Marketwire reports that Antics Technologies has released a new bundle of premium content for their existing entry-level product Antics V3 Basepack. The new version boasts

increased functionality, enhanced ease of use and improves users’ ability to import 3D content. With similar functionality to the professional Antics V3 ProPack version, the free version means creative individuals can use a professional-grade software tool to create quality animations on a limited budget.

Phil Swinstead, founder of Antics says this software is built for a diverse group of users in mind, from the experienced to the beginner. He says,

“Anyone from complete novices to more experienced animation enthusiasts can now use Antics to create animations quickly and cheaply, without any professional training, using the large free content available to all Antics users and purchasing those special premium content elements they need to bring extra life to their stories.”

Havok announced today that they will offer the PC version of their award-winning physics and animation software product – Havok Complete – for download free of charge.  Available for non-commercial use, Havok Complete for the PC will be freely downloadable in May 2008.

Havok’s core platform, Havok Complete combines the industry-leading Havok Physics engine and Havok Animation, the company’s premier character animation solution. Havok Complete is already the most popular solution in the cross-platform AAA games market, featuring technology used in over 200 games. By making Havok Complete for the PC freely downloadable, Havok will further build on its leading position by completely removing the barriers to entry for the large number of independent developers, academic institutions and enthusiasts in the PC space.    

Image Metrics introduces new facial animation software that does not require the actor to wear tracking marks on their face. This video from g4tv shows it in action:

Today at the 2008 Game developers conference Havok introduced 2 new tools into their arsenal of physics based tools, Havok Cloth and Havok Destrucion. With a line up of Award winning tools such as Behavior™, Physics™ and Animation™ Havok is easing the jobs or artists and animators with these new tools. According to The Earth Times David Coghlan, Vice President of Development for Havok said,

“Havok Cloth and Havok Destruction will further increase the standard of realism and immersion in games. Havok Cloth enables scalable clothing that will significantly enhance the visual impact of on-screen characters. Havok Destruction will drive high-adrenaline action scenes with unprecedented levels of physics mayhem.” 

Havok Cloth(TM) is a new performance-optimized development tool designed to minimize the time that game artists spend on animating the behavior of character garments and environmental cloth. It enables increased realism for cutting-edge games, is easily customizable and fits into today’s workflow without burdening artists, animators or programmers. Havok Cloth(TM) features: — Highly realistic physically-based simulation of cloth and character clothing with low CPU and memory overhead — Multithreaded and platform-optimized (including PLAYSTATION(R)3) — Artist-driven control of the full range of cloth behavioral properties such as stretching, damping and bending — Artist-friendly, modeller-based, cloth setup toolsHavok Destruction(TM) is the cross-platform tool for simulation of rigid body destruction. Destruction gives the game artist total control over the simulation, drastically reducing the production time and cost of creating large numbers of realistic destructible game objects. Havok Destruction can create a completely new game play experience by giving additional realism to structural mechanics, graphical effects and game level design.Havok Destruction(TM) features: — Dynamic fracture of game objects including: shattering, fracture and deformation. — Software Development Kit that is fully multithreaded, optimized for the PLAYSTATION(R)3 and Xbox 360(R) and makes optimal use of Havok Physics — Art Tool Support About Havok

Softimage today has launched a forum based website called Softimage|NET for the 3d community that uses Softimage. It has galleries, support and a “How To” section. It is similar to Autodesk’s  ”AREA” Site which provides a place for users of Autodesk MAYA and 3DSMax to gather. Speaking of Maya,  Audodesk announced today that they are dropping the price of May Unlimited Standalone from 6,995 to 4,995 and the Network license version from 8,345 to 6,245. While Maya Complete 2008 users can upgrade to Maya Unlimited for only 2,995. All of this and they just released Maya 2008 Extension 2.

OC3 has announced it is partnering with Softimage to create a plugin for their program FaceFX. According to Gamasutra it is a lip syncing plug-in that is designed to help game developers and 3d animators speed their workflow and create more realistic lip sync and facial expressions.

OC3 notes that the plugin uses only a sound file and optional text file to generate highly realistic facial animation data for use in video games and 3D animations. The company notes that FaceFX was used by Epic for Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War, meaning mod developers using either will be able to use Softimage assets with the plugin for machinima movies and other game mods.

Autodesk announced that they will be splitting their widely used 3ds Max software into two products. They will be titled “3ds Max Entertainment 2009″ and “3ds Max Design 2009″. Gamasutra reports

both versions will offer new rendering capabilities and improved interoperability with other products like Revit, as well as “additional time-saving animation and mapping workflow tools.

The Entertainment version will

include a new Reveal rendering toolset to streamline iterative workflows, a ProMaterials material library for simulating real-world surfaces, as well as numerous biped enhancements and new UV editing tools. It will also include Recognize, a new scene-loading technology which it says will significantly improve the inter-application workflow with Revit Architecture 2009.

Autodesk is hoping this split will meet the needs of their entertainment and visualization customers better.

Macworld announced that Apple has released an update to Quicktime, version 7.4.1. On Apple’s website, they claim that this update “addresses security issues and improves compatibility with third-party applications.” Even though no further information was posted on the site,

Macworld has confirmed with an Apple spokesman that this update addresses a previously reported incompatibility between QuickTime 7.4 and Adobe After Effects.

You can find the update here on Apple’s website.

DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. has boosted the companies 4000 processor Linux based render farm with some new software from Ibrix Inc. according to ComputerWorld.

Ed Leonard, DreamWorks chief technology officer, said the Ibrix Fusion software has boosted I/O speeds to shorten concurrent information access by artists…

Leonard said DreamWorks added Ibrix to its animation system about six months ago to create an interactive lighting prototype for digital artists working on lighting for Kung Fu Panda. The company was seeking to stop system I/O from being brought “to its knees” by animators simultaneously pinging the compute cluster overnight to retrieve digital frame data.
“We needed super performance [for our] file storage and access so when 2,000 computers start asking for the same texture file for one of the [film's] characters, our system isn’t overweighed by I/O,” said Leonard. Scenes that once took two hours to create, he said, are now completed in seconds. “That’s pretty remarkable, and we’re scratching the surface on where we are going with this.”

Marc Petit, Sr. VP of the Media & Entertainment division of Autodesk sits down with vfxworld.com to discuss the direction their products are headed for 2008. The key idea he drives home is “realtime”. From previs with their “…research project called sextant” which they debuted at SIGGRAPH last year, to their newly acquired product “Mudbox 3d” which Petit says “…will be a standalone [but] we are also looking at better integration with Max and Maya.”

The other big push is for stereoscopy, from the creation of it in Max and Maya to grading it in Luster. Petit says they have been working closely with some customers on some large projects developing tools to assist on the creation side of stereoscopy but they’re just starting to understand what they need to create for people to manage those images. He also goes on to talk about how they are working on the concept of stereo grading as well.They will eventually have stereoscopy hit all of their products: Lustre, Smoke and Flame.