Crater Software has released the latest version of their flagship 2D animation package CTP. Among other things, version 1.4 now offers complete compatibility with Macromedia Flash, making the cartoon production tool ideal for animators looking to publish their work on the Web. "Enhancing CTP 1.4 with Flash compatibility was clearly the next step to take," explained Crater Software President Joe Alonso, "With an overwhelming majority of Web users with Flash installed on their browsers, it has gone from a mere file format to the new standard in Web media delivery.

Adobe is now shipping the latest version of their award-winning and very popular digital video editing software Premiere. Adobe Premiere 6.0 allows users to edit digital video on a desktop and publish it to the Web in multiple formats, including RealNetworks RealMedia, Microsoft WindowsMedia and Apple QuickTime, quickly and easily. This new version is being dubbed "the tool of choice for DV professionals" because of its built-in support for a large selection of DV devices on Macintosh and Windows platforms.

At Macworld Expo this week, Electric Image announced that a professional version of its Amorphium real-time 3D sculpting and painting program would start shipping later this month. The new product, Amorphium PRO, builds upon its predecessor's real-time interface, while adding significant new modeling, animation and rendering capabilities that make it ideal for 3D artists, Web animators and graphic designers.

SGI recently announced that the source code for its digital media software development kit (dmSDK) for the Linux operating environment is now available to the open source community. The dmSDK toolkit shortens the time required to create digital media applications across the SGI product line by allowing SGI software partners to write to a single application-programming interface (API). dmSDK provides Linux developers with a proven, cross-platform digital media API and is a key enabler allowing digital media developers to deliver applications for this increasing popular operating system.

Stop Motion Pro recently announced that version two of their popular stop-motion software is now available. Stop Motion Pro 2 is a program designed to make creating stop-motion animation easier, while giving animators the power to do things that they may previously not have been able to accomplish. The new version now features a frame looping with capture tool, onion skinning and rotoscoping with onion skinning. The real-time preview, frame toggle and frame editor tools from version 1 have also been overhauled, creating a versatile and powerful package for any stop-motion animator.

Autonomous Effects (AFX) recently released version 1.4 of SceneGenie for 3D Studio MAX – their powerful match-moving plug-in suite for the award-winning animation package. Version 1.4 continues to enhance the no-measurement match-move capabilities of the CameraGenie portion of SceneGenie, which combines fast feature tracking with a fast computational core to produce 3D matches in minutes.

At the end of the year 2000, IBM announced the world's fastest UNIX-based workstation, offering nearly two times the performance of similarly configured new UltraSparc-III-based servers from Sun Microsystems. This IBM Model 170 workstation features the most powerful UNIX 3D graphics capability on the market and is shipping right now. It features copper-fueled microprocessors and the latest GXT6000P 3D graphics accelerator from IBM to provide unprecedented levels of performance for companies designing products such as airplanes and automobiles.

Alias|Wavefront announced recently that they would be previewing Maya 3 for Apple’s OS X at Macworld in San Francisco, January 8 – 12, 2001. Scheduled for shipping some time this year, Maya is the only high-end 3D modeling and animation product slated for release on the Mac. "We are very excited to be able to offer the Mac community their first glimpse of Maya on the Mac," said Alias|Wavefront director of Maya Technologies, Richard Kerris. "Macworld attendees will have an opportunity to stop by our booth and get an up-close look at how successful the port has been to date.

High-end visual effects software developer Interactive Effects announced the release of Piranha HD version 3.3 for Silicon Graphics workstations. The new version expands on the capabilities of previous releases in the key areas of universal mastering for film and HD, workflow, EDL conforming, effects and performance. Graphics additions to the new system include Wire and Rig Removal, Quad Filter Texturing, a new Transfer Mode effect with 2D Boolean operations and several new artistic blur effects.

