here . it is not to be confused with discrete or discreet records . autodesk media and entertainment type subsidiary of autodesk inc. industry computer software founded montreal quebec 1991 as discreet logic san francisco california 1996 as autodesk kinetix 2005 as autodesk media and entertainment headquarters new york city new york united states products maya maya lt fbx softimage discontinued 3ds max mudbox flame flint flare inferno lustre smoke combustion backdraft scaleform beast humanik navigation kynapse discontinued stingray game engine scaleform studio entertainment creation suite mental ray under license from nvidia wwise under license from audiokinetic . website www.autodesk.com industry media entertainment autodesk media and entertainment including the former company discreet logic is based in montreal quebec as the entertainment division of autodesk . autodesk media and entertainment provides animation and visual effects products and was formed by the combination of multiple acquisitions . this division produces software used in feature films television commercials and computer games . it also provides products for management and distribution to complement its primary product line . it also resells hard disks and sells certain linux software with bundled computers . contents 1 history 1.1 discreet logic 1.2 kinetix 1.3 media and entertainment 1.4 industry usage 2 products 2.1 historical 2.2 creative finishing 3 references 4 external links history edit discreet logic edit montreal based discreet logic was founded in 1991 by former softimage company sales director richard szalwinski to commercialize the 2d compositor eddie licensed from australian production company animal logic . 1 eddie was associated with australian software engineer bruno nicoletti who later founded visual effects 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 products developed by australian gary tregaskis . 2 flame which was originally named flash was first shown 3 at nab in 1992 ran on the silicon graphics platform and became the company s flagship product . in july 1995 discreet logic s initial public offering raised about us 40 million . on may 26 1995 the company acquired the assets of brughetti corporation for about cdn 1 million and in october acquired computer und serviceverwaltungs ag located in innsbruck austria and some software from innovative medientechnik und planungs gmbh in geltendorf germany . after a 2 for 1 stock split on october 16 1995 a secondary offering in december 1995 raised an additional 28 million . 4 third party source needed on april 15 discreet invested 2.5 million in privately held essential communications corporation . 4 third party source needed kinetix edit autodesk 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 . 5 third party source needed in august 1998 autodesk announced plans to acquire discreet logic and its intent to combine that operation with kinetix . 6 at the time it was its largest acquisition valued at about 410 million by the time it closed in march 1999 down from an estimated 520 million when announced . 6 7 the new business unit was named the discreet division . 8 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 . media and entertainment edit in march 2005 autodesk renamed its business unit autodesk media and entertainment and discontinued the discreet brand although still headquartered in montreal . 5 9 10 through the years autodesk augmented its entertainment division with many other acquisitions . one of the most significant was in october 2005 when autodesk acquired toronto based alias systems corporation for an estimated 182 million from accel kkr and merged its animation business into its entertainment division . 11 alias had been part of sgi until 2004 . 12 in 2008 it acquired technology of the former softimage company from avid technology . 13 in 2011 autodesk acquired image tools and utilities that use cloud computing called pixlr . 14 industry usage edit by 2011 these products were used in films that won the academy award for best visual effects for 16 consecutive years . 15 much of avatar s visual effects were created with autodesk media and entertainment software . autodesk software enabled avatar director james cameron to aim a camera at actors wearing motion capture suits in a studio and see them as characters in the fictional world of pandora in the film . 16 autodesk software also played a role in the visual effects of alice in wonderland the curious case of benjamin button harry potter and the deathly hallows part 1 inception iron man 2 king kong gladiator titanic life of pi hugo the adventures of tintin the secret of the unicorn and other films . 17 in november 2010 ubisoft announced that autodesk s 3d gaming technology was used in assassin s creed brotherhood . 18 products edit the division s products include maya 3ds max the new name of 3d studio max softimage mudbox motionbuilder 19 the game middleware kynapse and the creative finishing products flame flare lustre and smoke . 20 historical edit discreet frost introduced in 1996 a sgi based template based on air graphics system for news weather and sports 21 matchmover now bundled with 3ds max maya and softimage retimer and vtour . all acquired from realviz media cleaner a video encoder for the mac and edit acquired from media 100 in 2001 22 lightscape real time radiosity software for microsoft windows acquired in december 1997 by discreet 23 was incorporated in 3ds max in 2003 . 24 25 discreet plasma released in 2002 a simplified version of 3ds max for adobe flash authoring 26 27 discreet gmax a simplified version of 3ds max customized for game modders autodesk toxik introduced in 2007 compositing software that allowed users to coordinate work on a production . 