AWN Headline News

The Gnomon Workshop has updated its website with new navigation, contests, forums, books and several hours of free training.

Artbeats will participate in the Avid 2006 Back to School Industry All-Access campaign. All qualified students who purchase Avid Xpress Pro Academic, SOFTIMAGE|XSI Academic, or Pro Tools Academic before Sept. 30, will receive a 30% discount on any Artbeats collection priced $399 or higher, and a free broadcast quality clip worth $199, both of which will be available for immediate download from Artbeats website.

Sony Pictures Releasing International (SPRI) crossed the $1 billion mark in overseas box office receipts in record time for the company.

The previous record for the studio was Sept. 8, 2002, the year the studio grossed its record high overseas take of $1.305 billion. It marks the sixth time overall and the fifth time in the past seven years that SPRI has amassed more than $1 billion in ticket sales from international territories.

In 2006 to date, films from Sony Pictures Ent. have generated approximately $2.1 billion in worldwide ticket sales.

Disney's Oscar-winning animated feature, THE LITTLE MERMAID, makes its digital debut during a special limited engagement from Sept. 7-24 at Hollywood's legendary El Capitan Theatre.

The engagement, which celebrates the upcoming Oct. 3 release of the special edition DVD from Walt Disney Home Ent., will spotlight an all-new digital restoration of the film with enhanced picture and sound. Plus, every show throughout the entire run will offer a live appearance by Ariel.

NVIDIA Corp. announced an array of NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics that are now available in the high-performance 64-bit Sun Ultra 40 workstations. Prominent in the film and broadcast, digital content creation, oil and gas, geosciences, mechanical computer-aided design (CAD) and medical imaging industries, Sun Ultra 40 workstations deliver record-setting performance in many industry benchmarks and offer ultra-fast processing for large, complex datasets.

This week Fred Galpern reviews Maya 8, the first release under the new ownership of Autodesk. In addition to offering a more streamlined toolset, Maya is more compatible with 3ds Max. For one thing, theres the addition of the integrated FBX format, allowing users to import and export data between Max and Maya. And now theres cross functionality in Maya with Autodesks Toxik too.

Massive Ent., a studio in Vivendi Games Sierra Ent. division, is using modo for WORLD IN CONFLICT, the upcoming Cold War strategy game for the PC due in spring 2007. modos flexible user interface and powerful UV tools dramatically increased the Swedish developers production of detailed realistic models and was used to produce more than 90% of the titles in-game models.

LucasArts will partner with Free Radical Design to develop a new videogame for next-generation console platforms. Product and release details will be unveiled at a later date.

Free Radical has always been about titles with great gameplay and innovative design, said Peter Hirschmann, vp of product development at LucasArts. In the battle for videogame quality, these guys are at the front of the line. This teams pedigree is one of the best in the business.