On SGI it was TAV (The Advanced Visualizer) from Wavefront. Wavefront bought TDI Explore which was used by a ton of studios. Wavefront then released Kinematic a

On SGI it was TAV (The Advanced Visualizer) from Wavefront. Wavefront bought TDI Explore which was used by a ton of studios. Wavefront then released Kinematic and Dynamation which were both game changers for IK and particles. Softimage was also big, which was bought by Microsoft. Houdini was very powerful but expensive and hard to use. SGI bought Alias Research and Wavefront and merged them together. That's where Maya came from. Autodesk eventually got all of the AW assets after SGI's first bankruptcy.