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Autodesk Integrates Craft Director Studio into 2011 Versions of Software

Posted by Marc Leitner
April 8, 2010

GOTHENBURG, Sweden - April 6, 2010 - Craft Animations and Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today announced the integration of certain Craft Director Studio plug-ins within the 2011 versions of Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design and Autodesk® Softimage® software. Based on cutting-edge research in autonomous control systems, Craft Director Studio provides interactive control and simulation of cameras and vehicles, which helps greatly reduce animation production times. "Craft Director Studio provides artists with advanced, in-the-box, rigging and physics simulation capabilities, which helps them to animate cameras and vehicles more quickly and realistically," said Stig Gruman, Autodesk vice president of digital entertainment. "It also allows artists to use a variety of input devices to create on-the-fly animation, helping make 3D animation as easy as playing a game." Craft Director Studio is designed to help simplify the production challenges of 3D artists, industrial designers and architects working in the following areas:

Video Game Development Artists can enhance in-game cinematics through a modular, configurable system that replicates a specific rig's animation within the game itself. Artists can then "drive" a vehicle within the creative environment, helping achieve a more realistic effect in less time.
Film and Broadcast Production - Animators can leverage more realistic and accurate vehicle behavior and traffic animation to more quickly complete visual effects shots.
Architectural Visualization Architects can more easily create walkthroughs of architectural designs using unique camera angles and views.

"We are proud to provide animators with a new era of interactive animation tools," said Craft Animations CEO Deborah Lygonis. "By eliminating multiple step animation and design processes, artists utilizing Craft Director Studio will be able to create a more efficient production pipeline. Industry leaders Namco Bandai, Electronic Arts and Lockheed Martin have all experienced faster results using our tools. The integration of certain tools into 3ds Max and Softimage can provide a great boost to productivity, offering Autodesk customers a greater return on investment."

The Craft Director Studio plug-in bundle will be included, free of charge, on the Samples DVDs that will be shipped with 3ds Max 2011, 3ds Max Design 2011 and Softimage 2011 software. The bundle includes:

Craft SoftMotionCam
Craft ObserverCam
Craft MultiStateCam
Craft HumanizerCam
Four Craft Pre-rigged Models

The 2011 versions of 3ds Max, 3ds Max Design and Softimage software are expected to be available for purchase on, or after, April 7, 2010. Artists who install the bundle as part of 3ds Max, 3ds Max Design or Softimage 2011 releases will also be eligible for limited-time, special promotional pricing for a Craft Bundle Upgrade, offered by Craft Animations. For more information, visit www.craftanimations.com.

About Craft Animations
Founded in 2006 and based in Gothenburg, Sweden, Craft Animations AB is a leading developer of a new era of professional real-time 3D animation technology, Craft Director Studio. Based on cutting-edge research in autonomous control systems, Craft Director Studio and its add-ons simulate the complex physical behavior of cameras and 3D vehicles such as helicopters, cars, airplanes, boats and motorcycles. Utilized by high-profile companies world-wide such as Disney, Pixar, Namco Bandai, Lockheed Martin, Ford and Toyota; Craft Director Studio streamline production, enhance realism and increase creativity for users in the visual effects, game development, forensic reconstruction and architectural design industries. For more information, please visit www.craftanimations.com.

About Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc., is a world leader in 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software for the manufacturing, building and construction, and media and entertainment markets. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art software to help customers experience their ideas digitally before they are built. Fortune 100 companies - as well as the last 15 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects - use Autodesk software tools to design, visualize and simulate their ideas to save time and money, enhance quality and foster innovation for competitive advantage. For additional information about Autodesk, visit www.autodesk.com/pr-autodesk.

New Collections Available from Electric Crayon Studio

Posted by Jeff Pulera
February 16, 2010

Waukesha, WI - February 16, 2010 – Safe Harbor Computers today announced the availability of two new collections from Electric Crayon Studio. Designed for users of the popular LightWave ® animation software, these sets include realistic planetary objects as well as ready-to-use scene files which can easily be modified to suit the user’s needs.

The single most requested graphical production element in either film or print is the planet earth. Whether an antique globe, a high-tech sphere, a moving map on the wall, or a hyper-realistic earth from space, representations of the earth are constantly part of the composition.

