DISCREET ANNOUNCE NEW RELEASE OF 3D STUDIO MAX

DISCREET, providers in digital content creation, management, and distribution tools, have announced details of the new version of ‘3ds max 4’.
This is the fourth major upgrade of Discreet’s award-winning 3D modelling, animation, and rendering software solution that aims to deliver efficient and creative workflow for character animation, next-generation game development, and cutting edge visual effects production.
Senior Director of Discreet software products, Phillip Miller, said: “3ds max 4 continues Discreet’s ten year leadership in advancing 3D animation on the desktop. 3ds max is already the industry’s preferred animation solution, and the ground-breaking advances in version 4 set a new bar for integrating 3D within the workflow of the postproduction and game development animators and studios.”
Premiering on Discreet’s new animation zone, (www.discreet.com/animation), 3ds max 4 will be a significant release building upon a new Inverse Kinematics (IK) architecture for intuitive character animation.
Discreet expect that animators will embrace the new character animation enhancements in 3ds max 4 with its IK architecture that integrates blended FK/IK abilities, direct manipulation, weighted constraints, angle deformers, real-time shaded skin, and volumetrically shaded bones.
Discreet also provide an additional workflow-orientated solution for 3ds max 4 with character studio for advanced character animation and crowd creation, mental ray for advanced global illumination, and combustion, Discreet’s 3D compositing resolution independent paint software for the desktop.
The new version of 3ds max 4 is expected to be available in Q1, 2001.