Wave Issue 9705 3/14/97 Article 5-01

***Softimage Unveils version 3.7
by David Lohse

At a small press tour held this week in New York, Santa Monica and San
Francisco, Softimage took the wraps off of their forthcoming version
3.7 of SoftImage 3D.

Although they considered scrapping version 3.7 altogether to focus on
Sumatra (the next-generation Softimage product expected to encompass
the capabilities of SoftImage 3D, Digital Studio and Mental Ray),
according to Daniel Langlois, the president of Softimage, they decided
to release version 3.7 due to the large number of enhancements
available now.

Softimage 3D version 3.7 features a number of new capabilities, many of
which are targeted directly at the growing game developer market.
Distributed, cross-platform rendering will allow content developers to
easily convert a non-homogenous computer network into an efficient
render farm, vastly ramping up production time in many cases.

A key new feature, developed specifically with game developers in mind,
combines wireframe and shaded modes for modeling, allowing developers
to see the vertices while working in shaded mode. Another new feature
lets content developers get detailed specific information on models,
including the total number of polygons in the model, the numbers of
triangles and quads that make it up, and the number of non-planar
polygons.

Other new features include a complete 3D painting tool for painting
directly on textures or on the models themselves, an impressive
"Kaboom" tool for interactively designing explosions, TrueType font
support, export tools and attribute editors for a number of platforms
including Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation, and a "swiftmouse"
capability that maps mouse movements to command shortcuts.

Softimage 3.7 will be available at the beginning of April.

www.softimage.com