Category: Technology

Autodesk Inc. announced the availability of the latest version of the AliasStudio Personal Learning Edition (PLE), a special non-commercial-use version of the industry-leading industrial design software. Previously released versions of the PLE software have been downloaded more than 100,000 times by students and industry professionals eager for access to the latest AliasStudio software. Autodesk has continued this important product program so that the industrial design community can explore, learn and become productive to realize their ideas with this leading industrial design software.

Side Effects Software, developer of the award-winning Houdini family of 3D software, released Houdini 8.1. This new version features an animator-friendly Auto Rig, Muscle System, Character Picker and Pose Library. Enhancements to the Rigid Body and Wire dynamic solvers and support for the importing of Collada files are also included in this latest release.

1 Beyond Inc., a leading provider of digital video editing, compositing and storage systems, announced that Hatchling Studios, a growing full service digital animation company based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has chosen 1 Beyond systems to completely revamp its armory of graphics workstations.

eyeon Software gears up for the fall trade show season with the pre-announcement of its SIGGRAPH 2006 release of Fusion 5.1.

eyeon will soon unveil Fusion version 5.1, introducing more than 25 new technologies to their industry-leading compositing application. eyeon spent more than two years redeveloping the core architecture of Fusion 5. The 5.1 release will add a host of new features and functionality to this highly-adaptable visual effects system.

GenArts Inc. announced the immediate availability of Sapphire Plug-ins version 2 for Apples Shake. This release contains 20 additional effects, including a new FilmDamage effect, and a wide array of new features and improvements such as on-screen widgets for easy parameter adjustment, and an improved user interface for all color parameters.

Autodesk Inc. launched Autodesk Lustre HD, a new digital color grading system designed for working on high-definition television (HDTV) commercials and programming, as well as HDTV film projects. Lustre HD is the latest addition to the Autodesk Lustre family of nonlinear digital color grading products, which have been used to grade Academy Award-winning films such as THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and KING KONG.

Luxology Llc. announced the immediate availability of modo 201 Signature Courseware from 3DGarage.com. Taught by leading 3D animator and author, Dan Ablan, the modo 201 Signature Courseware complements existing modo educational materials to further streamline learning path for the many CG artists moving to capitalize on modos powerful feature set and productivity advantages.

Young-Gu Art is the latest vfx facility that has selected Iridas FrameCycler DI as its new review and approval system. The facility, based in Seoul, provides cutting-edge work for the Korean film industry, one of the largest in the world.

"We chose FrameCycler for its realtime playback and primary color correction capabilities," said Ki-Wook Shim, visual effects supervisor at Young-Gu. "We work with 2K 10-bit files so we needed an application that can handle that. Iridas has a great track-record in the industry and that made it an easy decision."

Blackmagic Design announced the immediate availability of Version 5.6 software for all Multibridge and DeckLink products. This release includes new support for Eyeon Fusion 5, support for 720p/50 on DeckLink high definition cards, new HDV playback support in Premiere Pro 2.0 on Windows XP and XP x64 systems.