Alias/Wavefront Announces Port Of Maya To Red Hat Linux; Customers and Industry Luminaries Laud Decision to Bring Leading 3D Animation Solution to Linux.Business/High Tech Editors TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 2000 Alias/Wavefront(TM), an SGI (SGI, Sunnyvale, CA, www.sgi.com) A manufacturer of workstations and servers, founded in 1982 by Jim Clark. The company was founded as Silicon Graphics, Inc., but changed to its acronym in 1999. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :SGI) company, today announced plans to port the entire Maya(R) 3D software product line to the Linux(TM) platform. Responding to demand from leading studios worldwide, Alias/Wavefront will deliver Maya on Red Hat(R) Linux in early 2001. "Customer demand for a Linux version of Maya has driven this development," said Bob Bennett, General Manager of the Entertainment Business Unit for Alias/Wavefront. "The Technical Committee of the Visual Effects Society The Visual Effects Society (VES) is the entertainment industry's only organization representing the full breadth of visual effects practitioners including artists, technologists, model makers, educators, studio leaders, supervisors, PR/marketing specialists and producers in all recently hosted a meeting of leading effects professionals to discuss the importance of Linux to their community. The consensus of the participants was that Linux will be a key operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. in visual effects work and urged software companies to be more forthcoming in support of Linux. We are responding to that call to action by announcing that Maya will be available on Linux. Our experience with UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). (R) has made this implementation of Maya both highly efficient and productive." Recent advancements in the graphics libraries available for Linux are enabling Alias/Wavefront to deploy Maya software on an operating system that is known for reliability and scalability. These are all requirements that are critical to meeting the rigorous production demands of the digital content creation The development of newsworthy, educational and entertainment material for distribution over the Internet or other electronic media. See DAMS. market. "Maya is the most complex and powerful 3D graphics application ever to run on Linux," said Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for initiating the development of the Linux kernel. , the Creator of Linux. "This is a historical day for the Linux community." The announcement follows Alias/Wavefront's March 2000 delivery of the Maya Batch Renderer for the Linux(R) platform. The Maya Batch Renderer is a powerful software application capable of creating stunning photorealistic Having the image quality of a photograph. images as well as artistic "hand-made" organic results. Leading Production Companies and Vendors Applaud Linux Port "As Maya continues to be a core technology in the DreamWorks(R) animation production pipeline, we couldn't be happier that it is now coming to Linux," said Ed Leonard, Head of Technology for DreamWorks Animation. "Maya on Linux is a key component to realizing our ambition for Linux at DreamWorks." "ILM(R) has been expanding our use of Maya in our production pipeline for some time now," said Jim Morris He spent most of his childhood moving to different cities. , President of Industrial Light & Magic and a Founding Member of the Visual Effects Society. "We're very happy to hear that Maya is coming to Linux." "SGI has always worked in close collaboration with Alias/Wavefront ensuring that the combination of our graphics workstations and Alias/Wavefront applications provide the strongest solution set for computer graphics artists," said Greg Goelz, Vice President of Marketing for Workstations and IA servers at SGI. "The Silicon Graphics(R) 230, 330, and 550 visual workstations running Linux are no exception. We've eagerly awaited today's announcement of Maya on Linux, as it fulfills SGI's promise to deliver Maya's unique 3D capabilities on our new Linux workstations and enables our customers to remain a step ahead of the competition." "At the same time Alias/Wavefront delivers its Maya software to the Linux digital content creation market, HP(R) is providing the highest-quality, Linux-based state-of-the-art graphics on its HP VISUALIZE(R) workstations to bring these images to life," said Jim Zafarana, Worldwide Marketing Manager for HP's Technical Computing Division. "HP is delivering not only the broadest support for graphics in the industry but also single-source support to meet the needs of Alias/Wavefront." "Maya is a stunning integration of GUI (Graphical User Interface) A graphics-based user interface that incorporates movable windows, icons and a mouse. The ability to resize application windows and change style and size of fonts are the significant advantages of a GUI vs. a character-based interface. technology, programmable and extensible interfaces, and the most complete animation technology of any package I know," said Michael Tiemann, Chief Technology Officer of Red Hat Inc. "The GNU/Linux community boasts some of the most creative minds in software development today. By making Maya available on Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux, assembled by Red Hat, was a popular, "middle-aged" Linux distribution (not as old as Slackware but older than Ubuntu) upon its discontinuation in 2004.