Specular International

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Specular International was a company founded by Dennis Chen and Adam Lavine in 1990. Specular created and distributed several software products, the most popular of which was Infini-D, an integrated 3D modeling, rendering and animation software product that specialized in 3D effects such as Media:type and water effects. Infini-D was part of a larger trend in bringing 3D technologies once only available in powerful workstations to a wider personal computer audience. Other Specular products included Collage, a high-resolution Photoshop compositing companion product, and BackBurner, a distributed rendering system that used multiple Macintoshes on a network or over the internet to render computationally intensive 3D animations. Many Specular employees joined Adobe Systems, and worked on products including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere. Specular merged with MetaTools in 1997 to form MetaCreations.