Monday, February 23, 2009

Autodesk Announces Softimage 7.5

Autodesk has launched Autodesk Softimage 7.5 software for visual effects and game production. With this release, Autodesk has renamed the SOFTIMAGE|XSI software — acquired from Avid Technology Inc. — Autodesk Softimage. The 7.5 version offers timesaving new features, such as UV unfolding technology, a multithreaded Syflex cloth simulator and an integrated mental ray 3.7+ renderer. Artists have used Softimage to create numerous movies, commercials and video games, including the Oscar-winning film “Happy Feet,” Coca Cola’s “Heist” Super Bowl ad, and the “Fable II” video game.

Key New Features in Autodesk Softimage 7.5

UV Unfolding Technology: Softimage now features UV unfolding technology that enables artists to unwrap polygon models with just a few clicks. This technology works well on complex organic models, which would be difficult to unwrap manually. Softimage 7.5 also provides a wealth of UV editing tools that help artists quickly create and edit UV maps.
mental ray 3.7+: Version 3.7+ of the mental ray renderer is now integrated into Softimage 7.5. Highlights include improvements to binary space partitioning for faster render times, multiple final gathering refinement passes and new motion-based displacement. These enhancements help users create high-fidelity images faster than ever before.
Multithreaded Syflex Cloth Simulator: The production-proven cloth simulator in Softimage is now multithreaded, enabling artists to use all the cores on their machine to iterate faster.

Scene Compatibility with Version 7.0: Scenes saved in Softimage 7.5 will load into version 7.0.

More information on new features