At the recent IBC conference in Amsterdam, Avid Technology’s new executive team stated that they would look to reduce the company’s holdings in an effort to bring the core Avid editing products back to prominence. That strategy is now being carried out with the announcement that Autodesk has agreed to buy all of the assets of Avid’s Softimage business unit for approximately $35 million. Softimage develops 3-D technology for the film, television and games markets.
Based in Montreal, Canada, Softimage was founded in 1986 by Daniel Langlois. The Softimage 3-D product line has performed well in the video games market.
Autodesk will continue developing and selling the Softimage product line, while also incorporating Softimage technology and products (including the flagship SOFTIMAGE|XSI 3D animation software) to its growing portfolio of real-time, interactive 3-D authoring tools within Autodesk’s Games Technology Group. The goal is to offer new types of 3-D features for games, film and television production.
For more information, visit www.autodesk.com/softimage.
