Autodesk

Autodesk is a world leader in 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, enabling customers to create stunning graphics, with an unbelievable amount of flexibility to get the job done faster.  3D workflows have the added advantage of freeing you from many of the creative limitations associated with traditional 2D graphics workflows.  Artists, designers, illustrators, and other visual communication professionals are turning to 3D to enhance their creative potential and improve their bottom lines.

Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 Breaks the Rendering Barrier
Producing Higher Quality Imagery and Animation Is Now Faster and Easier

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., March 9, 2010 - Autodesk, Inc. announced Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 software - the latest version of its modelling, animation, rendering and compositing application. A new node-based material editor, innovative hardware renderer and full-featured compositor are new features offered in the 2011 release to help accelerate the creation of compelling imagery and entertainment content.

"Our first priority with 3ds Max 2011 was to make artists more productive in common everyday workflows," said Stig Gruman, Autodesk vice president of digital entertainment. "We have re-architected core parts of the software, introduced a much requested node based material editor streamlining workflows and added new features, like the painting tools and the Quicksilver hardware renderer, to help customers meet or beat their deadlines without compromising either creativity or quality."

Key New Features in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 Software
Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 has the following new and enhanced features:
> Slate, a new node-based material editor that enables artists to more easily visualise and edit material component relationships

> Quicksilver hardware renderer, a new multithreaded rendering engine that uses both the central processing unit (CPU) and the graphics processing unit (GPU), and can achieve up to 10 times faster rendering than traditional techniques on common graphics cards

> Ability to view many 3ds Max texture maps and materials in the viewport to help develop and refine scenes in a higher-fidelity interactive display environment - without the constant need to re-render

> Extended Graphite modelling and Viewport Canvas toolsets for 3D and 2D painting of textures directly in the viewport, along with the ability to paint with object brushes to help create geometry within a scene

> Ability to non-destructively layer local edits on top of referenced content, helping artists to collaborate more efficiently

> 3ds Max Composite, a full-featured, high dynamic range (HDR)-capable compositor, based on technology from Autodesk Toxik software

From March 11-13, 2010, visit the Virtual GDC event on the AREA to watch 3ds Max 2011 product demonstrations and customer presentations live from the Autodesk Game Developers Conference booth. More information is also available on Autodesk's 3ds Max blogs by Ken Pimentel, Shane Griffith and Louis Marcoux. Videos of the new features in 3ds Max 2011 are available on the Autodesk YouTube channel.

Beta Tester Feedback
"The new Object Paint tool and the updated Viewport Canvas are like gold for game artists," said James Haywood, senior technical artist at Bungie. "Those two things alone are going to save tons of time creating our game assets. And the fact that we can save back to version 2010 means that we can safely make the jump to 2011 midproject without the usual upgrade jitters."

"The new release is packed full of great new features and refinements to existing tools," said Martin Coven, founder of Launch Studio. "Building complex materials is a breeze with Slate. Workflow enhancements in Graphite tools and the inclusion of 3ds Max Composite put the cherry on top of 2011."

Availability
Autodesk anticipates that 3ds Max 2011 will be available in English in April 2010. Autodesk expects to announce Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software in late-March 2010.

------------------------------------------------------------- 

Autodesk Unveils 2011 Versions of Its Digital Entertainment Creation Software
New Products Offer Increased Production Efficiency by Focusing on User Interaction, Workflow, Interface Design and Interoperability

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., March 9, 2010 - Autodesk, Inc., has announced the latest versions of its Digital Entertainment Creation software for 3D modelling, animation, effects, rendering, compositing, digital sculpting and 3D painting. The 2011 versions offer new features and enhancements that help accelerate workflows and improve interoperability, helping artists to maximise their creativity and optimise their productivity. Autodesk has also launched new versions of Autodesk Kynapse and Autodesk HumanIK game development middleware, focused on improving ease of use.

"Our 2011 products offer customers great value and integrate avant-garde technology - some developed with industry leaders like Sony Pictures Imageworks," said Marc Petit, Autodesk senior vice president, Media & Entertainment. "These versions offer much improved data interoperability through open formats like Autodesk FBX, as well as many innovative new capabilities."

