In 1992, Discreet Logic entered into a European distribution agreement with Softimage, and shifted its focus on Flame, one of the first software-only image compositing products, developed by Australian Gary Tregaskis.

[3] Flame, which was originally named Flash, was first shown[4] at NAB in 1992, ran on the Silicon Graphics platform, and became the company's flagship product.

[5][independent source needed] Autodesk originally created a San Francisco multimedia unit in 1996 under the name Kinetix to publish 3D Studio Max, a product developed by The Yost Group.

[6][independent source needed] In August 1998, Autodesk announced plans to acquire Discreet Logic and its intent to combine that operation with Kinetix.

One of the most significant was in October 2005, when Autodesk acquired Toronto-based Alias Systems Corporation for an estimated $182 million from Accel-KKR, and merged its animation business into its entertainment division.

Autodesk software enabled Avatar director James Cameron to aim a camera at actors wearing motion-capture suits in a studio and see them as characters in the fictional world of Pandora in the film.

[17] Autodesk software also played a role in the visual effects of Alice in Wonderland, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, Inception, Iron Man 2, King Kong, Gladiator, Titanic, Life of Pi, Hugo, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and other films.

Inferno, Flame, and Flint (collectively known as IFF) is a series of compositing and visual effects applications originally created for MIPS architecture computers from Silicon Graphics (SGI), running Irix.

[40] Lustre is color grading software originally developed by Mark Jaszberenyi, Gyula Priskin and Tamas Perlaki at Colorfront in Hungary.

The application was first packaged as a plugin for Flame product under the name "Colorstar" to emulate film type color grading using printer lights controls.