dizzying heights

later this spring, when audiences marvel at many of the suspense action scenes in the upcoming Disney feature Mortal Kombat, most people won’t realize that many of the effects were created on the computer screen of a Hollywood special effects designer – thanks in large part to Vancouver-based 3D computer graphics software developer, Vertigo Technology.

Vertigo was formed in 1990. The software was actually first developed in the late 1980s in Vancouver by California-based Cubicomp Corporation. When the company went out of business, former Cubicomp employee Linda Fawcus, now senior vice-president at Vertigo, approached corporate lawyer James Stewart to arrange financing and the technology transfer.

Later that year, Stewart left his law practice to head up the privately held Vertigo as president.

In five years, the company has grown to a staff of 20 with an annual growth rate of 25% to 30% and revenues ‘in the millions of dollars.’

‘The technology that we had was ahead of the times; now the times are at last catching up to the technology,’ says Stewart. ‘There’s a greater number of people that are realizing the relevance of this 3D technology and some of its many possible applications.’

Disney-owned Buena Vista Visual Effects originally approached Vertigo to create the falling snow effects and parts of a North Pole city, including a toy airplane, steam train and rotating towers in Disney’s The Santa Clause starring Tim Allen.

Impressed with Vertigo’s rendering capabilities and open architecture, Buena Vista then chose Vertigo software to create some of the complex action sequences on Mortal Kombat.

These stamps of approval from Disney and Buena Vista are all the more impressive when one takes into account the heavyweight competition the 3D software domain. But Stewart says there’s room for everyone on the expanding playing field.

‘We have a fantastic product that is significantly different from our competitors in a number of ways, and although the industry is very competitive, there are actually very few players in the 3D computer graphics business – Alias, Softimage and Wavefront.’

Stewart says the declining cost of software, and the hardware to drive those applications, has opened up the market. ‘As the general awareness of the technology increases so does the demand.’

And because the products are so different, users want all or a range of them.

‘For example,’ says Stewart, ‘Buena Vista was historically an Alias user but there were a number of things that Alias couldn’t do or do as well so they also purchased Vertigo. Vertigo is a more open system, users are capable of seeing more closely exactly what the program is doing.

As for the impact of the recent acquisition of competitor Alias by Vertigo’s platform supplier, Silicon Graphics, Stewart says: ‘A lot of people think that would concern us. What it does is provide tremendous opportunities on a number of fronts. One of those is similar to the Microsoft acquisition of Softimage. It validates that this is a core technology for use on the information highway.’

While there is some concern over bundling of software products and hardware, Stewart thinks proprietary hardware is going to become a less relevant factor in the equation. ‘We are working towards making our software package hardware-independent,’ he says.

This development is somewhat tied to Vertigo’s February announcement that it will work with Apple and sgi. The industry, Stewart says, is generally moving towards greater openness.

‘One of the key factors in product marketability in the future will be ease of use. Previously these products could only be used by a relatively small number of sophisticated users. The idea now is to work on interface issues to make the benefits of these technologies available to more people. Ease of use is key to our product and our future.’

A typical Vertigo software package sells for $10,000, however, the company has other packages ranging from $5,000 and $15,000.

Vertigo specializes in software for the entertainment and broadcasting industries, which dominates about 65% of its business. cbc, nbc in the u.s., bbc in the u.k. and nob in Holland all use Vertigo to generate daily news graphics.

Movies have served as one of the best marketing tools for Vertigo product, says Stewart. ‘When people attend these films, other people get ideas for how they can use the technology in their own fields. It’s a great catalyst.’

Electronic Arts (Canada) purchased the software for the 3D modeling in its recent driving simulation video game, Need For Speed.

But Vertigo is also rapidly expanding into new markets. It recently sold over $1 million worth of software to a large American trade show booth designer; the engineering firm of H.A. Simons uses Vertigo for visualizing computer-assisted design data; and ubc’s magic (Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre) lab is using the software to visualize cat scans and in forensic and legal reconstructions.

That said, the most lucrative growth opportunities remain in the entertainment industry where applications are extensive, says Stewart. Content creation, he believes, will represent their next big boom.

‘Sales of cd-roms in America now exceed sales of vcrs. We need a lot more content for those machines. There was also more money spent in America last year on video games than people attending the movies…. With the broadening of content it has opened up tremendous growth potential for our software.’