Digimation Bundles Popular 3D Studio MAX Plug-Ins for Incredible Savings

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., announced new plug-in application bundles from Digimation that provide an affordable and easy way for 3D Studio MAX Release 3 customers to purchase some of the hottest and most innovative plug-in applications.

Digimation's software bundle offer delivers tremendous value to 3D Studio MAX customers at an incredible savings of up to 40 percent. The plug-in value packs consists of six plug-ins each and are available in two complete solutions targeting the needs of 3D game developers/interactive content providers and film and video visual effects artists.

"The Digimation bundles make ideal starter plug-in kits and provide an excellent opportunity for new customers to break into 3D animation or migrate to the award-winning 3D Studio MAX development environment," said Phillip Miller, senior product manager for 3D Studio MAX. "At these discounted prices, the plug-in bundles are also a great incentive for existing customers to upgrade to 3D Studio MAX R3."

Digimation has assembled an outstanding line up of some of the industry's most innovative and useful plug-in applications developed for Discreet's award-winning 3D Studio MAX platform. The featured plug-in applications resolve a gamut of technical and aesthetic challenges animators face each day. In addition to the basic modeling and texturing tools, the bundled packages include six new applications in both the basic and special effect categories.

"The MAX R3 plug-in value packs are part of a joint effort by Digimation and Discreet to better serve the MAX community of developers, artists and animators. These artists have come to rely on third-party plug-in applications to extend the core functions of 3D Studio MAX and distinguish their works with cutting edge effects," said Beau Perschall, Senior Product Manager for Digimation, Inc.

Pricing and Availability

• Game Development/Interactive Content Provider Plug-in Pack: Plug-in Pack includes: daVinci3D v1.0, Texture Lab Elemental Tools, Texture Lab Tiling Tools, Sand Blaster, MultiRes, and RAYflect Four Elements. Promotion Price is US $995.00 (SRP US $1,630.00).
• Film and Video Plug-in Pack: Plug-in Pack includes: Rodin, Particle Studio, UltraShock, The Essential Textures, SeaScape, Shag: Hair. Promotion Price is US $1,995.00 (SRP US $2,770.00).

Orders for both inside and outside the U.S. and Canada should be directed to Digimation:

Customer Orders: Phone: (504) 468-7898 or web: sold@digimation.com Reseller orders: Phone: (504) 468-7898 or web: lavinal@digimation.com