"Autodesk Maya 2011 takes Digital Entertainment Creation workflows to new heights with a new customisable user interface, new high performance viewports and a new 3D editorial interface. Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 users will enjoy more integrated rendering workflows with a new material editor, a fast GPU renderer and a HDR compositor," added Petit.

Autodesk Maya 2011: One Maya. More Value.
On the heels of the Maya 2010 makeover last summer, Maya 2011 software offers several breakthrough capabilities. It features an invigorated customisable user interface, enhanced tools for character animation including non-destructive live retargeting, high-performance display of large scenes in the viewport, new 3D editorial capabilities for pre-visualisation and virtual production workflows, integrated colour management, asset structures for pipeline connectivity and improved rotoscoping. Also, Maya 2011 is now available for Snow Leopard, the 64-bit Mac OS X operating system.

Autodesk 3ds Max 2011: Breaking the Rendering Barrier
3ds Max 2011 features a powerful new node-based material editor, the feature most requested by 3ds Max users, and a high-quality hardware renderer that provides near production quality results 10 times faster than traditional rendering techniques on common graphics cards. It also offers a tightly integrated full-featured high dynamic range compositing system, based on Autodesk Toxik technology, as well as enhanced tools and workflows for creating and texturing models, animating characters and viewing high-quality images interactively, which help to significantly increase productivity.

Autodesk Softimage 2011: High-Quality Characters and Effects in Less Time
Softimage 2011 introduces innovative new rendering and animation tools that help artists create more complex, high-quality characters and effects in less time. The software offers a new advanced shading architecture and editing environment, an innovative rigging paradigm with support for kinematics in ICE (Interactive Creative Environment), and automated lip-synching in the Face Robot facial animation toolset.

Autodesk Mudbox 2011: Powerful New Tools and Workflows
Mudbox 2011 delivers new tools for helping deform and pose models. It also offers new image adjustment brushes and blend modes for paint layers, Vector Displacement map extraction, the ability to create higher-quality turntables, and enhanced file transfer with Maya and Adobe Photoshop.

Autodesk MotionBuilder 2011: Now More Easily Integrated into Production Pipelines
Offering significantly improved interoperability with Maya 2011 and 3ds Max 2011, MotionBuilder 2011 now integrates more smoothly and reliably into production pipelines. Skinning and blendshape deformations are now calculated on the graphics processing unit (GPU) for improved performance. The in-viewport experience is significantly more interactive, and playback is many times faster, further enhancing the software's capabilities as a real-time virtual production system.

Autodesk FBX 2011: Offering a Better Way to Connect
Autodesk FBX 2011 asset exchange technology helps facilitate higher-fidelity data exchange between Autodesk software and certain third-party applications. The open format provides new support for additional third-party and proprietary applications. In addition, games developers using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 will be able to import FBX files directly into the Unreal Editor. Developers can now use the Python programming language to integrate FBX technology into pipelines not based on C++.

Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suites 2011: Value and Flexibility
These new products will also be available as part of the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suites - giving artists and production facilities access to a broad range of creative toolsets at significant cost savings. The suites offer a choice of either Maya 2011 or 3ds Max 2011, and include MotionBuilder 2011 real-time character animation software, as well as Mudbox 2011 digital sculpting and 3D painting software.

Autodesk HumanIK 4.5 Middleware: Technology for Believable Characters
Autodesk HumanIK animation middleware is a run-time solution for full-body inverse kinematics and retargeting that enhances existing animation systems, allowing characters to interact dynamically and realistically with their environments. Autodesk HumanIK 4.5 improves ease of use with an artist friendly integration into the Unreal Engine and a Characterization plug-in for creating and validating characters in Maya.

Autodesk Kynapse 7 Middleware: Put the Brain in your Game
Autodesk Kynapse middleware is a world leading, production-proven artificial intelligence solution that has been used in over 100 games. This high-performance AI engine supports complex dynamic 3D pathfinding, spatial reasoning, team co-ordination, and automatic data generation. Kynapse 7 is easier to use, with new pathdata generation, improved tuning and profiling, simplified integration and configuration, as well as off-the-shelf behaviours.

