Last week, I had a chance to visit Autodesk ME (in Montreal’s Old Port). They create professional art tools (for games and architechture, among others), including the popular Maya, Softimage, 3ds Max and other like Inferno, Flame, Flare, Flint, Smoke, Lustre, Backdraft, and Toxik.
It looks like some of their tools have recently become free [...]

From gamedaily.com:

Autodesk, known for its 3ds Max and Maya software used throughout the video game industry, today announced the acquisition of rival firm Softimage from Avid Technology. Autodesk is acquiring “substantially all of the assets of Avid’s Softimage business unit for approximately $35 million.”
Montreal-based Softimage was founded in 1986 and is known for its [...]