History
Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a division of Autodesk which provides animation and visual effects products 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.
In August 1998, Autodesk announced plans to acquire Discreet Logic and its intent to combine that operation with Kinetix. At the time, it was its largest acquisition. The new business unit would be named Discreet.
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.
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. Eddie was the brainchild of Australian software engineer Bruno Nicoletti, who later founded well-known VFX 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. Flame, which was originally named Flash, was first shown 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.
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, and merged its animation business into its Entertainment division. Today, the division's main products are Maya, 3DS Max, Softimage, Mudbox, MotionBuilder, the game middleware Kynapse, and the creative finishing products Flame, Flare, Lustre, and Smoke.
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