Adobe announced at NAB the upcoming availability of a plug-in that will optimize Photoshop software for use with the Intel Pentium 4 processor. The new plug-in takes advantage of Intel's latest processor technology and reaffirms Adobe's commitment to providing outstanding performance on the latest technology platforms. Photoshop's software Pentium 4 processor plug-in is expected to be available in May, with no charge to all Photoshop users. Graphic artists who use Photoshop on Intel machines will directly benefit from the Pentium 4 processor's high performance and 144 new instructions.

On April 23, 2001, at NAB, the annual international conference of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas, Alias|Wavefront announced Maya 4, the sixth major release of its professional 3D animation and visual effects software. This major new release features enhancements and optimizations that will improve the product’s overall performance and efficiency, particularly in the areas of rendering, character animation, brush and paint tools and games related functionality.

On April 23, 2001, Apple announced the immediate availability of QuickTime 5 and the upcoming availability of QuickTime Streaming Server 3 at NAB, the annual international conference of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas. In addition, Apple is demonstrating a preview version of QuickTime with support for industry-standard MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding and decoding. "QuickTime has been long established as the digital media standard for capturing, encoding and delivering content on the Internet," said Philip Schiller, Apple's vice president of worldwide product marketing.

On April 23, 2001, at NAB, the annual international conference of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas, Softimage demonstrated version 1.5 of its SOFTIMAGE|XSI software and hinted that a new release would be ready for SIGGRAPH in July. "I can't say much more," program manager Michael Smith commented, "but this next release will be big." Softimage introduced its "INNOVATE::CREATE::COLLABORATE" tagline and displayed the power of XSI with images of Manta, a 3D character created in XSI.

Macromedia, Inc. announced on April 24, 2001, the immediate availability of Macromedia Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio, which will enable developers to bring 3D-enhanced Shockwave content to the Internet. The program features a new version of the Shockwave Multiuser Server, Havok physics engine for 3D game behaviors, support for Flash 5 and the ability to stream RealMedia content. 3D support in Director and Shockwave Player was jointly developed with Intel Corporation and is built on the Intel Internet 3D Graphics software.

On April 10, 2001, at the
Macromedia User Conference (UCON) in New York, Discreet announced a
3ds max Shockwave exporter that includes support for rich character
animation from character studio, dynamic physics from reactor and
MultiRes mesh technology. With this integrated exporter, artists can
transfer 3D content directly from 3ds max into the Director 8.5
authoring environment for deployment in the Shockwave format. "With
the Shockwave Player already in use by more than 200 million Web

Discreet announced on April 9, 2001 that
it has begun shipping reactor, an integrated extension for 3ds max 4.
Reactor, powered by Havok, incorporates technology that realistically
simulates cloth, rope, liquid and hard-/soft-body objects that
collide, bounce, break and stretch. Reactor officially launched last
month at the Game Developers Conference. Reactor features include
rope dynamics that simulate any deformable chain from realistic hair
to knots of climbing ropes; cloth dynamics that give objects

The final beta version of Silicon Grail’s RAYZ multi-platform compositing software is now available for public beta testing. The beta-testing period will last through April 22, 2001 when RAYZ will be officially launched at NAB. The software is available in versions for SGI IRIX, SGI IRIX (64 bit), Windows NT/Windows 2000, Intel Linux and Alpha Linux. The product is resolution independent making it equally suitable for feature film, large format film, HDTV and standard definition video projects.

Ascension Technology has announced the addition of the X-IST FaceTracker to their line-up of motion-capture tracking devices. The X-IST FaceTracker is a lightweight, head-coupled facial expression tracker using 36 reflective markers to collect real-time motion data on strategic locations such as lips, cheeks and eyelids. Its automatic search, labeling and marker tracking are designed to accelerate production time. The real-time data, transferred to an animation workstation, integrates with Filmbox, Maya, Typhoon, Softimage and other leading software programs.

Toon Boom Technologies, a leading supplier of 2D animation software for major film and television studios, announced Toon Boom Studio 1.0, a new software program the brings high-end 2D animation tools and capabilities to the Web. Targeted at Web designers, advertising agencies and other online content creators, the software is designed to simplify the creation process by automating traditional animation tasks. The new software derives its high-end features from Toon Boom Technologies' acknowledged expertise in the animation market.