Category: Technology

Toon Boom Animation will release OPUS and Concerto for Mac OS X in September. OPUS and Concerto are advanced solutions for the production of traditional and digital animation, providing customers with an integrated production workflow, powerful 3D scene planning, sophisticated effects, compositing tools and seamless 2D/3D integration.

NVIDIA Corp. announced that its GeForce 6800 series graphics processing units (GPUs) will equip the competition PCs featured at the rendering invitational worldwide finals of the Imagine Cup 2004, a multi-faceted technology competition sponsored by Microsoft Corp. The Imagine Cup challenges student teams of programmers and digital artists from around the globe to extend their artistic affinity beyond the classroom using the latest software development tools from Microsoft.

NVIDIA Corp. broadened its already expansive graphics line with the introduction of four new NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics solutions based on PCI Express. Leveraging this next-generation bus architecture, NVIDIA doubles the bandwidth of its AGP 8X-based products to more than 4GB per second in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

NVIDIA Corp. unveiled a new technology that enables multiple NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series or NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards to operate in a single PC or workstation for a stunning increase in graphics horsepower. Appearing later this year in PCI Express-based PCs and workstations from top manufacturers, the new NVIDIA SLI technology takes full advantage of the additional bandwidth and features of this new high-bandwidth bus architecture.

Side Effects Software, developer of the award-winning Houdini family of 3D software, announced the availability of Houdini 7 in public beta.

REALVIZ announced that it is offering a free copy of the award-winning image based 3D modeling software, ImageModeler 3.5 (which retails for 750 Euros/$850) with all purchases of MatchMover Pro 3.0 (which retails for 9,600 Euros/$11,000) made between June 14- 30, 2004.

With the kick off of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Convention in Chicago (June 10-12), Discreet announced that leading architectural firms are using its design visualization offerings for a competitive advantage in winning new commissions and securing approval for high-profile design concepts, including Perkins & Will, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, Kohn Pederson Fox, Ellerbe Becket and Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum.

Softimage Co. announced the worldwide availability of SOFTIMAGE|XSI version 4.0 -- the latest release of its industry leading nonlinear 3D production environment. Starting on June 7, 2004, Softimage customers with maintenance contracts can download version 4.0 at www.softimage.com/download, and first-time orders are scheduled to start shipping next week.