"Since our founding by Daniel Langlois, twenty years ago, Softimage has always prided itself on helping 3D artists unleash their creativity and to make the impossible come to life," said Marc Stevens, vice president and general manager for Softimage. "Once again, we have been listening to our customers and prospects and we followed their advice when we made these improvements to our features, packaging and pricing. We believe that the changes we are making will set a new standard for value and productivity in the industry,"
New in SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5:
Both SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 Essentials and Advanced software will include more than thirty enhancements that were developed for key customers such as Lionhead Studios, Valve, EA, Animal Logic, Nerdcorps, Pandemic and NCSoft. Some of the new enhancements, which improve production efficiency and meet the specific workflow needs of the game development, visual effects and visualization industries, include:
- HDR (high dynamic range) rendermap support;
- Additional SDK (Software Developer's Kit) APIs (Application programming interface);
- UV Editing enhancements (2D image data on a 3D model); and Enhanced audio support.
In addition, each SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 application delivers specific features designed to meet the needs of target customers:
SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 Essentials - equips artists with the features they need to create compelling 3D characters and content for games, film and television. The Essentials version now includes Hair & Fur, and Syflex Cloth capabilities. The price for Essentials will increase to $2,995 USMSRP; maintenance remains unchanged at $799 USMSRP, and upgrades remain unchanged at $999 USMSRP. XSI 6.5 Essentials will only be available to new customers and customers on active maintenance.
SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 XSI Advanced - enables technical directors and studio IT managers to set up and run a creative animation facility with a robust toolset, including everything in the SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 XSI Essentials package, plus Behavior, a crowd and behavioral simulation system, as well as five additional XSI Batch rendering licenses. The price for Advanced will decrease to $4,995 USMSRP and maintenance will decrease to $1333 USMSRP.
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"Artists need production-proven solutions that they can truly depend on," explained Marc Petit, Autodesk Media & Entertainment senior vice president. "With Autodesk Maya 2008, we have placed considerable emphasis on raising the reliability bar higher than ever before. Designed for multi-core workstations, the 2008 release provides artists with an optimized application that includes new creative tools in modeling and animation to help artist meet demands quickly and easily."
"On all fronts Autodesk has improved Maya software's arsenal of tools," noted Rob van de Bragt, animation director at post-production facility The Mill. "Maya 2008 offers more flexibility in its modeling, rigging and rendering tools than ever before." The Mill recently used Maya on the Audi A5 ad Lines, the Playstation 3 commercial This Living, the Absolute commercial Protest, as well as the Comfort ads City Stop and Do The Moves.
Insomniac Games relies on Maya as a modeling and animation tool for several titles including Resistance: Fall of Man. Chad Dezern, art director at the facility said: "When a problem comes up, artists can usually work it out using the Maya toolset. When we need to build on the software, Maya offers an extremely flexible API, which makes it a great hub for our proprietary modeling tools."
Highlights of Maya 2008
Increased polygon modeling efficiency:
- Maya 2008 enables artists to quickly create, manipulate and place polygons that form highly detailed characters and environments, through a streamlined Mesh Smooth workflow, a new Slide Edge feature and improvements to Booleans, Bridge, Bevel and other tools.
Overall performance improvements for greater efficiency:
- With Maya 2008, Autodesk continues the task of optimizing the software's toolsets to provide greater performance through both multi-threading and algorithmic speed-ups. For example*:
- The Poly Reduce function is now up to 30 times faster for a 22k face poly mesh, and Poly Smooth is now up to 4 times faster
- The Maya nCloth cache performance up to 3 times faster on a cache of 10k vertices mental ray translation for a 20k mesh instanced 2,000 times is over 20 times faster
Tools for creating better looking games:
- Maya 2008 is better equipped to create and display content destined for the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles. It offers support for DirectX HLSL shaders in the Maya viewport, a new hardware shader API, enhancements to the high-quality render view, accelerated mental ray texture baking performance, and more.
