Bauhaus Software announced the availability of Mirage v1.2 for Mac OS X and Windows. Designed for artists, Mirage integrates realtime video paint, animation and effects functionalities into a single product, freeing visual artists to explore entirely new creative ideas and techniques. Designed for resolutions ranging from HDTV and film to Web video, Mirage is a complement to existing packages such as Final Cut Pro and Shake, and is a key part of a seamless pipeline for 2D animation film and broadcast production.

Cartoon and 2D animators use Mirage as a unified paint and effects solution, allowing them to sidestep traditional scan/ink/paint workflows, and work from digital pencil tests to final product within a single unified environment. Broadcasters benefit from the speed and ease with which motion graphics can be created and animated in Mirage. Video producers use the software to easily manipulate, enhance and create effects for HDTV and film. Mirage's ability to combine multiple file types, different media and different resolutions in the same project will easily make it a core workflow component of any motion graphic artists working on a Mac.

Kelseus, from Cambridge in the U.K., announced the release of its new 3D animation system, Antics 1.0. Antics allows users to assemble, direct and edit 3D animated scenes in a realtime rendered environment using an intelligent and procedural toolset. Antics is intended to provide a solution to the animator, director or producer who requires a fast, cost-effective tool to produce animations for previs or episodic animated programming where complex multiple character interactions are called for.

Antics provides a unique arena where geometry and mo-cap data, either from within the Antics library, or imported from external sources, can be utilized. Simple point and click commands combined with intuitive scripted instructions allow characters to intelligently navigate their environments, and interact with objects in a sophisticated multi-camera view architecture.

Gelato aims to solve rendering problems.

NVIDIA announced the release of Gelato, the first 3D final-film renderer accelerated by industry-standard graphics hardware. Designed to create the highest-quality digital effects and animation, NVIDIA Gelato is the first commercially available application in the feature film industry that solves rendering problems by using hardware advantages, such as floating point acceleration, 64-bit computing, PCI Express and multithreading. Gelato is now available in versions running Red Hat Linux 7.2, 7.3, 9.0 and SUSE.

Gelato features and benefits include:

• Speed and power that scale with improvements in the entire system, including graphics hardware innovations, 64-bit CPU technology and PCI Express.
• A flexible architecture that makes it easy to integrate Gelato into existing film production pipelines such as plug-ins for Maya and Python binding.
• Accelerated scanline and raytraced rendering, global illumination, ambient occlusion and support for the full range of geometric primitives (NURBS, bicubic and bilinear patches, polygon meshes, subdivision surfaces, points, curves and procedural geometry) for true film-quality images.
• A new shading language that not only unlocks the power of the NVIDIA Quadro FX hardware, but also adds innovative features, including layered shaders for more precise effects.

The Orphanage, whose recent vfx efforts include Hellboy and the upcoming The Day After Tomorrow, announced the release a key piece of its visual effects technology to the public. Called eLin, the software consists of a suite of plug-ins and scripts for Adobe After Effects 6.5 that allow compositors to work in the expanded photographic color space of film. eLin will be free of charge for non-commercial use.

Softimage unveiled SOFTIMAGE | XSI 4.0, the latest version of the industry's leading nonlinear 3D production environment and has made it available in three distinct configurations at breakthrough prices: XSI Advanced, XSI Essentials and the new entry-level XSI Foundation. Version 4.0 delivers advanced toolsets, dramatic performance enhancements and advancements to the core architecture of the software, including new customization, project management and workgroup capabilities.

Using reference models and reference animation, animators and technical directors can create lightweight scenes, minimize memory usage and share animation scenes by off-loading animations and partial animation sources to external files. New motion trails, ghosting and advanced scene playback options also enhance the in-context visualization of animated content.