Alias|Wavefront announced on Friday, May 18, 2001, that its Maya Shockwave 3D Exporter plugin is now available as a free download from the Alias|Wavefront Website. The plugin can be used to transfer content directly from Maya into Macromedia’s Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio. A special Website has been set up within the Alias|Wavefront site where the plugin, technical information and examples are available.

Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc., has formed a strategic development relationship with Microsoft Corporation to provide professional 3D art tools for modeling and animation for the Xbox video game system. Through this agreement, SOFTIMAGE|XSI animation software and SOFTIMAGE|RTK character middleware will support the creation of Xbox-specific content. "The stunning graphics performance of Xbox is powered by the NVIDIA graphics processing unit (Xbox GPU).

NewTek Inc. announced the release of LightWave [ 6.5]b, a maintenance upgrade that enhances the speed and stability of LightWave [ 6.5 ], and also includes new features and functionality.

RE:Vision Effects Inc. has released ReelSmart Twixtor, a re-timing solution for Shake. The plug-in enables artists to speed up and slow down image sequences. Twixtor synthesizes unique new frames by warping and interpolating frames of the original sequence, using proprietary tracking technology that calculates motion for individual pixels.

Northern Lights Productions and Arete Entertainment announced the release of Arete's award-winning Psunami version 2.0 for Electric Image's Universe. Psunami is a hybrid plug-in/shader that allows users to create photo-realistic oceans and skies. "It's fun to watch people do a double-take when they see a Psunami animation. They can't quite tell that it's not real and that's the goal," said Blair Burtan, founder of Northern Lights.

Advanced Rendering Technology (ART) is shipping its new RenderPipe plug-in for Maya, which offers a seamless interface between RenderDrive and Maya. The plug-in provides Maya users with tightly integrated control and access to RenderDrive's powerful rendering features -- including ultra-fast ray tracing, area lights, depth of field and physically accurate materials libraries -- all from within their Maya application. The new interface, shipping with RenderDrive, supports Maya on Windows NT, IRIX, Linux and Mac OSX, when Maya for the Mac is available.

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, 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

On April 4, 2001, Cambridge Animation Systems, makers of Animo software, announced the upcoming release of Swiffworks, a new plugin that delivers Macromedia Flash format output to Alias|Wavefront's Maya users. The newsoftware is based on the Maya scene interpreter developed for Cambridge's Inkworks plugin, used in the feature film RUGRATS IN PARIS. The new plugin allows users to choose Swiffworks material or use the default Phong material provided by Maya.

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.

Macromedia, Inc. and Intel Corporation announced on Tuesday, April 10, 2001, that the coming release of Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio will include new jointly developed 3D authoring capabilities, as well as a new version of the Shockwave Multiuser Server and support for both Flash5 and streaming RealMedia content. According to the announcement, the new software is integrated with existing 3D solutions to ensure developers do not have to abandon their 3D authoring software of choice, but rather import that content into Director.

Electric Rain announced the development of a plugin version of their Swift 3D product that will allow LightWave 3D users to export content directly to the Macromedia Flash file format, as well as other types of vector-based formats. Scheduled for a late Spring, 2001 release, the plugin will support both PC and Macintosh platforms, and will accurately render complex models as vector outlines, 1-4 color shaded cartoon files and realistic gradient shaded files.

Alias|Wavefront announced on April 10, 2001, that next month it will be releasing a Maya exporter plugin that will transfer content into Macromedia Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio software. The Maya Shockwave 3D Exporter plugin will provide an export solution for the rapid refinement of content for the soon-to-be-released 3D version of the Shockwave Web platform. The plugin will be available for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.