Visual effects powerhouse Tippett Studio has recently purchased 10 Silicon Graphics Octane2 visual workstations, 25 Silicon Graphics 230 and Silicon Graphics 330 Windows NT OS-based and Linux OS-based workstations, an SGI 2100 visualization server and a 2TB SGI TP9400 storage system. The company has been using SGI systems since opening its doors in 1983, and continues to choose Silicon Graphics machines to realize their award-winning work.

U.K.-based Criterion Software recently announced its new RenderWare Platform - a middleware solution offering game studios a tightly integrated game development framework incorporating 2D/3D graphics, audio and physics modules. The RenderWare Platform builds on Criterion's highly successful 2D/3D graphics toolkit RenderWare3 to provide developers with a powerful, truly multi-platform development environment. Built on an open and flexible architecture, the RenderWare Platform initially incorporates 2D/3D graphics, audio and physics modules, with additional modules to follow.

Numerical Design Ltd. (NDL) has announced NetImmerse 4.0, the latest version of its 3D game-development toolkit. The new version will boast support for Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube, a new tool for previewing keyframe animations, new rendering capabilities and performance increases for the core product and free plug-ins. Already two titles for the much hyped Microsoft Xbox are in development: ODDWORLD INHABITANT'S MUNCH'S ODDYSEE and an as yet unannounced title from Totally Games.

pmG (project:messiah Group), the producers of the award-winning project:messiah 3D animation package, have recently revamped the company Website. The re-launch expands greatly on the previous version, adding strong news and informational components, a library of 25 easy to download MPEG-1 sample animations and promotes and sells online the company's full line of products, including project:messiah 1.5, the messiah:studio suite, messiah:animate and messiah:render.

Ascension Technology Corporation will preview their new infrared active-optical motion-capture system, the Ascension ReActor, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose this month. The ReActor delivers extremely smooth, real-time optical data for a broad range of animation applications at less than half the price of existing systems. ReActor captures the motions of an untethered performer free to spin, kick or jump in a capture area delineated by modular snap-together bars.

Japanese software developer ExpressionTools, Inc. has released ExpressionToolsShade Professional R4/E (ETShade Pro R4/E), an English language version of their high-end 3D graphics application. With a fifteen-year history behind it, Shade offers an outstanding and intuitive user interface, leveraging Bezier curve modeling and high speed/high quality rendering. In Japan, Shade has been the leading tool for professional graphics, 3D design, industrial design and architecture, with user-base numbers in excess of 200,000.

Alias|Wavefront has signed an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to become an official tools and middleware developer for the Xbox Video Game System. Xbox, Microsoft's next-generation gaming system scheduled for release this fall, is positioned to become one of the most advanced on the market. Alias|Wavefront's Maya software, with its powerful modeling and animation toolsets and its open, extensible API is strongly established in the game development market as the package of choice for top quality interactive entertainment with many of the top-selling next-generation games producers.

QEDSoft's QEDStream product line now natively supports the Kaydara FBX format. QEDStream users are now able to read FBX files, simplifying their production pipeline and enabling Web-content creation from the Kaydara suite of real-time 3D authoring tools. Designed to provide an authoring hub between major 3D packages, FBX provides a centralized working file format for vendors wishing to acquire, author and retarget 3D data and animation. "Using FBX and QEDStream in combination provides a superb channel for streaming both current and legacy content on the Web," said Michel Veys, COO of QEDSoft.

Nothing Real, the producer of popular compositing tool Shake, has announced that their new Tremor compositing system has entered into worldwide beta testing. Tremor is a front room, client-based compositing solution, engineered to handle the most demanding needs of HDTV, commercial video and broadcast production professionals. The product is built around a new, simplified and streamlined interface and incorporates the mature and production proven technology based on Shake's rendering engine. Tremor will be sold as an integrated compositing hardware/software product.

Giant Studios' new animated short film FRUITS OF LABOR premiered this week in San Jose, California, and received a warm and enthusiastic response. The film features a cast of simple computer graphics characters - a shiny red apple, a man and a fly - animated in a stylized way and rendering with startling photo-realism. Rudy Poat, creative director for the project described the look as being, "something that looks like stop-motion and that fooled both the mind and the eye.