Bauhaus Software Inc. announced the immediate availability of Mirage 1.5, a new version of its powerful 2D animation, paint and vfx system. A true paperless digital animation system, Mirage dramatically broadens the capabilities of traditional 2D animators, allowing users to create any classical or digital style 2D animation, from cel animation and anime, to rotoscoping, stop motion and more, in a fully-digital pipeline. Mirage is proven to drastically reduce costs and decrease animation production time by up to 50 percent when compared with traditional 2D pipelines.
"Mirage is having an overwhelmingly positive impact on the 2D animation community,” said Dan Kraus, ceo of Bauhaus. “The new features in this release are direct requests from our customers, professionals in the field of 2D animation. The new features in Mirage 1.5 will open even more doors for 2D animators, allowing them to expand their creativity into the digital realm.”
New features include:
* New Custom Panels — Artists can easily create, save and share custom user interface panels. Custom icon buttons on the panels allow users to control almost any function or combination of functions within Mirage with a single click, such as creating libraries of color effects, Key Framer moves, particle effects and more.
* 30-Day Fully Functional Trial License — The new Mirage 1.5 demo versions for both Mac and PC allow users to put Mirage through its paces for a full 30 days. The Mirage demo versions are now save-enabled, with no watermarks.
* Powerful New Effects — The new Color Replacer lets users change the colors of elements in animation and motion graphics files over time, allowing changes to be made to bitmap based projects or elements after they have already been completed.
* TWAIN Auto-Feed Scanner Support — Mirage 1.5 now supports most high speed, sheet fed, TWAIN compliant scanners. Users can scan images directly into the Mirage timeline for maximum speed and flexibility.
* New Spanish and German User Interface Language Support — Both Spanish and German localization files are now included with Mirage 1.5. Switching languages is easily done through the Mirage Preferences Panel.
* Stereo Audio File Support — Mirage 1.5 now loads stereo WAV and MP3 audio files - essential for timing lip-sync. Stereo files are converted to single-track mono to reduce computing overhead and increase speed.
* Wide Variety of New Element Scripting Commands — Mirage 1.5 includes significant enhancements to the already powerful scripting language, Element. Programmers have access to many new functions within Mirage that were never before available.
“Some habits are hard to dismiss,” said Paul Fierlinger of AR&T Prods. “I still like to have a pencil or paintbrush or even an eraser stay close at hand — right next to the drawing board. Mirage’s new custom tool panel gives me that same sense of interactivity and convenience by allowing me to customize the user interface and create familiar icons for all my favorite drawing tools —blue and yellow pencils, soft kneading and red-rubber erasers, a crayon and a piece of charcoal — all still close at hand in Mirage’s digital animation environment.”
Bauhaus Mirage 1.5 is a free upgrade for existing Bauhaus customers. Mirage 1.5 can be purchased directly from Bauhaus Software, at
www.bauhaussoftware.com , or through the company’s reseller channel. Mirage is currently available on Windows XP/2000 and OS/X. Educational pricing for both institutions and students is available.
Bauhaus Software was founded to become a leading provider of products and technologies to the digital visual effects and animation markets. Bauhaus is focused on providing professional 2D animators with the ultimate tools for producing next-generation animated graphics and special effects. Based in San Antonio, Texas, Bauhaus employs a team of business executives and engineers gathered from across the United States, Canada and Europe.