The GEM Collection (Globes - Earth and Moons) is designed to allow the creation of a stunning graphic quickly in LightWave ®. The globes include many styles such as paper, metal and wood, and some combinations as well. There are several earths depicting a surprising amount of variations, depending on cloud cover, atmospheric envelope, and nighttime cities. Also included are flat wall maps with built-in animations that loop, and the earth's moon as reconstructed from lunar satellites.

Scene files that cover many of the typical set ups that clients ask for, as well as scenes reminiscent of iconic movies, are included. Tutorial information on how to modify the scenes for specific needs and how to include other objects is also part of this package.

The Solar System Construction Set is used with LightWave ® to create quality animations and graphics of any planet in the solar system. All the planets, most of the major moons, and the sun are included in low, medium, and high-resolution objects and image maps.

The planets are textured starting with up-to-date NASA images with just a touch of artistic license. Cinematically constructed outer space depictions are waiting to be rendered. Training is included on how to change the timing and resolution of scenes, as well as adding additional objects to the scene. The Solar System Construction Set is the easiest way to add fantastic production value to any project, from web graphics to theatrical presentation.

Pricing and availability

Globes – Earth and Moons Set and Solar System Construction Set are available exclusively from Safe Harbor Computers, a leading reseller of editing and animation solutions for over 22 years. Priced at $49.99 each, or $89.98 as a bundle, the sets are delivered via electronic download. Available online at www.sharbor.com or by phone at (800) 544-6599

About the Creator

Electric Crayon Studio is an award-winning animation production facility, lead by its original founder Patrik Beck. Established in 1991, it is one of the longest standing computer animation companies in the world. Electric Crayon Studio produces animation and digital services for corporate and broadcast projects, as well as multimedia and direct to video productions.

Media Studio Graz Releases VoluMedic Version 2.0!

Posted by Marc Leitner
January 14, 2010

Studio Graz, a leading developer of custom LightWave plugins and 3D graphics software, today announced the release of VoluMedic, version 2.0. This is the first "dot zero" update to the world's first medical imaging software based on a commercial 3D application.

"This update marks a significant milestone in the ongoing development of VoluMedic", said Elmar Moelzer, the product developer of VoluMedic, Media Studio Graz, software division. "We are very proud to introduce a set of much sought after features in VoluMedic 2.0: measurement tools. It means the expansion of the product from the pure visualization to the evaluation of volume data. In addition to measurement tools, users will find our new "Selection Masks" for easier segmentation and the new Filters most helpful with their daily tasks. Another demonstration of our commitment to the wishes of our user base is the VoluMedic Wizard. It will allow new users as well as advanced users to achieve stunning results in even less time."

New Features in VoluMedic 2.0 Include:

Measurement Tools:
Measure volumes, distances and angles. Store the results in a Sqlite database and export them into a customizable CSV- table- file. CSV files are widely supported by applications such as Microsoft Office and the Open Office suite.

New Segmentation Tools, Selection Masks:

In addition to our patented Volume Painting tools, VoluMedic now also supports segmentation via a 3d "Magic Wand" like tool. Click on any voxel and select surrounding voxels of the same or similar Density. The resulting "Masks" can be used as 3d- Alpha Maps or Clip Maps for volume rendering as well as VoluMedics Surface Mesh Creation tools. They can also be used for measurement. Like any other data set, Masks can be edited with all the other editing tools available in VoluMedic. Masks can be painted and filtered. Like VoluMedic's Volume Painting tools, the selection tools have a non linear Undo History.

Filters:
VoluMedic 2.0 includes a couple of powerful, new preprocessing filters. The new Gaussian and Median Filters help cleaning up noisy data sets. They also help with softening the transitions in the new Selection Masks. The filters are also tied into VoluMedic's non linear Undo History.

VoluMedic Wizard:
The new VoluMedic Wizard makes creation of VoluMedic projects easier than ever before. Let the Wizard take you from a DICOM file to a finished Animation in a just a few easy steps.

Hounsfield Support:
VoluMedic now supports Hounsfield Units. Support for Hounsfield Units allowed the VoluMedic team to implement presets that are valid for most DICOM- CT data. You will find the new Presets in the Wizard and the Slice Editor.

