Category: Technology

Alias|Wavefront announced this week that the fifth major release of their Maya next-generation animation software will feature a universal rendering policy that enables Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited to "float" the Maya Batch Renderer across any number of machines. This new announcement furthers Alias|Wavefront's aim at synergy between all of Maya's tools throughout the production and post-production process and Alias|Wavefront's earlier announcement that Maya 3 will feature a new Trax compositing system further backs up this position.

Discreet, the producers of high-end 3D and 2D computer graphics tools this week launched their new unified paint, animation and 3D visual effects system: combustion*. The Macintosh and Windows NT-based system offers a single, unified paint, animation and 3D-compositing environment for visual effects creation. combustion* features Academy Award-winning technology from inferno* and an extremely fast caching architecture for igniting the desktops and creative imaginations of digital visual effects artists world wide.

REALVIZ has announced a new application, ReTimer 2.0, that can be used to change the speed or length of any motion sequence in post-production. ReTimer utilizes a revolutionary method for creating highly accurate new frames between frames that were actually shot, and can also be used to subtract frames to shorten a sequence realistically. ReTimer automatically creates any number of new frames through an accurate warping technique developed by INRIA, the renowned French Research Lab that is a technology partner to REALVIZ.

India-based company Colorfront has announced the release of their high-end colour correction tool color*star. color*star is the industry's first plug-in for digital film grading, advanced selective colour correction and creative look-creation running on Discreet's high-end visual effects and editing systems. The plug-in currently runs on inferno*, flame*, flint*, effect* on O2, fire* and smoke* systems from Discreet. Colorfront has recognized the convergence of film, HDTV and video to the 1080p/24 Universal Mastering solution and have standardized color*star's workflow in this format.

High-end 3D software developer Alias|Wavefront began shipping Maya Fusion 2 last week. Maya Fusion is Maya's NT-based compositing and effects software, which is integrated within the Maya UI to give artists the power to combine their live action footage with their Maya CG elements realistically.

SOFTIMAGE has announced that the latest upgrade to their flagship SOFTIMAGE|3D animation system was available for download from their Web site. This upgrade represents a milestone for SOFTIMAGE, as it is the first upgrade the company has chosen to distribute on-line (rather than wait 6-8 weeks for reproduction, duplication and distribution).

Last week Alias|Wavefront unveiled a new upgrade to its powerful 3D

animation system Maya, an upgrade which will add a major new feature to the

software, particularly useful to games developers. Trax is a new non-linear

animation editing solution which will allow games developers to manipulate

extensive amounts of animation and blend it together in a way that can be

reproduced in the final game play. Trax features include reusable time

independent motion clips, blending of hand animation, data filtering and

Interactive Effects, producers of high-end visual effects systems Piranha

and Amazon Paint, recently announced the release of Piranha 3.1 for Silicon

Graphics Workstations. The new version expands the systems' capabilities in

areas such as video support, digital audio and disk/graphics performance,

as well as adding new features such as Mipmap Texturing, high speed soft

edged rotosplining and improved image tracking capabilities. Also new to