AWN Headline News

This week editor Bill Desowitz is away at NAB so Ill be providing my musings. As I mentioned last week, we have Peter Plantecs look at how realtime rendering has affected the industry as well as a review of combustion 4. In addition, Fred Galpern tackles the future of visual content, especially effects animation, in the world of gaming.

Buena Vista Games Inc. (BVG) announced two major business deals to strengthen the company's internal game development capabilities and further its goals of becoming a top tier publisher of handheld and console games. The deals include the acquisition of acclaimed Salt Lake City-based videogame developer, Avalanche Software Lc. and the establishment of a start-up development studio in Vancouver, Canada, led by former Electronic Arts Canada senior development and business staff.

Autodesk Inc. announced new versions of its Discreet Flint and Discreet Smoke systems. Running on a personal computer, the Flint 9.2 visual effects system and Smoke 6.7 editing system are high-definition (HD) capable, enabling customers to realize their ideas in both HD and standard-definition (SD). Autodesk is also introducing two suites: Autodesk TV and Autodesk Digital Intermediate (DI).

Habbo Hotel, one of the world's largest and hottest online destinations for teenagers, will be opening its doors to animated story-based programming. In response to overwhelming consumer demand from the site's teen audience for new ways to experience the innovative world of Habbo Hotel, Sulake, the creators of the burgeoning community, have launched an animation challenge. Through this challenge, animation studios from across the globe will compete to help bring the popular Web world beyond the Internet.

On April 19, 2005, the Cannes Film Festival announced its films, including two films in competition that are adaptations of comic books. David Cronenbergs A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and Robert Rodriguez and Frank Millers SIN CITY will both compete for the coveted Palme d Or.

After last years surprisingly high amount of animated films in and out of competition, the 2005 event, which takes place May 11-22, 2005, features no toons.

At NAB, ADS Tech unveiled PYRO A/V Link Studio that includes ADS Tech's 1394/Firewire-based Analog/Digital Video (DV) converter bundled with the Sony Vegas+DVD Production Suite of video and audio software tools. Combined, the industry leading hardware and software components provide professional media producers and prosumers with a compelling video production solution that includes everything they need to begin capturing, editing and processing DV, HDV and creating other content, including surround-sound audio and streaming media.

REALVIZ chose NAB 2005 as the setting for the introduction of SMART ('Scalable Matching Architecture for Tracking'), a new automatic tracking engine, which is the result of extensive R&D efforts at the company's headquarters in the South of France. MatchMover Pro will be the first of the REALVIZ products powered by SMART, with a release slated for June 2005 on Macintosh, Windows and Linux.

Avanca Film Festival 2005Avanca, Portugal July 27-31, 2005Deadline: May 25, 2005

Avanca Film Festival presents a forum for the best in cinema, TV, video and multimedia. The event features screenings, surprises, workshops, exhibitions, meetings and discussions.

Next month, the WAR OF THE WORLDS graphic novel will debut in bookstores across the nation and it will be promoted with a 90-second trailer, not unlike the way movies are promoted.

"We're producing the trailer in Hollywood, and it will be complete with a soundtrack, special effects and voice talent," said Aron Kessler, vp of Best Sellers Illustrated (www.bestsellersillustrated.com), the book's publisher.