Improved Import:
The Importer has, once again, been improved. Besides the new support for Hounsfield Units, data sets can now be imported in a much more memory efficient fashion. Particularly multi channel datasets can benefit from this. Users can also manually reduce the precision of the imported data, to further conserve system memory. The DICOM importer also has seen another update, providing better compatibility with certain vendors.

Improvements in Scalar Panel:
The Scalar Panel has seen some fine tuning and cleanups. A new popup has been added to house a Selection Mask for rendering.Shading Softness can now be controlled via a percentage slider instead of a simple two value popup. "Inverted" Opacity Ramps no longer require the use of "Use Opacity for Normals". This not only makes renderings look much better, it also allowed for the now obsolete option to be removed. New renderer optimizations made the "Preprocessing" optimization obsolete and this control has been removed as well.

Other Improvements:
DICOM information can optionally be "anonymized" when it is saved into a VoluMedic file. Painting information is no longer lost when the Slice Editor is closed. The Histogram is now in a Panel of its own. This improved the refresh rates in the Slice Editor. There are new scripts for the creation of Bounding Boxes and the Bounding Box Panel to the main UI. Another new script quickly creates a simple gradient backdrop.

About VoluMedic:

VoluMedic™ is an add-on for LightWave 3D™, the award-winning 3D software from NewTek, Inc. VoluMedic is so powerful and so well integrated into LightWave3D that it becomes a whole new piece of software for use in medical visualization, material science, forensic animation and even astronomy. VoluMedic is also a great tool for creating stunning visual effects. VoluMedic has been used in the production of the Emmy award winning documentary "Inside the Living Body" (Emmy for best visual effects in a documentary) by National Geographic Channel and in TV series such as "CSI:Crime Scene Investigators".

Pricing and Availability:

VoluMedic Plugin
This version of VoluMedic is meant for existing users of LightWave3D 9.6 who want to enhance LightWave’s toolset with the functionality of VoluMedic. The package includes VoluMedic installation CD, menu config files and printed manual. The suggested retail- price of VoluMedic: Plugin is $ 3,499 - USD excl. VAT.

VoluMedic Complete
VoluMedic: Complete includes one seat of VoluMedic: Plugin and one seat of LightWave3D in a single package. It is meant for users that do not own LightWave3D yet.

The Package includes VoluMedic installation CD, menu config files, manual and the full package of LightWave3D (installation CDs, content CDs, manual, dongle). The suggested retail- price of VoluMedic: Plugin is $ 4,189 - USD excl. VAT.

VoluMedic System
A complete turnkey system. The Package includes VoluMedic installation CD, menu config files, manual and the full package of LightWave3D (Installation CDs, content CDs, manual, dongle) all ready to go on a high end workstation.
Please contact our sales department for detailed hardware specs and pricing information.

For more information or to purchase, visit: www.volumedic.com.
North American customers, please visit Safe Harbor Computers at www.sharbor.com.
Customers from Japan please contact D- Storm, Inc. for more information http://www.dstorm.co.jp

VoluMedic 2.0 Upgrade
VoluMedic 2.0 Upgrade updates any previous version of VoluMedic (v. 1 or v. 1.5) to the VoluMedic 2.0. The suggested retail- price of VoluMedic: Plugin is $ 1,699 - USD excl. VAT.

About Media Studio Graz

Since the company's establishment in 2000, Media Studio Graz has been delivering high quality visualizations and custom software to clients around the globe. In these years the company expanded its business towards developing 3D- animation software. After working with NewTek on delivering updates to LightWave3D, Media Studio Graz focused on developing add ons for LightWave3D to bring this software- package to markets previously not covered by commercial 3D- software. Media Studio Graz's clients include companies like AVL- List GmbH, Pioneer Productions, Xvivo, Zizala Lichtsysteme GmbH and Zoic Studios and Pioneer Productions.
Website: http://www.volumedic.com

About NewTek

With headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, NewTek is a leading provider of full-featured video editing, live production, presentation and visual effects tools including TriCaster™, VT[5]™, SpeedEDIT™, 3D Arsenal™ and LightWave 3D™.
Website: http://www.newtek.com/

About This Blog

Safe Harbor's video and post production news blog offers you the latest announcements and updates from the industry.