There used to be a company called Parallax based in England. They made a few softwares for various entertainment industry applications. Most notable of the bunch was "Matador" what many considered the best paint package ever for SGI desktop systems. It commanded price tags upwards around $30,000 at one point. It's strengths were painting and color palette manipulation/computation. However, it also did compositing, onion skinning, and other things usually required by illustrators, cel ink + paint artists, game developers, and so on.
While Matador was very powerful, it's user interface left much to be desired and was considered difficult to use for the average artist. About 4 or 5 years ago, Avid acquired Parallax hoping to integrate it into their video products such as Media Illusion. However, after failed marketting attempts, both Media Illusion and Matador got the axe and were sent to the scrap heap when Avid Acquired Softimage and it's editting product, DS, which had many of the capabilities of Matador and Illusion already integrated into a single interface.
With the rise of XSI, what was formerly the $60,000 SGI compositing software known as Media Illusion is now the FXtree inside of XSI....along with other code tidbits from the now defunct Softimage Eddie. There's rumors that Matador may follow the same path and eventually end up in XSI as the 2D/3D paint solution. But that's just rumor.
Matt
Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
Softimage certifed instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com