NewTek announced late last week that Lightwave 6.5, the new upgrade to their award-winning 3D software, is now available for download from their Website. The new version was originally to be called Lightwave 6.1, but NewTek decided that due to the large array of new features and improvements they would pitch it as a more significant upgrade. "Lightwave 6.0 was a monumental release, and the new architecture it provides has allowed this release to consist of hundreds of features in a relatively short amount of time. Upgrades to follow should be no less significant.

Milan-based Phoenix Tools announced the release of RealFur 2.0 – a major upgrade to their fur rendering technology. The new version introduces renders up to 10 times faster than the previous version. The key to this speed is that the old volumetric technology has been replaced with a new geometry-based system that allows artists to render millions of polygons without having to display them in the 3D authoring application. An optimized cylinder, with the given color, transparency and other global material parameters, replace each hair strand at the rendering stage.

eyeon Software recently announced a major new release of their powerful digital effects and compositing software, Digital Fusion DFX+. DFX+ is a "modular" offering. eyeon has chopped Digital Fusion up into 5 different packages, created a new licensing system and presto – their flag ship package is now highly customizable and accessible to all! eyeon also announced that a demo of the software is now available for download from their Website. "If you want to know how a software package performs in the real world, you have to kick the tires and take it for a spin.

NewTek has reinforced its commitment to the Macintosh platform by announcing that their newly released Lightwave [6.5] will also be available for Apple’s new OS X platform. Although NewTek only released Lightwave [6] on the MAC earlier this year, they have slowly moved their efforts toward the fruity platform.

Toon Boom Technologies has announced its participation in RealNetworks' RealPartner program to refine USAnimation further to work well with RealNetworks' RealSystem. "We're pleased Toon Boom technologies has chosen to support RealSystem and we welcome Toon Boom into the RealPartner Program," said Geoff Walker, senior developer relations manager, RealNetworks, Inc.

REALVIZ announced that the new version of their award-winning camera tracking software, MatchMover, is now shipping. The software is used to track the motion of a camera accurately so that the 3D elements can be seamlessly composited into place. The new version includes a graph editor that allows the user to edit camera parameters as curves on a graph easily. In addition, the new status-tracking feature also allows for the tracking and analyzing of project progress and results.

Numerical Design Ltd. (NDL) and Nintendo of America announced that the NetImmerse game engine is now available to developers creating games for the highly anticipated Nintendo Gamecube. NetImmerse is a multi-platform game development tool that, according to NDL, can save approximately six months of development time and a year or more of engineering costs. It can be used for a wide variety of game genres and platforms.

At 3December, Alias|Wavefront announced that they are giving away copies

of their Maya Paint FX plug-in for free. The 3D Paint FX tools will

be present in the next major release of Maya. But as Jill Ramsay,

product manager for Maya and Brush Technologies explained, "We wanted

to make this powerful brush-based technology available to our

customers as part of our 3December celebration, instead of waiting

for the next major Maya release." So for registered users of Maya the

Pulse Entertainment announced last week that they are developing a Pulse Exporter for Maya. This would allow Alias|Wavefront users to export interactive, real-time 3D animation created using the Maya platform directly into Pulse and onto the Web.

SensAble Technologies announced the release of version 3 of their FreeForm modeling system. The new release expands on the previous version's shape creation capabilities while maintaining the fundamental FreeForm touch advantage. When combined with the FreeForm system's unique ability to create complex blends and highly sculpted details, the result is a very powerful modeling solution. The new version also features new surface creation tools, which make the transition downstream to production easier then ever before.

Macromedia has announced that the eagerly awaited Dreamweaver 4 Fireworks 4 Studio is now available. Dubbed "the complete solution for professional Website design and production," the new package is comprised of Dreamweaver 4, the new version of Macromedia’s award-winning Web design package and the new version of their popular graphics tools Fireworks. The studio package unifies HTML code and graphics workflow and provides professional Web designers with an integrated authoring platform designed to simplify the Web design process, while retaining maximum control over the final outcome.