Discreet Announces 3ds max 7

Press Release

Discreet Announces 3ds max 7

Discreet Announces 3ds max 7—Designed to Streamline Character Animation and Next Generation 3D Workflow

Latest Version of Acclaimed 3D Modeling, Animation and Rendering Software Will Equip Customers to Meet the Evolving and Complex Production Demands of Growing Game Development, Character Animation, Film & Television Visual Effects, and Design Industries

Montréal, Québec— August 2 nd, 2004— Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) and a leader in digital content creation, management, and distribution tools, today announced 3ds max ® 7—the newest version of its acclaimed 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software. Discreet’s 3ds max 7 software will be shown for the first time publicly at the international SIGGRAPH Exhibition in Los Angeles, CA (August 10 th -12 th). With over 280,000 registered users worldwide, and a 19% increase in sales revenues in the last year, 3ds max  is clearly the most popular professional 3D modeling and animation application available today. 

Responding to the ever-increasing industry need for powerful yet approachable non-linear animation tools, Discreet   is integrating its award-winning advanced character motion toolset character studio® into the core feature set of 3ds max 7. With a unique constraint-based non-linear animation mixer, highly scalable behavioral crowd simulation capabilities, and extensive motion capture filtering and editing facilities, character studio brings   industry leading price/performance capabilities to the existing 3ds max character toolset.  The result of the integration of character studio and 3ds max is the democratization of character animation functionality, which up until now has been found in solutions costing two to three times more than

3ds max . 

3ds max 7 also offers a wide range of newly developed core functionality including industry-first Normal Mapping, a workflow accelerator for gaming; and Edit Poly Modifier, designed to improve ease of use and speed of animation (a more comprehensive feature list is included below).  Such groundbreaking features as Normal Mapping continue Discreet’s legacy of cross-pollinating innovative technologies between market segments, where features originally designed for one market segment such as games can have a significant impact on other segments such as film or design visualization.

"NVIDIA and Discreet have worked together for years to deliver the highest performance graphics creation solutions for professional 3D animation artists," said Jeff Brown, general manager of professional graphics at NVIDIA. "With Discreet’s acute focus on high-end real-time shading in 3ds max 7, it takes a powerful professional graphics solution with true 128-bit floating point frame buffers and Shader Model 3.0 support ― like the NVIDIA Quadro ® FX workstation graphics solutions ― to unleash its full potential. Together, Discreet and NVIDIA have ensured that the full power and feature sets of our respective products give 3D game developers and visual effects artists a sophisticated, but approachable hardware and software duo that optimizes productivity.”

“3ds max 7 is designed to deliver the optimized performance required for the large data sets of today’s increasingly complex 3D production environments,” said Marc Petit, vice president of product development, Discreet. “Major innovations in

3ds max 7 focus on delivering the most productive and customizable workflow to date, support for next-generation PC/console and mobile platforms, as well as powerful new creative tools.  Furthermore, the integration of advanced character animation capabilities as a part of the core functionality of 3ds max will provide fast, efficient, and intuitive character tools for the benefit of all 3ds max 7 users.”

Built in conjunction with industry artists and facilities, 3ds max 7 isaimed at boosting facility productivity and meeting the demanding production requirements set by today’s highly competitive environment.

“We're always excited to be part of Discreet’s development process,” said Greg Zeschuk, Joint CEO of BioWare. “With 3ds max 7, we are seeing some great improvements in performance. The character animation advancements have reaffirmed our commitment to 3ds max 7 as our core development platform. Discreet’s advancements for improved visual feedback have paid off in a significant way – giving us the ability to handle larger amounts of polygons as well as more objects than ever before. Ray Muzyka, Joint CEO of BioWare also added, "As we are in the home stretch for bringing Jade Empire - already an award winner at E3 - to market in the first quarter of 2005, we will definitely be utilizing all of the features of 3ds max,both to ensure Jade Empire is visually stunning and also to help us get the artwork done quickly and efficiently; we're confident that Jade Empire will be BioWare's best game yet!”

