NVIDIA Corp. announced the release of Gelato 2.1, the high-quality, GPU-accelerated rendering software, which now includes support for Joe Alter's Shave and a Haircut software for CG hair and fur effects. Other enhancements in this newest release of Gelato include support for Autodesk Maya 8.5 and 3ds Max 9.0, improved stereo rendering, fog lights and significant performance improvements.
eyeon Software announced the release of the Fusion 5.1 Learning Edition, which gives compositors of every skill level the opportunity to learn Fusion.
The learning edition was created to give everyone the chance to experiment, test and grow his or her compositing skills on eyeon's award-winning desktop visual effects software.
wondertouch has released three new libraries in its Professional Emitters (Pro Emitters) product line for particleIllusion 3.0 software. Each library contains 30 emitters that are thematically geared to providing sophisticated, ready-to-use, motion graphics style particle-based effects.
PipelineFX announced the release of Qube! 5.1 render farm management software.
DAZ 3D announced the release of the Mac-Intel compatible version of Bryce, the popular 3D art and animation tool. Now able to run natively on Intel-based Mac computer systems, Bryce 6.1 gives artists greater performance and stability as they develop 3D environments and animations for print, multimedia, video and the Web.
mental images announced the upcoming availability of mental mill Artist Edition at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco. mental images is known for providing artists and visual effects professionals with leading edge software tools to render their imagination visible such as mental ray and now mental mill, which is a breakthrough technology for the creation of hardware shaders in all popular formats.
Organic Motion Inc. announced the industry's first full body, markerless motion capture system. Functioning without the use of markers or body suits, Organic Motion's technology improves every step of the animation process by producing immediately usable clean data that can be imported into MotionBuilder, Autodesk's leading realtime character animation application, as well as any custom software applications. Organic Motion will be exhibiting at GDC (North Hall, booth #5603) in San Francisco, March 7-9.
Vicon announced the launch of the FKextreme system, catering specifically to game developers and small studios. FKextreme will be introduced at GDC in San Francisco, booth #354 WH, March 7-9.
Side Effects Software unveiled affordable new pricing for Houdini Master, the award-winning 3D animation and visual effects software renowned for its node-based procedural workflow. Houdini Master is now available for $7,995 for a node-locked Workstation license and $9,995 for a floating Network license.
Realscan 3D, an industry leader in mobile, high resolution and high color structured light 3D scanning, today announced that advancements in its proprietary scanning pipeline now allow the company to create and deliver a full-body, animation-ready normal-mapped character in any number of different levels of detail (LOD's) to film or videogame productions in only four days -- 20% less time than previously required. The same advancements have enabled Realscan to reduce the cost of adding levels of detail and normal maps to their scans, savings the company passes on to their clients.
Ofer Alon (Pixolator) announced on ZBrushCentral that May 15, 2007, is the target date for the Windows release of Pixologic's ZBrush 3.
MAXON announced the immediate availability of its brand new CINEMA 4D R10 Engineering Edition. This powerful software allows engineering professionals -- even those with no graphics experience -- to quickly create high-end visualizations using their own CAD files. Improved scene management, a context-sensitive help system and an integrated preview renderer are only some of the numerous improvements users can take advantage of.
Highlights include:
SplutterFish, maker of the award-winning Brazil Rendering System for 3ds Max, announced the immediate pre-release availability of Brazil r/s V2, the highly anticipated successor to their high-end 3D rendering package. This pre-release version is feature-complete, production tested and late-stage beta.
NVIDIA Corp. unveiled a new line of professional graphics solutions: NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600, Quadro FX 5600 and NVIDIA Quadro Plex VCS Model IV. Armed with the largest increase in GPU power and functionality to date, these solutions are designed to help solve the world's most complex professional graphics challenges.
Tackling the extreme visualization challenges of the automotive styling and design, oil and gas exploration, medical imaging, visual simulation and training, scientific research and advanced visual effects industries, these new Quadro solutions offer:
NaturalMotion Ltd. announced the immediate availability of morpheme, a powerful new animation engine for next-generation game development. Featuring a flexible and unique 3D authoring tool chain, morpheme is designed to give animators unprecedented creative control over the look of their final in-game animation by allowing them to author and preview blends, blend trees and transition graphs in realtime. morpheme is available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
NewTek Inc. is offering the LightWave v9 Training Bundle, a special offer that provides hundreds of dollars in training materials free with the purchase of LightWave 3D. By special arrangement with the publishers -- 3D Garage, Desktop Images, KURV Studios, Wordware Publishing and Replica Technology -- purchasers of new full or upgrade licenses of LightWave will be eligible to receive a book, two training DVDs, getting started courseware and a package of royalty-free content for use with LightWave.
NVIDIA Corp. released the worlds first WHQL-certified drivers for Microsoft DirectX 10, coinciding with the release of the first DirectX 10 test kit from Microsoft, which allows other hardware vendors to test their graphics processors using the DirectX 10 WHQL tests.
Microsoft DirectX 10 is included with Windows Vista and delivers unparalleled levels of graphics realism and film-quality effects for games, all rendered in realtime on NVIDIA GeForce 8-series GPUs. GeForce 8-series GPUs are the first and only Microsoft DirectX 10-capable GPUs currently available.
NVIDIA Corp. released a public beta of the NVIDIA CUDA Software Developer Kit (SDK) and C-compiler for computing on NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs). GPU Computing with the CUDA SDK is a new approach to computing where hundreds of on-chip processors simultaneously communicate and cooperate to solve complex computing problems.
BOXX Technologies Inc., has a plan to provide users with a smooth transition to Microsoft Windows Vista by fully testing and certifying all BOXX Workstations and renderBOXX products for use with Vista.
Thomsons Technicolor will be opening its first studio-based digital intermediate (DI) facility, built at Sony Studios in Culver City, California.
Skymatter Ltd., a high-end provider of 3D software tools, announced the immediate availability of a free trial of Mudbox 1.0.4, the company's advanced 3D sculpting software. The free trial offers all the capabilities of the professional version and can be downloaded at www.mudbox3d.com/downloadTrial.html.
Mudbox is a next-generation, high-resolution, brush-based 3D sculpting software application designed for the professional digital sculptor.Since its public beta debut in December 2005 and official release in
Autodesk has announced 3ds Max 9 Extension: Productivity Booster. The update will enable Autodesk subscription customers to work more efficiently with more than 30 productivity enhancements in the areas of animation and Biped, rendering, UI and usability. Additionally, increased interoperability with AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD Architecture 2008 and Revit Building 2008 will help design visualization customers share data with other architecture professionals more easily than ever before.
VFXWorld polled professionals to see how they are coping with some of the latest technical challenges. Bill Desowitz reports back with a few highlights.
Rhythm & Hues Inc. has purchased three seats of Iridas' FrameCycler DI. FrameCycler DI offers a powerful toolset combining uncompressed playback of 2K content, conform, primary color correction and ReviewLink, Iridas' new remote collaboration system.
"FrameCycler DI allows us to do 2K playback and saves us the step of having to do a film-out," said Harry Lam, digital compositing supervisor at Rhythm & Hues. "It's great being able to go into the screening room each day and see our work in realtime. It allows us to keep close tabs on our work as we go."
Corel Corp. announced the availability of Corel Painter X. The latest version of Corel Painter continues its focus on giving professional artists, designers and photographers a natural painting and illustration experience that is unmatched by any other software.