Increased flexibility for character setup and animation:
- Building upon the Maya software's advanced, customizable animation system, Maya 2008 delivers improved skinning and rigging toolsets, including new, non-destructive skin editing capabilities. These enhancements allow animators and Technical Directors to efficiently explore ideas, manage iterations and get superior results, faster.
For more information on Maya 2008 check out this Product Brochure
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"Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 provides an ideal environment for creating the complex 3D content demanded by today's game, design visualization, film, and television industries," said Marc Petit, Autodesk Media & Entertainment senior vice president. "3ds Max 2008 dramatically improves artists' productivity, enabling them to quickly achieve higher levels of visual sophistication through innovative modeling and interactive rendering capabilities."
Neversoft Entertainment used 3ds Max to create Tony Hawk's Project 8, the premier next-generation version of a Tony Hawk title. "Autodesk 3ds Max let us quickly visualize our work as it would appear in the game engine," explained Nolan Nelson, character art director at the facility. This kept our creative momentum flowing and allowed us to produce the most advanced characters possible for the title."
Robert Stava, creative director at 3D Media Group and 3ds Max 2008 beta tester said, "Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 quickly became a standard part of our production pipeline. With many of our architectural design projects tipping the scales at millions of polygons, 3ds Max 2008 software's improved handling of complex data is a very welcome addition." 3D Media Group recently used 3ds Max to create visualizations for the Fulton Street Transit Center in New York City, the Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi and the New Songdo City in Korea.
Highlights of 3ds Max 2008
Improved viewing and handling of large complex scenes:
- New viewport technology and optimizations provide improved performance with large and complex scenes consisting of tens of thousands of objects. Artists can select thousands of objects and perform material assignments up to 10 times faster. They can also transform objects up to 60 times faster.**
- 3ds Max 2008 offers a new Scene Explorer, which provides artists with a hierarchical view of scene data, as well as fast scene analysis and editing tools. This facilitates working with complex, object-heavy scenes. It also includes a new Adaptive Degradation System, which improves the software's interactivity by automatically simplifying the scene display to meet a user-defined target frame rate.
New options for fast, artist-friendly modeling:
- New modeling user interface options give artists a less menu-dependent modeling experience.
- 3ds Max 2008 offers conceptual design artists and modelers a more streamlined modeling workflow, which enables them to focus more on the creative process.
New Review toolset and mental ray workflow improvements:
- The new Review toolset provides iterative rendering workflows with interactive previewing of shadows, the 3ds Max sun/sky environment, and Architectural and Design material settings.
- 3ds Max 2008 also provides several mental ray workflow improvements, including a new mental ray Sky Portal, which simplifies lighting indoor scenes using outdoor lighting and supports HDRI-based lighting effects.
New tools and enhancements for complex workflows and pipelines:
- The new integrated MAXScript ProEditor makes it easier to author scripts that automate and customize 3ds Max.
- Major improvements in file-linking and interoperability with other Autodesk design solutions provide faster, more accurate importing of data into 3ds Max. Furthermore, new features, such as Select Similar, facilitate work with imported data inside of 3ds Max.
For more information on 3ds Max 2008 check out this Product Brochure
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Aug. 6, 2007 - Autodesk announces a 3ds Max & Maya Rebate program. Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 software and Autodesk Maya 2008 software are coming soon.
Purchase Autodesk 3ds Max 9 with Subscription or Autodesk Maya 8.5 with Platinum Membership for a limited time and save $500. With this purchase you will receive an upgrade to 3ds Max 2008 or Maya 2008 at no additional cost when they become available.
Plus you will get exclusive access to product extensions and e-learning tools and you will be eligible for all software updates for the duration of your product Subscription or Platinum Membership. There's never been a better time to buy these industry-leading products.
Purchase Dates for Autodesk 3ds Max 9: August 1, 2007 - October 15, 2007
Purchase Dates for Autodesk Maya 8.5: August 1, 2007 - September 17, 2007
The purchase of Subscription/Membership is required to qualify for this rebate.
Submission Date: Rebates must be submitted online within 30 days of the date on the qualifying purchase invoice.
