Changing hands: Autodesk goes on another spending spree, buying Softimage.(News Analysis)

Autodesk to buy Softimge. The news came during a wild and scary late October week in the world economy, and in certain corners of the content creation world, those words were as surprising and game-changing as a stock market plunge (or rise, or rise and plunge).

There are Softimage customers who are not going to be happy about this news, but Autodesk, for its part, promises to do right by Softimage. The company plans to take advantage of Softimage's technology, to build out its game development tools. In a phone interview, Marc Petit, Autodesk senior vice president and head of the Media and Entertainment Group, contends that this deal comes at the perfect time for Autodesk, as the 3D industry is undergoing revolutionary changes.

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What is definitely a sign of tough times is the size of the deal. Autodesk is acquiring Softimage for 535 million. This isn't a huge amount for Autodesk, but it does put some dollars in Avid's pocket. To keep things in perspective, Autodesk acquired Alias, in another deal that surprised the industry in 2006, for $197 million.

Past to Present

Things weren't always this way for the company. Softimage has long been considered the boutique tool for 3D content creation. Daniel Langlois founded the company in Montreal in 1986, and Montreal is where it has stayed through several upheavals, in the early days, it seemed like all glamour as the sophisticated Canadians sold their high-priced tools to the people who really needed them and appreciated what they could do. Softimage brought new animation capabilities to 3D modeling; it was one of the first to introduce inverse kinematics, the ability to animate characters by connecting rigid segments and joints--that is, connecting the thigh bone to the leg bone.

But then the first wave of democratization started to happen, and the boutique was under siege. The largest upheaval was the acquisition of Softimage by Microsoft for $130 million in 1994. At that time, Microsoft was battling SGI on the workstation front and hoping to entice professionals off RISC-based workstations with Unix operating systems and on to Windows NT. Softimage, which was sold with SGI workstations, was bait. And, it was one of the first high-end content creation tools to be ported to Windows NT.