Over the last few months we have had a few rumors come in that the Softimage 3D folks may be considering bringing their award-winning 3D product to Mac OS X. The reports from anonymous and some named individuals admit that the company -- a division of Avid -- has traditionally been no fan of the Mac platform, however things may be changing.

Rumors of an Apple 3D Purchase

Back when Alias/Wavefront announced that they were closing their Santa Barbara offices (why anyone would close a Santa Barbara office to work in a non-Santa Barbara office is beyond me?...anyway) many folks both in and outside the Mac press were speculating that the company (Alias/Wavefront) was a possible takeover target for an ideally suited larger company. However, that rumor was quickly quashed by the A/W folks.

While Apple was suggested as a perfect buyer, some brought to our attention that Avid's little subsidiary, Softimage Inc., might be a better purchase. And some suggested, why not buy Avid at the same time.

Long Standing Rumors of Apple 3D

Indeed, such a buy of Avid by Apple could be a real coup for the company that seems to be going all out to capture the Hollywood market. And why not Softimage? The software was just used for the last Star Wars movie and if you thought master Jedi Yoda's light saber skills were impressive you owe much of that admiration to Softimage 3D.

There are actually two rumors here. The first is that Apple is interested in possibly buying an advanced 3D application. While we think that rumor is interesting, this site's official stance on it is that it is very unlikely. We could only see that happening if Maya for Mac OS X was to fail or if Alias/Wavefront were to get into serious financial trouble due to larger financial problems coming from its owner: SGI.

It is critical that Apple has a superb 3D animation application in its arsenal, preferably the top application in its class (used and admired by the biggest studios) but it doesn't need to own it. In fact, owning it could hurt other 3D players in the Mac market, especially if the pricing were very low relative to the competition (the Final Cut Pro strategy). We hope that this is not the case.

The second rumor is simply that Apple persuades Softimage to port their application to Mac OS X, just as they have ported their app to Linux with great success. (just read the Star Wars story to hear why Linux was successful over SGI IRIX).

Is Softimage the Right Choice?

If Apple were to make a major commitment (and isn't Avid financially struggling anyway?) to this company they might be easily persuaded to partner with Apple to bring this exciting application to Mac OS X. Softimage 3D, together with Maya, rounds out the 3D animation front very nicely for Apple in the Hollywood studio scene. All they would need then would be the hardware to justify the effort.

We'll see if we get it this July in New York.