Additional major new features in 3ds max 7 include:

Normal Mapping — industry first revolutionary workflow developed for gaming adds extreme detail to low-polygon models with high resolution maps – and with complete rendering support normal mapping brings great time-saving benefits to film production and cinematic visualizations mental ray 3.3 — enhanced integration in 3ds max with accelerated performance and better memory efficiency. Improved Global Illumination, new support for Render to Texture and Normal Mapping, and Sub-Surface Scattering that disperses light for amazingly realistic skin and dense translucent object rendering Custom Attributes Collector — a new, unified interface that improves efficiency when animating multiple custom attributes for any character setup. Edit Poly Modifier – significantly increases the rapidity and ease at which complex polygonal surfaces can be created, modified and then animated - improving the creative process Skin Wrap Deformer — greatly improved character animation workflow with easy application of props and clothing to pre-skinned 3D models Snapping Workflow — improved accuracy and viewport feedback for the underlying snapping system in 3ds max Paint Selections — an intuitive and interactive method for building selections with a brush-based interface Enhanced Interactive Performance and Scalability — an ongoing program to enable 3ds max to scale to very large datasets including smart object culling for high performance manipulation of large numbers of objects TurboSmooth — a highly optimized smoothing algorithm for increased performance of high resolution models Mobile Gaming Development Tools — native mobile 3D asset creation with new JSR 184 exporter and per camera diagnostic tools

Discreet 3ds max was used to generate 3D visual effects in motion pictures such has The Day After Tomorrow, The Alamo, The Last Samurai, The Triplets of Belleville, Xmen-2 and the majority of award winning PC and console games including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire (BioWare); Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Rainbow 6 series (Ubisoft); the ever-popular Grand Theft Auto III series (Rockstar); Halo and Halo 2 (Bungie); and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Electronic Arts).

Pricing and Availability

3ds max 7 is expected to ship in fall 2004 for US $3,495. Localized versions are planned to be available later in 2004 and 2005. Upgrade pricing from 3ds max6 is US $795; and 3ds max5 US $1,295. Discreet’s Subscription Program benefits customers with access to new software feature extensions, patches, upgrades, and e-learning content for an annual fee. For more information, visit www.discreet.com/subscription/ and resellers. 

PRESS: For images of Discreet 3ds max 7 software (box art and screen shots) go to: http://www4.discreet.com/company/imagelibrary.php?id=410

About Discreet

Discreet empowers media professionals to realize the visual experience and transform their most evocative and ambitious visions into reality. Discreet's award-winning solutions are designed for digital media creation, management, and delivery—across all disciplines from film and television visual effects, color grading, and editing  to animation, game development, web/interactive, and design visualization.  Discreet is based in Montréal, Québec, and is a division of Autodesk, Inc., the world's leading design and digital media creation, management, and distribution company.  Product and corporate information: www.discreet.com.

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During the course of this communication, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future performance of the Company. These forward-looking statements are subject to assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are discussed in documents we file from time to time with the SEC and specifically in our Annual Report and 10-K filed for the year ended January 31, 2004. These documents contain and identify important factors that may cause the actual results to differ from those contained in our forward-looking statements.

Additionally, we may make statements regarding planned or future development efforts for our existing or new products and services. These statements are not intended to be a promise or guarantee of future delivery of products, services or features but merely reflect our current plans, which may change.  Purchasing decisions should not be made based upon reliance on these statements.

The Company assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist or change after the date on which they were made.

Discreet is a division of Autodesk, Inc. Discreet, 3ds max, and character studio are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc./Autodesk Canada Inc. in the USA and/or other countries. mental ray is a registered trademark of mental images GmbH & Co. KG, licensed for use by Autodesk, Inc. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

© 2004, Autodesk, Inc.  All rights reserved.