Alias (formerly Alias Wavefront)

A subsidiary of Silicon Graphics (SGI), and headquartered in Toronto, is the maker of the world-reknowned three-dimensional animation program Maya. The Maya Composer is a video-based product known as “The Swiss Army knife of Hollywood,” said Edward M. Ward, a branch manager for Alias Wavefront’s federal systems, in Chantilly, Va. The Maya Composer can take one scene and change the background. If the scene was shot in the fall, but the action of the movie is supposed to be in the spring, Maya can change the background without changing the people or objects in the scene, explained Ward. For intelligence analysts, this technology allows them to locate an object or person of interest and track it. Some modifications to the software had to be made to make it more user friendly for military analysts, stated Ward. “Their specialty is analyzing data, not the software.” So SGI and Alias Wavefront simplified the keystrokes needed to run the software.

In 1996, the chariman of Alias Wavefront acted as one of the key organizers for a flagship MIME workshop in Irvine, California, one that led to the creation of the Institute for Creative Technologies. Co-organized by the Department of Defense’s Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO), and the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.

“The workshop brought together more than 50 representatives of the entertainment and defense research communities to discuss …joint research, and suggest mechanisms for facilitating greater collaboration. Participants were drawn from the film, video game, location-based entertainment (Disney, Pixar, Paramount, George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar), and theme park industries; DOD (DARPA, the Navy, Air Force); defense contractors; and universities. They included top executives and government program managers as well as engineers, film directors, researchers from industry and academia, and university faculty. Through a series of presentations on electronic storytelling, strategy and war gaming, experiential computing and virtual reality, networked simulation, and low-cost simulation hardware, the committee attempted to encourage dialogue among these diverse stakeholders and stimulate discussion of research areas of interest to both the entertainment and defense industries.” See the report that came out the conference, Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense.