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In another move in a series of acquisitions of multimedia companies, Apple Computer has purchased Silicon Grail, makers of Chalice and RAYZ.

The sale was initially announced in early June, but the purchaser was undisclosed at that time.

Silicon Grail was founded in 1995 by Ray Feeney, a four-time Academy Award-winner and founder of RFX, Hollywood’s largest integrator of digital effects technology for over 20 years.

Chalice is compositing software for high-end 2D film-work, and RAYZ offers a fully customizable, scriptable and extensible interface to it — featuring dockable or floating windows; drag and drop functionality; and customizable menus and tool bars.

Apple now has a significant collection of 2D and 3D compositing tools that they will presumably continue to develop for Mac OS X, Linux and perhaps IRIX platforms. If their position on the earlier Nothing Real acquisition is any example, then Microsoft will shortly find their Windows operating system marginalized in the film and television industries.