Macromedia and Discreet announced a strategic partnership that will accelerate the deployment of interactive 3D content to the Web by uniting the worlds of 3D authoring and Web design. The partnership will bundle Macromedia Director 8.5 within 3ds max. The co-marketing partnership and bundle arrangement will begin in mid-August 2001.

At QuakeCon, the world's premier multi-player gaming event, Discreet unveiled gmax, the company's licensable game development platform and free consumer game-content editor. The consumer version of gmax will be available as a free download to gamers in fall 2001 and will come with 3D modeling, animation, texturing and character building tools. Discreet previously announced that elements of gmax will be bundled with MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR 2002: PROFESSIONAL EDITION, shipping in Q3 this year.

Side Effects Software has announced that Walt Disney Feature Animation made a significant purchase of the company's Houdini 3D animation software package. Houdini has been used in many projects at the Walt Disney Company including FANTASIA 2000, GONE IN 60 SECONDS and TARZAN. "Houdini's flexible procedural paradigm helps our artists be more creative, while maintaining an efficient production environment," said John Carey, VP of technology at Disney.

WildTangent has announced that their direct-to-Web exporter for 3ds max will be packaged along with the software. WildTangent's integrated solution gives artists the ability to pull animated scenes directly from 3ds max into a Web page. The encryption options allow artists to pinpoint where Web page assets can be viewed. If someone attempts to copy and paste an artist's page into a new source, they will receive a refuse to load response.

REALVIZ has announced upgrades to ImageModeler and MatchMover. The new ImageModeler will be the first to be Mac compatible. ImageModeler 3.0 feature highlights include a newly designed user interface and contextual menus allowing for improved calibration workflow and easier camera navigation. ImageModeler is compatible with all major 3D animation packages, including Maya, Lightwave 3D, Softimage, 3D Studio Max, and Cinema 4D.

Curious Labs, Inc. has announced that their Poser and Poser Pro Pack will be supported within the Cinema 4D and PiXELS 3D applications. The Cinema 4D plug-in will be available for download at no charge to Pro Pack customers from the Curious Labs Website and will enable Pro Pack users to integrate and render their animated Poser scenes directly in Cinema 4D. The PiXELS 3D plug-in will offer similar functionality. Distribution details will be announced once they have been formalized.

Pinnacle Systems has shipped Commotion Pro 4, the company's integrated paint, composite and special effects software. Commotion Pro 4 offers speed gains of 30% in compositing and 200% in painting. New grouping and browsing controls provide a comprehensive solution for managing composites and working with multiple layers. Users can add mattes, color corrections or other filters and motion controls to multiple layers at once. A new timeline browser gives users an overview of the entire composite with controls for selecting, moving and deleting groups and layers.

Zona, Inc., a massive multiplayer online game server solution provider, has announced that they has developed a new server engine called Terazona for online 3D games capable of supporting tens of thousands of users on a server. Terazona is capable of supporting a minimum of 32,000 concurrent users per server. Existing server loads can only support around 6,000 concurrent players. In addition, the servers contain fault tolerance, which prevents downgrade in game play experience within a growing base of concurrent users.

auto.des.sys Inc. has released form.Z 3.8 which replaces form.Z 3.8g that was originally shipped in May. Although only a gamma version, the reception of version 3.8g has been like a "warm welcome home," said Alexandra Yessios, vice president of sales and marketing at auto.des.sys. form.Z is a hybrid solid and surface 3D modeler that combines polygonal with smooth parametric modeling under a single roof. It is complemented by drafting, photo-realistic rendering, Radiosity, walk through animation and advanced CAD capabilities.

Softimage has created advanced tools to support the creation of new titles for the Nintendo GameCube console. This is the result of a six-month collaborative effort by Nintendo and Softimage to define a suite of new features in the SOFTIMAGE|3D system that leverage the run-time capabilities of the Nintendo GameCube.