An article in eWeek makes Autodesk sound like a Computervision of the 1980s. That was when a CAD station cost $100,000 - $150,000 -- each, for combined hardware and software. Back then, Autodesk was the winner in bringing CAD to desktop computers.
In The Man Behind Microsoft's Expression, eWeek's Darryl K. Taft quotes Microsoft's Forest Key on Autodesk software:
At the time there was a product called Flame by Discreet Logic, now Autodesk, that cost $500,000. The complete system we used was $1 million, because before desktops were powerful enough we had to do everything on SGI machines.... With version 1 of Commotion we solved the process of rotoscoping. We realized it didn't take a million-dollar machine to do it. We took that to the desktop.
(Rotoscoping is where animators trace over individual frames of live-action film.)
Mr Key is now director of product management for design tools at Microsoft, Expression Suite (Web, Blend, Design, and Media).
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