|
|
 |
 |
 Side Effects Software Ships Houdini 6.1 Posted by: amigo
Source: Press Release
Date: Thu Dec 04 2003
Santa Monica, CA - December 4, 2003 - Side Effects Software has released Version 6.1 of the company's Houdini family of 3D software. Designed to bring increased productivity to both animators and technical directors, Houdini 6.1 offers artists and effects studios an array of production-ready new features, including the ability to create, publish and use digital assets within and across projects with greater control, seamlessness and speed. The new software, available now via download from www.sidefx.com, additionally features enhanced character animation tools, global illumination rendering, interactive light and camera controls, and an embedded help browser.
Over the past few months, facilities have been implementing Houdini digital assets to economize their workflows by creating characters and effects that can be set up, updated and easily managed throughout a production. Houdini 6.1 adds new, faster ways to assign the parameters of an asset, create artist-friendly controls and hand elements off to animators for easy interaction.
"All of the 6.1 features were driven by our customers' immediate needs for increased productivity," noted Dr. Paul Salvini, Chief Technology Officer at Side Effects Software. "By responding directly to feedback from artists and animators in the field, we were able to develop tools that are very focused on their production requirements."
Feature highlights for Houdini 6.1 include; drag-and-drop support for promoting handles and parameters onto a digital asset; a streamlined Pose Tool that makes it easier to animate digital asset characters; support for inverse kinematic squash-and-stretch of bones; pick-walking in a bone chain; new muscle and wire deformers; the ability to transfer attributes to a new piece of geometry; and a Flipbook feature for fast preview of OpenGL-rendered animations with audio. Additional features range from a new pelt surface operator for "unwrapping" texture UVs in a manner similar to real-world pelting to numerous interface and compositing enhancements, such as the customer-requested return of the Render COP.
During the course of the "Early Access" program, a pre-release of Houdini 6.1 rolled out this summer, Side Effects Software built additional features into Houdini 6.1 including: a UV Pelt Tool for unwrapping texture UVs by choosing cut lines then stretching out from a specified center point; a UV Brush Tool for editing and smoothing UVs by brushing either in the UV viewport or directly on the 3D geometry; Edge Loops for a streamlined edge selection workflow; a Poly Bevel Tool for quickly beveling edges and points; a Path Tool for creating curves at the object level that work with path animation and follow curve solutions; a Bones-on-Curve Tool for quickly distributing a set number of bones on a curve, with follow curve kinematics if desired; a Wire Deform Tool for capturing and deforming geometry using curves as control objects; and numerous interface and compositing enhancements.
For more information on Houdini 6.1, please visit www.sidefx.com. Users worldwide can get a copy of the application by downloading Houdini Apprentice, Side Effects Software's free, non-commercial learning edition of Houdini.
About Houdini
The Houdini family of animation software offers digital artists an unprecedented level of power, flexibility and control based on award-winning technology. The comprehensive feature set includes modeling, animation, character tools, particle and channel operations, compositing, integrated rendering with Houdini Mantra, and much more. All Houdini applications work together seamlessly and are available for the Windows, Linux, IRIX and Solaris operating systems. Houdini has been used to create stunning digital animation in blockbuster films, including "Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World," "The Cat in the Hat," "Elf," "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," "X2: X-Men United," "Daredevil," "Spider-Man," "XXX," "The Sum of All Fears," "Black Hawk Down," "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," "X-Men" and "The Matrix," among many others.
About Side Effects Software
Established in 1987, Side Effects Software is a world leader in the development of advanced 3D and 2D graphics and special effects software for use in film, broadcast and game development. Today, Side Effects Software leads the field of non-linear animation with its unique, award-winning Houdini technology. Houdini is used by numerous digital content creation leaders including Digital Domain, DreamWorks SKG, Electronic Arts, Namco, Nickelodeon, Rhythm & Hues, Sega, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Walt Disney Feature Animation and Weta Digital Ltd.
Related Links: Side Effects Software website
| Database error: Invalid SQL: SELECT replycount FROM vbulletin.thread WHERE threadid='1830'
MySQL Error: 1142 (SELECT command denied to user 'webmaster'@'localhost' for table 'thread')
Please contact the webmaster and report the exact error message.
Session halted. |
