Maya users to receive license to employ film quality Maya Renderer across any number of machines

Las Vegas NV- April 10, 2000 -- Alias|Wavefront, an SGI company, today announced additional details about its upcoming release of the Maya version 3 software. New features will include a universal rendering policy that enables Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited customers to "float" the Maya Batch Renderer across any number of machines on Windows NT, IRIX and Linux platforms. Maya 3's new features and liberalized rendering policies will further bolster its best of class status as the tool for next generation game development and the industry's most powerful solution for digital content creation.

Maya 3, the fifth major release of Maya in less than three years, incorporates numerous user interface and workflow improvements. This release continues Maya's long standing focus on feature synergy, which allows for the cross use of tools throughout the entire production process. Major enhancements in Maya 3 include: Trax™, the non-linear motion compositor for video, film and games users; fully integrated Subdivision Surfaces, Maya Artisan™ texture paint; rendering enhancements; plus, across the board improvements in user interface and workflow.

"The ability to use the Maya Renderer on several machines without paying for additional nodes allows our artists to do more work for less money," said Burt Ward, visual effects supervisor at Logical Figments Inc. "Alias|Wavefront continues to lead the industry with its unerring focus on providing exceptional, world class 3D authoring tools." Maya 3 New Features Trax - The new Trax editor is a powerful addition to Maya's industry leading suite of animation tools and provides a new method of non-destructively mixing animation sequences with total control over motion blending. This allows game developers to prototype multiple character moves in a game, or · animators to quickly assemble complex animation sequences from a series of animation clips such as "walk" and "jog".

Subdivision Surface and Other Modeling Enhancements
Subdivision Surfaces in Maya 3 are now treated as equal citizens with NURBS and polygons. Maya 3 enhancements extend the Subdivision Surface pipeline from modeling on through to animation and final rendering. A new polygonal architecture in Maya 3 provides significant performance improvements on very large datasets and is complemented by a host of new texturing tools and multi-UV support.

Maya Artisan Enhancements
Maya's award-winning Artisan tool provides a unique 3D brush-based paradigm that greatly speeds workflow. In Maya 3, the new ability to use the Maya Artisan brush to paint color, bump, transparency and other renderable channels directly onto NURBS and polygonal models is introduced. By providing the Artisan Texture Paint capability directly inside Maya, artists can accomplish basic texture painting tasks with much greater efficiency. Artisan has also been extended to "paint" cloth properties in Maya Unlimited; further streamlining the workflow of this highly acclaimed innovative technology.

Maya Renderer Enhancements
Speed improvements of up to 40% for ray-tracing, the addition of area lights and new razor sharp displacement mapping lead the enhancements of the Maya Renderer. A new universal rendering policy provided in Maya 3 allows owners of Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited to float the renderer across any number of desired nodes. The renderer can also be used across the IRIX, Windows NT and Linux operating systems.

Workflow Improvements
Maya 3 incorporates hundreds of across-the-board detail enhancements and new features that cement its reputation as a mature production tool that is accessible to new users and yet efficient for expert users. Improvements to the user interface maximizes screen real estate and makes functionality of the product more obvious to the novice user. Interactive volume controls are provided as "virtual plumbing" for funneling particle systems. Accelerator keys are provided on menus and support for the ISO 8859-1 character set standard is now provided (allowing the use of 8-bit non-ASCII characters found in foreign language versions of operating systems). A new library of pre-defined shaders and readily accessible textures makes it easier for new users to generate hyper-realistic imagery.

"Maya 3 contains across-the-board enhancements that will delight our current customers and further distance ourselves from competitive offerings," said Chris Ford, product manager for Alias|Wavefront. "The advent of universal rendering is a celebration of the breadth of these new enhancements, which now positions Maya 3 as the best in class tool for next generation game development and the most powerful solution for digital content creation," Ford continued.


Pricing and Availability
Maya Complete 3 and Maya Unlimited 3 with universal rendering will ship this summer for Windows NT and Silicon Graphics® IRIX, with the Linux renderer to follow.

Maya Complete 3 has a SRP of $7,500 US, Maya Unlimited 3 has a SRP of $16,000 US and Maya Builder 3 has a SRP of $2,995 US (Maya Builder does not include Universal Rendering). Prices will vary outside of the U.S.

Alias|Wavefront offers favorable upgrade pricing from current versions of Maya, and offers free upgrades to customers who purchase Maya commencing April 10th, 2000 and prior to the ship date of Maya this summer.

About Alias|Wavefront
Alias|Wavefront provides artists with open workflow solutions for creative advantage. As the world's leading innovator of 2D and 3D graphics technology, Alias|Wavefront develops software for the film and video, games, interactive media, industrial design, and visualization markets.

Alias|Wavefront's film and video customers include Blue Sky, Cinesite, CNN, Digital Domain, Dream Quest Images, Industrial Light & Magic, Pacific Data Images (PDI), Pixar, Sony Pictures Imageworks, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Feature Animation.

Games customers include Acclaim Entertainment, Core Design, Electronic Arts, Factor 5, Kodiak Interactive, Lucas Arts Entertainment Company, Midway Games, Naughty Dog, Nihilistic, Nintendo, Rare Ltd., Retro Studios, Sega, Single Trac, Sony Computer Entertainment, Square, Timeline Studios, Valkyrie Studios, Relic Entertainment and Westwood Studios.

Alias|Wavefront is a wholly owned, independent software company of SGI with headquarters in Toronto and technical centers in Seattle and Santa Barbara. Please visit the Alias|Wavefront Web site at www.aliaswavefront.com