28 the software could only be bought for a minimum of 3 pcs underlining its focus on collaborative database driven workflow . with its collaborative functions and databases removed and renamed composite 29 it is now bundled with maya 3ds max and softimage . combustion acquired as illuminaire paint and composite from denim software running on windows nt and mac os . rebranded as paint and effect and integrated into a suite with edit . finally unified as combustion a desktop shot compositor and motion graphics application for mac os and windows . shared some technologies and user interface elements with discreet systems based products flame smoke . ran as stand alone and integrated with edit . eventually ran stand alone only when edit was eol d. sketchbook pro creative finishing edit iff flame flint and inferno collectively known as iff is a series of compositing and visual effects applications originally created for mips architecture computers from silicon graphics sgi running irix . by mid 1995 flame had become a market leader in visual effects software with a price around 175 000 usd or 450 000 usd with a silicon graphics workstation . time with the software was typically rented at a post production house with an operator . 30 the flame software is licensed in a variety of forms including flint a lower priced version of flame with fewer functions 31 and inferno introduced in 1995 a version intended for the film market with a price of about us 225 000 without hardware . traditionally inferno ran on the sgi onyx series while flame and flint ran on sgi indigo and octane workstations . flame inferno were implemented on linux in 2006 . autodesk said the use of more powerful hardware allowed complex 3d composites to be rendered more than 20 times faster than on the previous sgi workstations . 32 in the 1998 academy scientific and technical awards gary tregaskis design dominique boisvert phillippe panzini and andre le blanc development and implementation received a scientific and engineering award for inferno and flame . 33 flare and smoke flare a software only subset of flame for creative assistants was introduced in 2009 at around one fifth the cost of a full featured flame seat . 34 autodesk smoke is non linear video editing software that integrates with flame . when sold as a turnkey system e.g. with an ibm linux workstation 2004 pricing started at us 68 000 . 35 a version for mac os x was announced in 2009 initially priced at us 14 995 . 36 lustre lustre is color grading software originally developed by mark jaszberenyi gyula priskin and tamas perlaki at colorfront in hungary . the application was first packaged as a plugin for flame product under the name colorstar to emulate film type color grading using printer lights controls . it was then developed as a standalone software . it was introduced through british company 5d under the colossus name in private demonstrations at ibc show in amsterdam in 2001 . alpha and beta testing were held at eclair laboratoires in paris . during the trials colossus was running on the windows xp operating system but the same code base was also used on the irix operating system . after the demise of 5d in 2002 autodesk acquired the license to distribute the lustre software 37 and later acquired colorfront entirely . 38 in the 2009 academy scientific and technical awards the original developers received a scientific and engineering award for lustre . 39 flame premium in september 2010 autodesk introduced flame premium 2011 a single license for running flame smoke advanced and lustre together on a single workstation . 40 at launch new licenses were priced from us 129 000 excluding hardware with upgrades from existing flame licenses priced from us 10 000 . existing users of smoke advanced or lustre could upgrade from us 25 000 . 41 references edit discreet logic inc. company profile information business description history background information on discreet logic inc . referenceforbusiness.com . retrieved 2012 03 04 . 1 archived june 11 2008 at the wayback machine . http www.fxguide.com modules.php name news & file print & sid 209 . retrieved october 3 2010 . missing or empty title help dead link a b discreet logic incorporated july 11 1996 . quarterly report for the quarter ended april 30 1996 . us securities and exchange commission . retrieved september 8 2013 . a b 3dsmax 20th anniversary . autodesk . 2010 . retrieved september 7 2013 . a b dawn kawamoto august 21 1998 . autodesk to buy discreet logic . cnet news . retrieved september 7 2013 . autodesk completes largest ever acquisition ; debuts new discreet division . software industry report . march 22 1999 . archived from the original on june 14 2010 . retrieved september 7 2013 . wayne carlson september 2 2008 . animation software companies and individuals . the ohio state university department of design . retrieved september 10 2013 . discreet to be rebranded autodesk media and entertainment . gfx diary . april 21 2005 . retrieved september 10 2013 . autodesk re brands discreet its industry leading film television post production and gaming business as autodesk media and entertainment . press release . march 24 2005 . retrieved september 10 2013 . autodesk signs definitive agreement to acquire alias . press release . autodesk . october 4 2005 . retrieved september 7 2013 . peter cohen october 4 2005 . autodesk acquires alias . pc world . retrieved september 10 2013 . simon carless october 24 2008 . autodesk acquires softimage for 35 million . gamasutra . retrieved september 10 2013 . robin wauters july 19 2011 . autodesk acquires online photo editing service pixlr . tech crunch . retrieved september 7 2013 . adriene hurst march 15 2011 . autodesk tools build pipelines for oscar winners and nominees . digital media world . archived