The new group adds Luxology's innovative 3D modelling and rendering technology and its flagship product, modo, to The Foundry's existing stable of products.

modo is a cutting-edge and artist friendly 3D software package that combines modelling, painting, rendering and animation in a single integrated powerful package. The new generation in 3D software, modo is a true end-to-end solution that offers a fresh, flexible and modular approach.

The collective product range is very exciting, but equally important is the shared ethos of our two companies and the staff within them. Both The Foundry and Luxology have strong reputations for being community driven and good collaborators. We are widely recognised for building tools around customer needs, providing artist-friendly workflows and great support. For this reason we’re very excited about what the future holds and a union that will allow us to push the boundaries for our customers across a wide range of industries.

John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic comments:
“I am a big fan of both Luxology and The Foundry having been using modo for quite a while and KATANA here at ILM in the last 18 months. Their marriage is really exciting for the VFX community. Their combined technology and similar approach to working with customers is a very interesting development. I’ll definitely be keeping my eyes on them.”

Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry comments:
“We were impressed by modo's strong roots in a variety of markets - including VFX, design and games - and by Luxology’s focus on creating artist friendly, highly advanced technologies. Both companies are a great match for each other.

The Foundry and Luxology's products are highly complementary, and we both like our products to be open and flexible, letting the customers choose how they want to work. In the short term we will be continuing to develop the interaction between our products, which will be of immediate benefit to all of our customers. We can’t wait to see what our combined experience and knowledge will allow us to build in the long term.”

Brad Peebler, President of Luxology comments:
“The Foundry has an impressive pedigree in the visual effects industry, where its products and attention to customers are second to none. Creative industries are converging in terms of media, quality and deliverables. Joining forces with The Foundry will allow us to accelerate the development of modo, ushering in a new era for our customers. We simply can not wait to leverage our combined strength to change the landscape for content creators everywhere.”

MAXON has unveiled CINEMA 4D Release 14, (R14) a milestone release of the industry-leading 3D motion graphics, visual effects, painting, and rendering software application. Leveraging more than two decades of 3D graphics programming innovation, R14 delivers breakthrough performance offerings including a new, fully integrated sculpting system, new camera matching functionality, the debut of exchange plugins to two key applications -- The Foundry NUKE and Adobe Photoshop Extended -- and improved integration with Adobe After Effects. Packed with a number of other powerful workflow feature enhancements, creative professionals – motion graphics and visual effects artists, as well as visualization designers – will benefit from features that accelerate productivity to produce spectacular 3D content more fluidly, and the ability to collaborate with increased efficiency.

See CINEMA 4D R14 in Action (New in R14).

“CINEMA 4D R14 is a milestone release that harnesses MAXON’s decades of leadership and programming experience to deliver the absolute best-in-breed 3D technology with the unified workflow capabilities our customers need to realize their creative visions, quickly and efficiently,” says Harald Egel, co-founder and CEO of MAXON Computer. “With improved and added tools such as digital sculpting, camera matching and tighter integration with leading third-party applications, R14 offers the innovation on which individual artists and design teams have come to rely to create compelling 3D content for any medium - from film and broadcast to architectural visualization and mobile games.”

CINEMA 4D Release 14 Highlights:
MAXON offers four versions of CINEMA 4D, each catering to the needs of 3D artists in different industries. Note: The features listed below may not be included in every configuration. See http://www.maxon.net/comparison for further information. Key features and benefits include:

§  Digital Sculpting

Dynamic new sculpting tools give artists complete control to create finely detailed models with tools like Pull, Wax, Smooth, Flatten, Inflate, Knife and Pinch. There are powerful preset options for brushes, stamps, stencils, and attributes for size, pressure, symmetry options and more. A powerful layer system allows for maximum flexibility in the creation process while the Bake option recalculates the millions of sculpted polygons into displacement and normal maps that can be applied to low-poly count base meshes for further use in renderings and animations.


§  Improved Modeling Toolset

New interactive work plane modes, dynamic guides and a completely redesigned snapping system offer a powerful, unified 3D workflow to model dramatically faster and accurately align elements. Controls to interactively position the world grid to move, scale and rotate objects, as well as the ability to intuitively snap objects and components to the grid plane, grid lines or grid points are provided along with other key parameters.


§  Camera Enhancements

The new Camera Calibrator in R14 offers an integrated solution to match a 3D camera image to a 3D environment – a perfect solution for architects and designers to present their creations. Users can integrate 3D objects into the photographed environment for visualizations or use CINEMA 4D’s camera mapping workflow to create digital matte paintings and set extensions.


The new Motion Camera, Morph Camera and Camera Composition Helper tools in R14 help to quickly frame a 3D scene following artistic rules or easily create realistic and dynamic camera animations while the new Camera Focus Picker gives users control to interactively set focus distances.


§  Better and Faster Rendering

Multiple enhancements in R14 bring digital artists a more flexible toolset to achieve greater rendering realism and compositing control that result in outstanding image quality. New and improved shaders and materials are now available for simulating wood grain, weathering effects and normal mapping. Global Illumination has been enhanced with new technologies such as Radiosity Maps and the unified sampler from the Physical Renderer, to let users achieve higher-quality renders in less time and with greater accuracy. New render effects also power up the post-processing workflow. Relight scenes, pull position-based mattes and reconstruct objects with the new Position Pass or perform quick and easy color correction with new interactive grading curves. New algorithms in R14 provide up to twice the speed for caustics, while further enhancements to subsurface scattering render materials such as milk, wax and skin more efficiently.


