Wavefront Technologies

Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold animation software used in Hollywood motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, by Bill Kovacs, Larry Barels, Mark Sylvester. They started the company to produce computer graphics for movies and television commercials, and to market their own software, as there were no off-the-shelf computer animation tools available at the time. In 1995, Wavefront Technologies was purchased by Silicon Graphics and merged with Alias Research to form Alias/Wavefront.

Wavefront developed their first product, Preview, during the first year of business. The company's production department helped tune the software by using it on commercial projects, creating opening graphics for television programs. One of the first customers to purchase Preview was Universal Studios, for the television program Knight Rider. Further early customers included NBC, Electronic Arts, and NASA.

Some of Wavefront's early animation software was created by Bill Kovacs, Jim Keating, and John Grower, after they left Robert Abel and Associates. Roy A. Hall, and others after him, developed the company's flagship product, the Wavefront Advanced Visualizer.

In 1988, Wavefront released the Personal Visualizer, a desktop workstation interface to their high-end rendering software. As with Wavefront's other software, it was developed for Silicon Graphics computers, but it was later ported to Sun, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, DEC and Sony systems. Wavefront purchased Silicon Graphics first production workstation after their offer to buy the prototype they were given a demo of was knocked back.

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