Category Archives: Flashback

Friday Flashback #608

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Canadian Made
A new breed of wizards makes it big in the magical world of animation
June 24, 1996

Something I found in my basement while puttering around over the Christmas break…

Toronto companies Alias and C.O.R.E are mentioned a few times. If you look hard you’ll find the word “Softimage” somewhere

Canada is home to the high wizards of the nextwave of animation magic, the computer artists who fabricate fantasy from nothing more substantial than the electronic plasma that flickers through a microchip. Using innovative software such as Toronto’s Alias|Wavefront, computer animators like Steve (Spaz) Williams have dazzled and delight audiences in movies including Jumanji and 1994’s The Mask, which earned Williams an Oscar nomination (page 42 [where you’ll see SOFTIMAGE|3D running on his computer])

Friday Flashback #600

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From a 2002 presentation…

Hybride

A digital Post & FX facility:

  • Film, commercial and television work
  • Founded in 1991
  • Grew from 4 to 50 over 10 years
  • On path to double in size

At the forefront of new technology:

  • SOFTIMAGE|XSI is the backbone of their production pipeline
  • Lead user of SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR

Press Coverage

Playback, March 2001

–“The growth of F/X house Hybride Technologies is a reflection of the long-form production renaissance in Quebec”

CGW September, 2002

–“Hybride was responsible for about 650 shots [in Spy Kids II] – almost 43 minutes of animation…”

Post Magazine, September 2002

–“Hybride Technologies in Montreal was the lead visual effects house [on Spy Kids II], with Daniel Leduc in charge… both Hybride and [colleagues] Janimation run XSI as their main 3D system, and this also made for smoother transitions for shots.

§CGW, October 2002:

–[For Napoléon], Hybride artists used XSI and Mental Ray to create 3D animated imagery, including horses, carriages, trees, birds, people, and even reflective water, which they added to the backgrounds to make the scenes more lifelike.

–The group then generated sophisticated crowd animations and movements using a beta version of RTK

Cinefex, January 2003

–(to come!)

Friday Flashback

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Every Friday I’ll post some image or screenshot from Softimage history…

What we know now as Softimage XSI grew out of the Softimage|DS (Digital Studio) product. Here’s a couple of screenshots from March 1997 that shows a prototype of Sumatra (the codename for XSI). Back then, the first version of DS was almost finished, and XSI was taking shape. Although at that point, XSI did have a distinct “DS” feel to it. Note the “SOFTIMAGE|Digital Studio” in the title bar.

Click to view full size

UPDATE: Comment from Luc-Eric:

I think that was not an actual screenshot, but a photoshop mockup, there countless of them.
This is closer to what the software looked like – but still not quite (it’s missing the jewel-like timeline button)
http://www.softimageblog.com/archives/175
we still have some of those bitmaps somewhere in the source tree..
note the Twister room buttom.