Autodesk Aquire Softimage - Avid Lost Password to 3D

Autodesk and Avid Technology announced that they have signed an agreement for Autodesk to acquire all of the assets of Avid’s Softimage for $35 million. Its flagship product is SOFTIMAGEXSI, an extensible 3D animation software solution used by leading media and entertainment companies all over world.

Softimage was founded in 1986 by National Film Board of Canada filmmaker Daniel Langlois. It was later bought by Billgates's Microsoft in 1994. They bought Montreal-based SoftImage for $130 million. Later AVID bought Softimage in 1998 for $285 Million. It was included DS - now AVID DS.

AVID has revenue of $638.2 million in the last 9 months which annualizes to $850M, so Softimage represents only 1.8% of their annual sales. While they will make $35M selling Softimage, their net loss for the quarter was $66.4 million.AVID installed a new management team at the beginning of the year and it is this team that after reviewing the company as a whole decided to sell the division. The Softimage business unit acts as a separate operating unit, with its own very motivated sales and marketing team, so the split was not going to be messy or relatively complex.

Softimage Product Integration

Upon completion of the acquisition, Autodesk intends to continue developing and selling Softimage’s core product line, while integrating certain Softimage technology into future versions of Autodesk solutions and products. Autodesk plans to acquire and continue developing the following Softimage products:

SOFTIMAGEXSI: Including XSI Essentials, XSI Advanced, XSI Academic, XSI Mod Tool and the XSI software development kit. XSI is production-proven 3D animation software for games, film and television. It offers a complete 3D modeling, animation, rendering and development environment for visual effects and custom tools.

SOFTIMAGEFace Robot: A complete software solution for easily rigging and animating 3D faces. Face Robot enables studios to create life-like facial animation at incredible speeds.
SOFTIMAGECat: This advanced character animation system is a plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max software. It is intended to be integrated into the 3ds Max product line.

SOFTIMAGECrosswalk: This interoperability solution is intended to be integrated with Autodesk’s own interoperability technology.

Autodesk now has the most powerful portfolio of 3D products that any company has had since the birth of 3D.