Alias|Wavefront and mental images Form Strategic Alliance
Companies Look Towards the Creation of a mental ray Rendering Option for Maya

June 21, 2001 - Alias|Wavefront(TM), an SGI (NYSE:SGI) company, today announced that it has entered into a strategic alliance with mental images®, makers of the world-renowned, mental ray® renderer.
The two companies will work together to develop a mental ray rendering option for Alias|Wavefront's award-winning 3D animation and effects software, Maya®.

"Image quality is a top priority to CG industry professionals,'' explains Peter Mehlstaeubler, Vice President of Product Development at Alias|Wavefront. "With this priority in mind, Alias|Wavefront has pursued an aggressive rendering development path, one which will soon be expanded to encompass a mental ray solution. Our alliance with mental images will not only provide an attractive solution for current users of mental ray, it will also result in a valuable new rendering option for Maya customers.''

mental ray is a high-performance, interactive, rendering software product widely acknowledged as one of the leading solutions in the Digital Content Creation and CAD/CAM markets. It is also the only commercially available rendering software that combines the physically correct simulation of the behaviour of light with full programmability for the creation of photorealistic imagery. With its fully scalable parallel rendering capabilities supporting both multiprocessor platforms and networks of machines, mental ray can be used for near real-time interactive rendering sessions as well as for complex, high throughput batch mode rendering.

"We are excited to have Alias|Wavefront added to the list of companies supporting mental ray,'' states Rolf Herken, President and Director R&D, mental images. "A technology union combining Maya, the renowned 3D animation and effects software, and mental ray -- our programmable, photorealistic, rendering software -- will greatly benefit the computer graphics industry as a whole.''

"We have been using mental ray for quite some time and have had great results,'' states Stefen Fangmeier, a two time Academy Award nominated visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic. "Likewise, Maya has in recent years become an indispensable part of our production pipeline and the marriage of these two technologies will no doubt greatly enhance our productivity. It is something we're all looking forward to.''

Pierre Buffin, CEO of BUF Compagnie, Paris, adds: "For years our entire proprietary production pipeline has been established around mental ray -- it is the only rendering software that enables us to achieve the photorealistic visual effects that film directors expect of us. The integration of mental ray with Maya, today's most widely used professional high-end 3D animation system, will allow us to continue to meet the demand for the kind of sophisticated imagery that we specialize in.''

About Alias|Wavefront
As the world's leading innovator of 3D graphics technology, Alias|Wavefront develops software for the film and video, games, interactive media, industrial design, and visualization markets.

Entertainment customers include Blue Sky, Cinesite, CNN, Digital Domain, Disney's The Secret Lab, Electronic Arts, Industrial Light & Magic, Midway Games, Nintendo, Pacific Data Images (PDI), Pixar, Sega, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Square Co., Ltd., Warner Feature Animation and Weta Ltd.

Alias|Wavefront is a wholly owned, independent software company of SGI(TM) with headquarters in Toronto and technical centers in Seattle and Santa Barbara. Please visit the Alias|Wavefront website at www.aliaswavefront.com or call 1-800-447-2542 in North America. Readers in Europe can call +800 4125 4125 or 800 791 174 in the Middle East and Africa; 81 3 3470 8285 in Asia-Pacific; and 525 203 0030 in Latin America for the nearest sales office or authorized reseller in their area.

About mental images
mental images GmbH & Co. KG, founded in 1986, is a recognized leader in providing next generation rendering and modeling software technology to the entertainment, CAD, and visualization markets and to other industries where sophisticated images are required. Customers of mental images include major original software developers as well as select key industrial end-users. Users of mental ray include most of the leading visual effects and digital film studios, game development companies, and companies in the automotive and aerospace industries.

mental images is a privately held company based in Berlin, Germany. For more information please visit the mental images website at www.mentalimages.com .

mental ray and mental images are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH & Co.KG. Alias|Wavefront and the Alias|Wavefront logo are trademarks of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. SGI is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Maya is a registered trademark and the Maya logo are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., exclusively used by Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All other products or companies mentioned are trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Alias|Wavefront, 210 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5A 1J7, Tel: 416-362-9181, FAX: 416-369-6140.

for screenshot and press images: http://www.aliaswavefront.com/entertainment/press

Contact:
Alias|Wavefront
Donna Teggart, 416/874-8592 dteggart@aw.sgi.com or

mental images
Silvia Hanko, +49 30 315 9970
Fax: +49 30 315 99733 office@mentalimages.com