward. It includes a renderer as well as many other tools for measuring the simulated light levels. It uses ray tracing to perform all lighting calculations, accelerated by the use of an octree data structure. It pioneered the concept of high-dynamic-range imaging, where light levels are (theoretically) open-ended values instead of a decimal proportion of a maximum or integer fraction of a maximum. It also implements global illumination using the Monte Carlo method to sample light falling on a point.
Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold animation software used in Hollywood motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, by Bill Kovacs, Larry Barels, Mark Sylvester. They started the company to produce computer graphics for movies and television commercials, and to market their own software, as there were no off-the-shelf computer animation tools available at the time. In 1995, Wavefront Technologies was acquired by Silicon Graphics, and merged with Alias Research to form Alias|Wavefront.
Jos Stam is a researcher in the field of computer graphics, focusing on the simulation of natural physical phenomena for 3D-computer animation. He achieved technical breakthroughs with the simulation of fluids and gases, new rendering algorithms and subdivision surfaces, which are a mix between two previously incompatible worlds of Nurbs- and polygon-modeling in 3D.
3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3-D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering digital images, usually 2D images but sometimes 3D images. The resulting images may be stored for viewing later or displayed in real time.
3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery.
The history of computer animation began as early as the 1940s and 1950s, when people began to experiment with computer graphics – most notably by John Whitney. It was only by the early 1960s when digital computers had become widely established, that new avenues for innovative computer graphics blossomed. Initially, uses were mainly for scientific, engineering and other research purposes, but artistic experimentation began to make its appearance by the mid-1960s – most notably by Dr Thomas Calvert. By the mid-1970s, many such efforts were beginning to enter into public media. Much computer graphics at this time involved 2-dimensional imagery, though increasingly as computer power improved, efforts to achieve 3-dimensional realism became the emphasis. By the late 1980s, photo-realistic 3D was beginning to appear in film movies, and by mid-1990s had developed to the point where 3D animation could be used for entire feature film production.
OpenFlight is a 3d geometry model file format originally developed by Software Systems Inc. for its MultiGen real-time 3d modeling package in 1988. Originally called Flight, the format was designed as a nonproprietary 3d model format for use by real-time 3d visual simulation image generators. The format was later renamed to OpenFlight to denote its nonproprietary image generation (IG) usage. The MultiGen modeling package and the OpenFlight format were rapidly adopted by the early commercial flight simulation industry in the later 1980s and early 1990s. NASA Ames was the first customer for the MultiGen modeling package.
Art of Illusion is a free software, and open source software package for making 3D graphics.