From March 11-13, visit the Virtual GDC event on AREA to watch demonstrations of the 2011 products, as well as customer presentations, live from Autodesk's booth at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Short videos of new features in the 2011 Digital Entertainment Creation products are also available on the Autodesk YouTube channel.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Autodesk Maya 2011: Modern Look, High Performance Core and New 3D Editorial
Customisable User Interface, 3D Editorial Timeline and Skinning Workflows Make 3D Animation Easier

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., March 9, 2010 - Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), announced Autodesk Maya 2011 software - the latest version of its Academy Award-winning 3D animation software. A new user interface (UI), 3D editorial capability and enhanced skinning workflow help provide computer graphics (CG) artists with an end-to-end creative workflow at an exceptional value. Autodesk Maya software has been used on countless games as well as every Oscar-winning movie for Best Visual Effects since 2001.

"Maya continues to help artists set new standards in entertainment with credits such as ‘Avatar' and ‘Uncharted 2: Among Thieves,'" said Stig Gruman, Autodesk vice president of digital entertainment. "The 2011 release is a key milestone for Maya. With a new customisable UI and a new graphics architecture, Maya strengthens its position as a foundation for modern film and game pipelines. The innovative 3D editorial timeline helps communicate and validate the creative vision behind a project and enables previs and virtual moviemaking workflows for users."

Key New Features in Autodesk Maya 2011 Software
> Redesigned User Interface - Maya 2011 has a fresh new look and feel. Based on Nokia Qt, the new UI is simpler to customise, featuring dockable UI elements and improved editors. As beta tester Rob van den Bragt, supervisor/director, The Mill, explained, "I am loving all the positive steps taken in Maya 2011. With the UI now based on Qt, Maya has become more flexible, powerful and modern."

> High Performance Core - Maya 2011 features a completely redesigned graphics pipeline that helps deliver new levels of performance for complex scenes while improving the quality of the viewport feedback.

> Mac OS X 64-Bit Availability - Mac OS X users can access considerably more memory to handle larger and more complex scenes with the new 64-bit executable.

> Accelerated 3D Editorial - The software's new Camera Sequencer adds powerful multicamera editorial capabilities to help facilitate pre-visualisation and virtual moviemaking production using a Maya timeline. Developed on-site in production to meet the needs of large-scale CG animations, the Camera Sequencer supports import of both AAF and Final Cut Pro EDLs. "The most exciting feature in Maya 2011 is the Camera Sequencer," said beta tester Matt Wood, visual effects supervisor, Space Digital Ltd. "I found it to be an amazing solution. The ability to edit and animate at the same time is truly remarkable ⎯ not just sequencing cameras but slipping, reordering and even retiming them individually. It's so valuable."

> Enhanced Skinning Workflow - Creating believable CG characters is also made easier with a new, dual quaternion option for smooth skinning, interactive volume binding, enhancements to the Paint Skin Weights tool, deformer weight mirroring and surface falloff mode for the Wrap deformer. "The Paint Skin Weights tool overhaul has made working with large numbers of joints much easier, and the interactive skinning envelopes will be very helpful for working with multiple characters of the same size with various mesh topologies," said beta tester Ryan Trowbridge, character technical director, Naughty Dog.

> Improved Maya Composite - A new Vector Paint feature in Maya Composite dramatically improves its paint and rotoscoping capabilities. Now, animatable and trackable paint strokes can be used to paint colours and reveal or clone data across a sequence or on a per-frame basis. "We absolutely love the new Vector Paint tools, which nicely round out the robust toolset in Maya Composite," said beta tester Michael Vaglienty, visual effects supervisor, Giant Steps, VFX.

From March 11-13, 2010, visit the Virtual GDC event on the AREA community site to watch Maya 2011 product demonstrations and customer presentations live from the Autodesk Game Developers Conference booth. More information is also available on AREA blogs: Cory Mogk's Mayalicious, Steven Roselle's My Oh Maya! and Duncan Brinsmead's Duncan's Corner. Videos of the new features are available on the Autodesk You Tube channel.

Availability
Autodesk anticipates that Maya 2011 will be available in English and Japanese in April 2010.

