That distinction belongs to the Alias Systems Corporation who used to be known as Alias/Wavefront. Nearly eighteen years ago.Īutodesk wasn’t the original owner of the Maya project. This lead to the release of the first version of Maya in February of 1998. These were the Advanced Visualizer, PowerAnimator and Alias Sketch! Maya is actually the codename given to a software porting project that combined three different software packages. As it stands, unless you literally only read books, there’s zero chance that you’ve not been exposed to something created using Maya. That’s when Maya took the industry by storm.Īutodesk's Maya software is one of the most popular 3D animation packages in the history of the craft.įew 3D animation tools have proven as versatile as Maya, it’s been used to create many 3D applications and games as well as films and television programs. Not everyone has the means to create their own custom software and by the mid-90s it was clear that the market for a complete solution was wide open.
However, each studio still had to deal with software that only partially satisfied their needs or had to create their own software, such as Pixar’s Marionette, which is still in use today. Albeit restricted to films with the very highest budgets. In 1991 with the release of Terminator 2: Judgement Day CG in film had become mainstream. The late 80s and early- to mid- 90s represented a major leap forward for CG in film. You have to remember that at this time there weren’t really something like a personal workstation that could even render a competent rough draft of the animation, the rendering happened on super expensive Cray supercomputers or the equivalent extravagant monstrosity. Shortly afterward in 1984 cult classic The Last Starfighter upped the ante, making extensive use of CG in a way not yet seen. The 1982 film Tron is probably the first or at least best known pioneer of solid 3D CG in film. Of course these prototypical technologies were not yet ready, it would only be in the 80s and beyond where companies like Silicon Graphics would kick start the CG revolution.
While these were obvious 3D animation applications in the public eye, there were already research projects experimenting with rudimentary hidden-line 3D models that had texture, lighting and the other technologies that modern 3D animation rests upon. While it’s not that easy to peg exactly when computer animation itself became a viable technology, the beginnings of 3D computer animation in the public eye was with wireframe animations in films like Westworld and the original 1977 Star Wars film. You are here: Home > Computer Articles > The Story of Maya
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