Graphics technology works on-premise or in-cloud. Amazon appears to be building a graphics stack for cloud computing services.

Amazon Web Services has acquired Thinkbox Software, maker of several visualization and graphics management tools used for both media and engineering applications. Terms were not disclosed.

Thinkbox offers most of its product line as both desktop software and cloud-based services. The company’s most popular products include Krakatoa for particle rendering, Frost for particle meshing, and Deadline for render management. Krakatoa and Frost were used to render the massive nebula cloud imagery in the opening scene of Star Trek Beyond.

“At this point, it’s still business as usual,” reads a short note on the Thinkbox home page. “We’ll continue to provide you, our customers, with remarkable support whether you work on-prem, in the cloud, or both.”

What do we think?

Amazon Web Services appears to be on a buying spree for tools and services to complement its growing role as a full-service cloud graphics infrastructure service. Other recent purchases include Biba for video conferencing, Harvest.ai for security, Elemental Technologies for video encoding/transcoding, and Chime for videoconferencing.