Palo Alto, Calif.­-(Feb. 08, 2001 ) Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the availability of Electric Image's Universe on Sun hardware. Universe will be available later this month for Sun Blade 1000, Ultra 80, Ultra 60 and Ultra 10 workstations running on the Solaris Operating Environment. Universe software will also be supported by the full range of Sun's graphics accelerators for professional level graphics, including the high end, power graphics Sun Expert3D board.

"With Electric Image's Universe software available on Sun workstations, content creators can now count on the proven quality, performance and robustness of the SPARC architecture with the Solaris Operating Environment," said Robbie Turner, Vice President, Client and Technical Market Products, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "When developing on a powerful animation suite like Universe, digital media professionals will benefit from the high quality graphics, scalability, large memory capacity and 64-bit computing that Sun workstations offer."

Electric Image's Universe 3D is one of the largest upgrades to the company's Electric Image Animation System (EIAS) visual effects software in over a decade. The animation package is based on a new framework that provides powerful new modeling, animation and rendering capabilities, as well as support for multiple platforms. Universe offers highly sophisticated modeling capabilities and the ability to create complex objects more efficiently with its hybrid surface/solids modeler. Artists can now create resolution independent shapes with solids, NURBS surfaces or UBER-NURBS (subdivision surface modeling). Its animation system has also been enhanced with deeper character animation tools, a new Inverse Kinematics system, and advanced camera projection mapping with real-time image previews.

Universe's rendering system, Camera, features a new raytracing engine that produces extremely high image quality and offers network rendering, reflection maps with occlusion, and channel-based controls for optimized rendering times. Additionally, Universe continues the EIAS legacy of having one of the industry's fastest renderers and the ability to handle enormous amounts of data.

"Universe is not just a new layer of code on top of a previous version. Instead, we have developed a completely new framework that allows for radical new innovations with virtually simultaneous cross-platform support," said Dwight Parscale, CEO of Electric Image. "We are excited to offer availability on Sun systems and think its SPARC architecture and Solaris workstations will be a very powerful combination for customers in a variety of digital media markets."

Availability, Support and Price

Universe will be available worldwide later this month through traditional Sun reseller channels. Support for Universe on Sun's Solaris Operating Environment will be available through live and DVD-based training courses. Electric Image's support group can be contacted at http://www.electricimage.com or 714-433-0400. The universe software package for the Solaris Operating Environment retails for $1,995.00. More information about the Sun workstations that support the Universe software package is available at http://www.sun.com/desktop.

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