The modular nature allowed these loosely coupled lightweight programs to start-up quickly with relatively small memory footprints. Many primitive utility programs such as graphics conversion were included in the toolkit and were frequently employed for batch processing via shell scripts. Composer was also available as an add-on for compositing of imagery. The major components of the TAV software suite included: Model, Paint, Dynamation, Kinemation, Preview, and fcheck. The collection of these smaller programs formed the entire suite based on simple interchange of mostly ASCII file formats such as OBJ. In contrast to many modern day (2011) computer graphics animation software, TAV was a set of independent programs that each focused on one aspect of image synthesis as opposed to a monolithic product. Some of the technology under Autodesk's ownership is still sold today as part of Maya.
Wavefront was renamed to Alias Technologies and acquired by Autodesk in 2005. In 1996 Alias|Wavefront announced the release of Maya which incorporated aspects of all 3 software suites. Wavefront's programmers continued to reside in California but the management of the company was carried out in Toronto, Canada. Thus SGI created the super-company Alias|Wavefront. Silicon Graphics responded by purchasing Alias Systems Corporation, and their two major competitors, Wavefront, and the French company TDI (Thomson Digital Images) for their Explore, IPR, and GUI technologies. This was widely seen as the result of Microsoft purchasing Softimage in an attempt to take over the 3D computer graphics market. A software package famous for its use in the production of numerous Oscar-winning movies such as The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park.