[1] Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994. , Alias/Wavefront not only provides a proven product with comprehensive commercial support, but invites new minds to further push the creative envelope. I cannot wait to see the products from this exciting combination." Pricing and Availability Information Maya will be available for Red Hat Linux 6.2 on Intel(R) IA32 processors through Alias/Wavefront distribution channels in early 2001. Details on pricing and availability will be announced prior to shipping. Alias/Wavefront will keep Linux users up to date on developments as they progress at www.aliaswavefront.com. About Alias/Wavefront Alias/Wavefront provides artists with open workflow solutions for creative advantage. As the world's leading innovator of 2D and 3D graphics technology, Alias/Wavefront develops software for the film and video, games, interactive media, industrial design, and visualization markets. Alias/Wavefront's film and video customers include Blue Sky, Cinesite, CNN CNN or Cable News Network Subsidiary company of Turner Broadcasting Systems. It was created by Ted Turner in 1980 to present 24-hour live news broadcasts, using satellites to transmit reports from news bureaus around the world. , Digital Anvil, Digital Domain, DreamWorks, Industrial Light & Magic, Pacific Data Images Pacific Data Images was a computer animation production company that was bought by DreamWorks SKG. It is now known as PDI/DreamWorks and is half of DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc., the public company formed by merging PDI and the feature animation division of DreamWorks. (PDI PDI Protein Disulfide Isomerase PDI Personal Docente e Investigador (Spanish: Personal Educational and Investigating) PDI Pre Delivery Inspection PDI Professional Development Institute ), Pixar, Santa Barbara Studios, Sony Pictures Imageworks Sony Pictures Imageworks, Inc. is an Academy Award-winning, state-of-the-art visual effects and character animation company. Individuals at the company have been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Oscars for their work on Spider-Man 2 , The Secret Lab, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Feature Animation. Alias/Wavefront's games customers include Acclaim Entertainment, Core Design, Electronic Arts, Factor 5, Kodiak Interactive, Lucas Arts Entertainment Company, Midway Games, Naughty Dog, Nihilistic ni·hil·ism n. 1. Philosophy a. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence. b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. 2. , Nintendo, Radical Entertainment, Rare Ltd., Relic Entertainment, Retro Studios, Sega, Single Trac, Sony Computer Entertainment, Square, Timeline Studios, Valkyrie Studios, Verant Interactive and Westwood Studios. Alias/Wavefront is a wholly owned, independent software company of SGI with headquarters in Toronto and technical centers in Seattle and Santa Barbara. Please visit the Alias/Wavefront web site at www.aliaswavefront.com or call 800/447-2542 in North America. Readers in Europe can call 800/4125-4125 or 800/791-174 in Italy for the nearest sales office or authorized reseller in their area. Alias/Wavefront and the Alias/Wavefront logo are trademarks of Alias/Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. Silicon Graphics and IRIX A Unix-based operating system from SGI that is used in its computer systems from desktop to supercomputer. It is an enhanced version of Unix System V Release 4. IRIX integrates the X Window system with OpenGL, creating the first real time 3D X environment. are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Maya and the Maya logo are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., exclusively used by Alias/Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. SGI is a trademark and IRIX is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and/or other countries. Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. HP and HP Visualize are registered trademarks of Hewlett-Packard Company. ILM is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm, Ltd. DreamWorks is a registered trademark of DreamWorks L.L.C. All other brands and products referenced are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Alias/Wavefront, 210 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5A 1J7, Tel: 416/362-9181, FAX: 416/369-6140. |
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