§  Integration

Brand new to CINEMA 4D, the highly anticipated seamless integration with The Foundry’s award-winning NUKE compositing application allows R14 users to directly export a NUKE project file to reconstruct a multi-pass render and provides full support for OpenEXR and FBX files. The new Photoshop Extended exchange plug-in opens and manipulates CINEMA 4D scenes into a Photoshop 3D layer, offering new opportunities to illustrators, photographers, digital matte painters and motion graphics artists to share CINEMA 4D files with the broader Photoshop design community. Enhanced integration with After Effects brings new levels of performance to directly import and export native CINEMA 4D files.


§  Misc Productivity-Boosting Features

CINEMA 4D is renowned for outstanding ease of use. With numerous enhancements to the R14 interface, artists can perform common tasks faster and more efficiently.


R14 now offers greater levels of realism and control with increased versatility over dynamics with aerodynamic forces, plastic springs and breaking connectors. Users can now create much more believable animations of flying or breaking objects. The improved editor view now displays soft shadows and features new object highlighting options. Individuals and teams can manage tasks using the To Do list and the Commander, a filtered search box that appears directly under the cursor, which gives quick and easy access to all commands and tags. An improved XRef system offers options to offset the animation, scale or pivot of each referenced scene, which is especially useful for team collaboration. Finally, Arabic speakers can now use CINEMA 4D in their native language with new Arabic interface translation and a mirrored layout designed for right-to-left readers. This is just a brief overview of the 200+ improvements CINEMA 4D R14 has to offer.

System Requirements
Minimum system requirements include Windows XP, Vista or 7 running on Intel or AMD CPU with SSE2-Support; Mac OS X 10.6.8 or higher running on an Intel-based Mac and 1024 MB RAM, DVD ROM drive and an OpenGL graphics card. Standard DVD installation can take up to 7 GB of disk space.

Availability and Upgrade Path
CINEMA 4D Release 14 and BodyPaint 3D Release 14 are scheduled to ship in September through MAXON and its authorized dealers. Customers with an active MAXON Service Agreement (MSA) valid through September 2012 will automatically receive the upgrade. Current customers who do not have an active MSA can purchase an MSA before the end of August and be eligible for a free upgrade. New customers who purchase R13 from now until Aug 31, 2012 are being offered a one-year MSA with their purchase at no extra cost incl. an upgrade to R14.

Work more efficiently, streamline your pipeline or upgrade your compositor with our 2012 Summer Software Sale.

With huge savings off list price on all this year's promotions this is a Summer Sale not to be missed!

Please note, this offer is not available online. TO BUY NOW contact DVT.

Offers end 31st August 2012, so don't delay get in touch today.
The Works
Work more efficiently with this complete software package giving you over 50% off when you buy NUKEX, MARI, FURNACE and 2 renders (1 x NUKE, 1 x FURNACE) before 31st August 2012.

The ultimate software collection, The Works comes jam-packed with tools to give you greater freedom. Not only giving massive discounts off MARI, FURNACE and renders, The Works includes our most comprehensive compositing product NUKEX. Giving an extended tool set that allows you to work efficiently, interactively and in the context of the visual effects process.

"Our artists really enjoy using The Foundry's tools because of their first rate support and their collaborative open approach to product development.” Scott Holmgren, Chief Technology Officer at Molinaire.


The Perfect Partnership
Streamline your pipeline with our NUKEX and HIERO summer bundle, giving you a saving of 30% when you buy NUKEX and HIERO together before 31st August 2012.

The ultimate in collaborative workflow, NUKEX and HIERO offer a new way of working that’s fast and flexible and guarantees improvements in project efficiency.

“With both NUKE and HIERO in our pipeline we have a more accessible, collaborative approach, which is faster and more cost effective, and best of all lets us take on even more projects. For us NUKE and HIERO offer a new way of working that we see as the foundation of our pipeline for the future.” Heino Henning, Creative Director at Searle Street Post.

The Summer Step Up
Step up to NUKE with this year’s summer upgrade offer. Send us your After Effects, Shake or Fusion serial code and we’ll give you a node-locked NUKE with over 30% off before 31st August 2012.

Take your VFX work to the next level with NUKE, our award winning, industry standard node-based compositor. Don’t compromise on speed, power or creativity upgrade your current compositor today and save over 30% off list price.

"I switched to NUKE because I needed more. I needed a 32 bit linear environment that worked and a 2.5/3D system that's responsive, fast, and easy to use. With python scripting and control over all my color and matte channels I'm free to think and composite like an artist, a cinematographer or a visual storyteller." Stephan Fleet, VFX Creative Director at Encore.

The next generation of the Unity development platform, includes all-new character animation technology, more publishing options, shadows for mobile games, DirectX 11 support and many more key updates. Unity 4.0 is the first release in the Unity 4 series that will offer critical new features. Pre-order Unity 4 today and join us on the quest to a truly democratic AAA game engine!

• Mecanim, simple and powerful character animation technology
• Unity add-on for Adobe Flash Player – a major global platform for your game
• Publish to Linux and a market ripe for awesome Unity games
• Visual Fidelity and AAA Rendering to achieve the artistic style of your desires
• Key workflow updates to efficiently turn your ideas into a completed game

Pre-order Unity Pro 4 and get immediate exclusive access to the Unity Pro 4.0 pre-order beta.