Autodesk Maya 2011 will also be available as part of the Autodesk Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2011. The Suite offers customers Maya 2011 together with Autodesk Mudbox 2011 and Autodesk MotionBuilder 2011 software.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------

Autodesk Softimage 2011: Advanced Character Animation and 3D Procedural Effects Automated Lip Sync in Face Robot and Innovative Rigs with Interactive Creative Environment (ICE) Kinematics Set New Bar for Character Animation

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., March 9, 2010 - Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) announced Autodesk Softimage 2011, a comprehensive 3D application featuring a unique, multithreaded GigaCore architecture and innovative tools: the Interactive Creative Environment (ICE) and Face Robot facial animation toolset. Softimage is also an ideal companion product to both Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max software pipelines with its easily programmable effects simulations, advanced character rigs and lip-synched facial setups.

"Softimage provides a flexible, high-speed and efficient solution to help create stunning and complex character animation and procedural effects. Technical directors, visual effects artists and computer graphics supervisors are cheering the unique combination of innovative rigging tools, particle, dynamics and rendering openness," said Stig Gruman, Autodesk vice president of digital entertainment. "Softimage is a great addition to Maya or 3ds Max pipelines helping to expand creative capability and increase productivity."

Key New Features in Autodesk Softimage 2011 Software
> Rendering Sandbox - Automatically hosts external shaders and renderers without the need to build a custom shader user interface (UI) or other tools.

> ICE Kinematics - Aids creation of advanced rigging elements with custom inverse kinematics, spines, constraints and dynamics tails. The visual graph-based structure of ICE helps remove trial and error and enables easier examination of rig construction, facilitating troubleshooting and rig debugging. 

> Automated Lip-Synching in Face Robot - Allows for quicker generation of facial animation based on an audio file. Features a new dedicated view for controlling the visemes and phonemes with function curves to help modify their contribution.

> Rendering Enhancements - The new mental ray 2011 renderer offers increased stability and faster renders. Up to one hundred new mental ray shaders enable easier simulation of a wider range of materials. Helps save time rendering multiple cameras for each pass, and the new Camera and Render Slate functionality shows useful information in the viewport or renders.

> 100 New ICE Compounds - Provides predefined compounds covering several areas: Kinematics, Arrays, Curves, Debugging, Deformation Effects, Hull Deformers, Skinning, Verlet Integration, Geometry Queries, Math, Particle Emissions, Particle Getters and Setters, Testers, Strands and Strand Dynamics.

> PhysX 2.83 - Helps artists create meshless deformations in ICE with the latest NVIDIA PhysX rigid body library. Provides new support for springs and dampers. New library also offers accelerated performance when using the optional addition of an NVIDIA CUDA enabled graphics processing unit (GPU).

Beta Tester Testimonials
"ICE has a great user interface and gives great flexibility to artists, helping us save time in production. We're looking forward to using the new ICE kinematics to create ever more complex and dynamic rigs."
- Aloys Baillet, Research and Development Lead, Animal Logic

"ICE kinematics will change the way the industry does rigging, it just doesn't know it yet! Rig complexity will be reduced to the simplest representation, bones won't be needed at all and rigging that was simply impossible for technical directors to attempt before is now possible." - Eric Thivierge, Technical Director, SpeakeasyFX

"Rigging using ICE is going to change everything. Not only did character technical directors just get access to scene information at a much deeper level, but they got it within a framework that allows logic structures and programming far beyond anything possible using existing tools for constraints, expressions and relations."
- Bradley Gabe, Senior Technical Animator, Janimation

"This is hands down the most powerful rigging framework on the planet. When I look at traditional rigs now, they just feel so awkward and clumsy." - Phil Taylor, Independent Contractor, Motion Mechanic

From March 11-13, 2010, visit the Virtual GDC event on the AREA community site to watch new Softimage 2011 product demonstrations and customer presentations live from the Autodesk Game Developers Conference booth. More information is also available on Mark Schoennagel's Planet Softimage AREA blog.

Availability
Autodesk anticipates that Softimage 2011 will be available in English and Japanese in April 2010.

Autodesk, FBX, HumanIK, Kynapse, Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, Softimage and 3ds Max are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document.
© 2010 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Website: www.autodesk.com.au