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Published: 2024-01-13 13:20:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 564; Favourites: 2; Downloads: 0
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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 Kroyer Films, Silicon Graphics, Rhythm & Hues and merged with Alias Research to form Alias|Wavefront.Sun-3 is a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9, 1985. The Sun-3 series are VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 microprocessor, in combination with the Motorola 68881 floating-point co-processor (optional on the Sun 3/50) and a proprietary Sun MMU. Sun-3 systems were supported in SunOS versions 3.0 to 4.1.1_U1 and also have current support in NetBSD and Linux.
deGraf/Wahrman was founded in 1987 by former Robert Abel & Associates employee Michael Wahrman and former Digital Productions director Brad deGraf after the folding of DOA. Tom McMahon of Symbolics Graphics Division helped finance the company and provided equipment and software, including a Symbolics 3600 and the suite of Silicon Graphics software. Brad deGraf studied architecture at Princeton and Mathematics at the University of California at San Diego. He started his career as lead software designer and programmer at SAIC for the US Army National Training Center, and became Head of Technical Direction at Digital Productions before opening deGraf/Wahrman and serving as Director of Production. After deGraf/Wahrman, from 1992 through 1994, he was Director of Digital Media at Colossal Pictures, which he and his partners spun off to create Protozoa. deGraf/Wahrman created Mike Normal, or “Mike the Talking Head”, the first live performance of a virtual character. It was shown live at the Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH 88 in Atlanta. deGraf also created “Moxy” on the Cartoon Network, the first virtual character for television, and Peter Gabriel’s Grammy award-winning video, “Steam”.