By Carolyn Giardina

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. --

Prompting much analysis of the potential impact on the visual effects market–including the 3-D landscape and the integration of 2-D and 3-D–San Rafael, Calif.-headquartered Autodesk (Nasdaq: ADSK) announced last week that it signed an agreement to acquire privately held Alias for $182 million in cash. Autodesk’s Media and Entertainment division markets 2-D products such as Discreet Flame and Discreet Inferno, as well as 3-D product 3ds max. Toronto-headquartered Alias is the developer of Maya 3-D software.

This news comes less than 18 months after Accel-KKR, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (Teachers’) and Alias management, acquired Alias from prior owner SGI for $57.5 million in June ’04. (It should be noted that shortly thereafter, Alias added to its product line with the acquisition of Kaydara, maker of MotionBuilder software.)

Autodesk reported that the deal is expected to close in four to six months, and it does not anticipate changes to any planned product releases scheduled during that period. During a press teleconference held last week, emphasis was placed on interoperability, and plans to create more integrated pipelines and streamlined workflows.

The obvious first question involves the future of Alias’ Maya and Autodesk’s 3ds max, which have overlap in the 3-D market.

“In general the direction is to maintain the products–both Maya and 3ds max–in functionality, and focus on the functional integration between products and collaborative capabilities,” stated Alias president/CEO Doug Walker.

When a more specific question was raised during the conference, asking if some of 3ds max’s capabilities might end up in Maya (or vice versa) or if there might be one product with the best functions of both, Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s VP of worldwide sales and marketing Martin Vann responded, “It’s hard to tell you exactly what the roadmap will look like. We have an entire set of people that make up the integration team that will work through this and determine what functionality goes where and what changes we can make. But we are on day one of this. Our focus is to continue to meet our customers’ needs and whatever work we do will be done in conjunction with our customers.”

With such widely used products in the center of this deal, commercialmakers were obviously speculating about what it means for them–and reactions were mixed. One also has to wonder what impact the joining of these two popular 3-D programs under one roof could have on the other 3-D tools in the market, such as Avid Technology’s Softimage XSI and Side Effects’ Houdini.

Avid was contacted by SHOOT but declined to comment on the Autodesk announcement. Commercial effects houses were ready to talk.

“If they interface Maya into the Discreet world of products, it would be great–the way 3ds max integrates [with Autodesk’s 2D systems] is quite good; it makes a wonderful combination with Flame and Combustion,” said Jim Riche, head of production at New York-based post house Nice Shoes, as well as sister companies Guava and Freelance Collective. “What we don’t want to see is them integrate Maya and max together. Alias has so many more high-end functions and we don’t want to see it diluted. 3ds max is more suited to mass terminals, as it’s very cost effective compared with Maya. Maya has deeper functionality for the commercial world; it is a superior product in many ways and we want to see it stay that way–. Also, Alias’ support levels are excellent; I really hope they maintain them.”

“They [Maya and max] are different and necessary and we need both,” said Ed Ulbrich, senior VP of production and executive producer of the commercial division at Venice, Calif.-based Digital Domain, which uses products from and has strong relationships with both Autodesk and Alias. “There will be a certain period of time to assimilate the companies; I think ultimately it will be great and everyone will benefit.”

Meanwhile, Brian Moylan, director of visual effects at Vancouver-based Rainmaker’s animation and visual effects division, offered, “It bodes quite well for the future. We are already seeing increasing involvement between the compositing and animation worlds. We have compositing talent already learning to work in 3-D, and vice versa.

“Maybe we are heading toward a day when there are multidiscipline visual effects artists,” he added. “There will still be specialists, but it is still possible to be skilled at CG but also able to composite. Maybe we are heading to a day when 2-D and 3-D is integrated in one program. I think that would be awesome.”

 

BRANDING AND STRUCTURE

Few details were available on organizational structure. Walker related that the two entities “would need to build a strategy to bring the two companies together.” He reported that he personally would have a transitional role both before and after the deal closes. But once that work is done, he expects to leave the organization.

Earlier this year, Autodesk renamed its media and entertainment unit–formerly bearing the widely recognized Discreet name–Autodesk Media & Entertainment. Today ‘Discreet’ is used as part of the name of its established high end products, such as Discreet Flame and Discreet Inferno. With this in mind, questions about branding were also raised during last week’s news conference.

“In the entertainment marketplaces, certainly Maya has tremendous name recognition and I would imagine that no doubt the Maya brand would continue on as long as we remain focused and committed on that product line,” said Vann.

    He added, “I’m not exactly sure what the final naming will looking like by we’re are going to do everything we can to maintain all the value that Alias has built into their products just as we have done so on the Discreet side.”

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