About the Plug-Ins

• daVinci3D v1.0: Organic modeling is made easy with this new revolutionary way to model inside of 3D Studio MAX. Animators now have an incredibly intuitive way of working to build stunning characters in a fraction of the time and gather unparalleled feedback in real time. With precise control over the surface transitions between membranes, daVinci3D v1.5 makes it easier than ever to create complex models.
• Texture Lab Elemental Tools: This impressive collection provides MAX animators with six basic procedural mapping types: Fire, Water, Fog, Electricity, Strata, and Noise. The maps can be used alone and in any combination to produce stunning effects, from animated swirling clouds, and water caustics, to jittery electricity or skin. All of the map types are animatable and loopable (except Fire) eliminating the need to render out hundreds of frames to achieve "repeatable" animated patterns in an infinite variety of colors.
• Texture Lab Tiling Tools: This toolset is all an animator needs to create tilable patterns of just about any shape - simple brick to elegant, shimmering fish scales - in just minutes. Tiling Tools is incredibly intuitive and utilizes very little memory allowing it to generates quickly.
• Sand Blaster: 3D Studio MAX's plug-in particle generator lets design professionals create schools of fish, swarms of bees, explosions, etc. from a single object by simply applying Sand Blaster to the original character or element. It also has the unique ability to break any 3D Studio MAX geometry down into particles, then re-assemble those particles into any other object.
• MultiRes: This plug-in provides 3D Studio MAX artists with "multi-resolution mesh," an alternative path for creating a single model capable of user-defined topological change. MultiRes runs a MAX plug-in to reduce memory overhead for efficient rendering. This versatile plug-in can be used with the MultiRes Software Toolkit for game and web content creators to create dynamic multi-resolution models for use outside of MAX.
• RAYflect Four Elements: The ultimate in environment creation tools, RAYflect instantly generates stunningly realistic landscapes and otherworldly surfaces with Four Elements' Earth modeling tool. Animators can fill rivers, lakes and oceans with everything from tiny ripples to heavy surf with the Waves and Ripples materials. It's easy to call up animated, stormy skies, breathtaking sunsets, moonlit night -even eclipses and rainbows with the Wind atmospheric, while adding romantic candlelit flames or destructive infernos with the Fire material.
• Rodin: Rodin's H-Spline technology for 3D Studio MAX, enables animators to create more complex and realistic models in less time using less resources - with as much detail as desired or as little for a minimalist look. Rodin's ability to join surfaces seamlessly allows the application of deformations without distorting surface details join surfaces seamlessly. H-Splines employs a technique called "local refinement" that allows an artist to add detail to a specific region of the surface, rather than across the entire spline surface. On top of those tools, Rodin offers multi-resolution animation capability that gives you greater control over surface deformations over the course of your animation.
• Particle Studio: This plug-in uses a unique series of particle events, such as shape, speed, direction, etc., to describe particle behavior, represents the next generation of 3D Studio MAX particle systems.
• Features include: solid assembly and disassembly of objects, particles targets, particle spawning, flocking, dynamic materials and much more. Plus, new users can follow Particle Studio's Quick Setups to efficiently generate complex particle motions with just a few mouse clicks.
• UltraShock: With UltraShock, Digimation has created a whole new way to work with particle systems within 3D Studio MAX to add volumetric effects to particles so clouds, sparks, fire, plasma, etc. look real. Plus, since UltraShock's particle shading occurs at the rendering level, it allows for true 3D perspective.Rotate around a particle stream and your smoke rotates with it. And with its open architecture, UltraShock is easily expandable to include more plug-ins.
• The Essential Textures: This powerful suite of 48 procedural texture maps let 3D Studio MAX animators distinguish renderings with a dramatic look and feel. With The Essential Textures, animators' options for rendering enhancement are virtually limitless. All of them are fully animatable and allow for user adjustable antialiasing. Plus, with The Essential Textures' optional fractal perturbation of texture input coordinates animators can now distort texture space without warping your geometry to add a little irregularity to even the most regular texture.
• SeaScape: Based on real-world physical representations of wave systems and ocean models, this exciting new plug-in lets animators create realistic, spectacular wave, ocean and wake effects into 3D Studio MAX animation sequences. To reduce rendering times, SeaScape was designed to be used both on optimized and specialized adaptive surfaces.
• Shag: Hair: Shag: Hair represents the next step in procedural coiffures with its own built-in dynamics engine for complete control over the shape and style of the hairs and realistic movement of hair.

About Discreet Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., develops systems and software for visual effects, 3D animation, editing and production used in the creation of digital moving pictures for video, HDTV, the web, broadcast graphics, interactive games and feature films. Discreet products are used extensively in film and video post production, games and multimedia, broadcasters graphics, programming and on-air event coverage as well as by designers and architects for 3D visualization and conceptualization.

About Autodesk Autodesk is the world's leading supplier of PC design software and digital content creation tools. One of the largest software companies in the world, Autodesk has more than four million customers in over 150 countries. For more information, contact any Authorized Autodesk Reseller, call Autodesk at 800-964-6432, or visit www.autodesk.com. Discreet product information is available at 800-869-3504 or via the Web at www.discreet.com. Autodesk shares are traded on the NASDAQ national market under the symbol ADSK.

About Digimation Digimation, Inc., Discreet's Preferred Plug-in Publisher, develops and distributes plug-in technology for 3D software as well as standalone graphics oriented programs for the PC marketplace. This award winning technology has been used by film and video, game and graphics professionals around the world for a range of commercial and corporate projects. Digimation products are sold through a network of worldwide dealers and distributors as well as direct. Digimation, Inc. is headquartered in St. Rose, Louisiana at 107 Mallard Street, Ste D, St. Rose LA - USA. World Wide Web: http://www.digimation.com Discreet is a division of Autodesk, Inc. Autodesk and Kinetix are registered trademarks, and Discreet is a trademark, of Autodesk, Inc., in the United States and/or certain other countries. flame* and inferno* are registered trademarks of Discreet Logic, Inc., in the United States and/or certain other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks are used solely for the purpose of identification and belong to their respective holders. (c) Copyright 1999, Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.