Secrets of the Alias Tapes

Alias|Wavefront (now a subsidiary of AutoDesk) is a company with a long history of developing industry-focused 3D rendering tools. Origin's FMV Wing Commander games used their PowerAnimator suite for their CG work and the team at Digital Anvil used Maya for working on the Wing Commander film. Every year Alias|Wavefront produced a VHS 'showreel' that was part advertisement and part thank you for their loyal customers. It would include dozens of clips of projects from the previous year and then some longer segments describing how some of the work was accomplished.

DMJC was recently browsing their 1996 demo tape and found a fun surprise: a clip from Wing Commander IV! It turns out that Chris Roberts was eager to have his team's work shown alongside film production groups like ILM and encouraged his artists to submit their best efforts… and guess what, they compare pretty favorably with the ones being done by the movie industry! But from that hint we did a little hunting and found that the 1995 tape is both full of Wing Commander clips AND it includes a long segment with a Chris Roberts interview and never-before-seen behind the scenes shots from Wing Commander IV! Here's the segment:

We also discovered that the 1997 tape includes a submission from Digital Anvil. It's not completely clear but we believe it's an early iteration of the concom scene from the Wing Commander.

We also found this mystery in the 1996 tape: an elephant… person?... that's credited to Origin Systems. We've verified that it's not an Ultima elephant but it's also not clear what 1995-6 Origin project might have resulted in this clip.

It's also a lot of fun to watch the entire tapes which are chock full of clips from films and commercials you remember… with some neat tunes! They're like concentrated 1990s pills. We've embedded them below along with an index of Wing Commander and Origin clips for each. Let us know if you find anything we missed!

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1995

1m11s - Wing Commander IV clip, Hellcat under attack
1m26s - Wing Commander IV clip, Seether's mine trick
12m16s - Wing Commander IV clip, transport exploding
15m55s - Jane's Longbow cutscene
15m58s - Jane's Longbow cutscene
16m02s - Wing Commander IV segment
20m47s - Wing Commander IV clip, transport under escort

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1996

1m27s - Unidentified elephant
1m29s - Jane's Longbow cutscene
20m41s - Wing Commander IV clip, Kilrathi convoy flash-paking

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1997

17m12s - Unidentified Digital Anvil clip (original concom?)

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1999 (Maya)

0m20s - WCM clip, Rapier attack
0m31s - WCM clip, Broadsword rescue
0m55s - WCM clip, broadside
1m28s - WCM clip, Charybdis jump