Postmark Date: Proof of Purchase documentation must be postmarked within 30 days of the date on the qualifying purchase invoice. From August 1, 2007 through the dates defined above, customers may be eligible to receive a US$500 rebate for each new, commercial license of eligible products purchased with Subscription/Membership. Eligible products include 3ds Max 9, Autodesk Maya Complete 8.5, and Autodesk Maya Unlimited 8.5. This rebate is not valid with, and cannot be combined with, any other Autodesk Media & Entertainment promotions, special pricing or other offers. Educational licenses, upgrades, cross-grades, migrations, education to commercial transfers, US government purchases, strategic account purchases, and Autodesk Store purchases do not qualify.
Frequently Asked Questions: Download PDF of frequently asked questions regarding this program.
Rebate Program Terms and Conditions: Download PDF of the Terms and Conditions for the Autodesk 3ds Max & Maya Rebate.
Find out how to redeem this rebate offer in the Americas.
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"What used to be accomplished with a number of software tools and hands-on labor is now managed by a single software solution. TACTIC has taken our production to a new level of organization," says Dan Hawes, President, March Entertainment.
TACTIC ties the whole production together with an all-in-one asset and production management solution.
TACTIC Library: It stores corporate digital assets in a clear and cohesive way so that they are easily retrieved. Consistent directory and file-naming conventions ensure a clean and understandable library.
TACTIC Tracking: It records all transactions so a record of who works on an asset and when it occurs is conveniently tracked. It provides an intuitive interface for artists to keep track of their work progress. All check-ins, notes and schedules for artists are conveniently placed together so that the artists can easily find out what has been done and what still needs to be done.
TACTIC Scene Planning: It searches for the assets in an easy to use interface. Users can manage scenes without wasting valuable time manually retrieving directories.
"Prior to TACTIC, it was difficult to resurrect old episodes. A large amount of time was spent tracking down and recovering files. With TACTIC, scenes can be recovered exactly the way they were when in production," says Tammy Semen, Production Supervisor, March Entertainment.
March Entertainment is an award-winning producer of digital content for television, Internet and wireless/mobile platforms. With an office in Toronto and a state of the art production facility in Sudbury, Ontario, March creates propriety content brands that entertain, inform and inspire. The company's approach creates a powerful cross-media experience to a global audience, leveraging the best of each medium, whether television, Internet, or wireless.
To date, March Entertainment has created and produced such successful television properties as Chilly Beach and The Very Good Adventures of Yam Roll in Happy Kingdom, as well as a full-length animated feature for Chilly Beach. In addition to producing content for television and film, March Entertainment also creates web/wireless "webisodes" and games. March Entertainment is currently developing a broadband comedy portal to broadcast its proprietary content.
TACTIC lets your artists focus on their artwork and your Production Managers on the production. TACTIC handles all the details. TACTIC is the only web based, enterprise class solution that provides project management, workflow management and asset management in a single software solution for all industries using digital assets, including Film and Video, Games, and Industrial Design.
Artists and Production Managers spend too much time managing their files. With this task automated by TACTIC, Artists can focus on their creative work and Production Managers can keep an eye on the big picture. Patent pending TACTIC introduces repeatable standard controls developed and extensively tested in production. There's no need to re-invent the wheel with every new production. TACTIC delivers a true production pipeline from start to finish.
TACTIC is extensively scalable and highly customizable. We provide TACTIC source code to guarantee customization. TACTIC operates on many platforms including Linux, Windows XP, 2000 and 2003, and Mac OSX. TACTIC is deeply integrated with Side Effects Houdini, Autodesk Maya SoftImage XSI, and Adobe Flash.
Southpaw Technology Inc. is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. TACTIC is used for production in a wide range of projects including episodic television, full CGI effects films, and industrial design. Its flexibility allows TACTIC to be used in any industry that uses digital assets.
For more information on March Entertainment please visit www.marchentertainment.com
For more information on TACTIC please visit www.southpawtech.com or you can