Credo Interactive Ships Life Forms 3.0

Powerful new 3D animation tool offers dynamic character movement to a full range of 3D graphics users.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Ken Bryson, Marketing Coordinator kenb@credo-interactive.com (604) 291-6717 Hollie Wendt, Public Relations hollie@earthlink.net (408) 688-1193

VANCOUVER, B.C., June 30, 1998 - Credo Interactive Inc., leaders in providing innovative tools and solutions for 3D character movement, today announced volume shipments of Life Forms 3.0, a powerful software solution for creating natural movement sequences for 3D character animation. Life Forms 3.0 delivers an intuitive, powerful and streamlined solution for character animation, providing increased productivity to a full range of 3D graphics users, including broadcast, game, web and 3D worlds developers, architects, dance choreographers and other 3D animators.

"Life Forms 3.0 provides animators and choreographers with an exciting new tool for creating dynamic character movements in 3D environments," said Sang Mah, Credo Interactive's Chief Operating Officer. "Animators and artists alike will benefit from the ease of use and advanced functionality of Life Forms, be they creating 3D games and avatars, producing animation and pre-visualization sequences for film and video, designing 3D graphics for the Web, or working with character movement in any capacity."

As the first tool dedicated specifically to movement, Life Forms is the only software that makes movement a simple, intuitive process. With an incredibly straight-forward and unique figure editor, plus an instant walk generator, Life Forms users can create movement quicker, easier, and more intuitively than previously possible.

"Life Forms Studio 3.0 brings a wealth of enhancements that streamline creating realistic character movements for animations," said David Saraceno, of DigitaLaw. "Now can I create, view and modify simple or complex character movements on screen much easier and quicker."

Life Forms 3.0 is extremely flexible and fits into nearly any 3D animation environment. Its advanced data-sharing architecture allows users to swap data from many of today's most popular 3D animation solutions directly into and out of Life Forms. Life Forms can be used as a stand-alone solution, as a complementary tool that brings movement to models and scenes created in other packages, as a highly flexible mocap data editor, or in any combination to suit users and projects individually.

The new Credo software is available in two versions: Life Forms 3.0, an entry-level package, and Life Forms Studio 3.0, for professional animators.

Life Forms Features

Life Forms provides a natural workspace to explore and build concepts, plan interaction, and produce final 3D movement scenes and sequences. Based on an intuitive and easy-to-use interface Life Forms has many powerful features that make creating movement fast and easy.

The Life Forms interface is built around three main views. The figure editor provides a simple, intuitive method for creating keyframes and posing characters through inverse or forward kinematics. The figure based timeline gives users direct control over every character and every frame of animation with such simple functions as copy/paste, select/drag, stretch and mirror. What's more, with thumbnail sized figure representation right in the timeline, users have a visual reference for every keyframe, plus simple and intuitive access to their movement sequences. The stage provides a complete 3D environment for viewing character movement and interaction in either wireframe or rendered views.

Life Forms combines efficiency and power through many easy to use features including:

* Inverse and Forward Kinematics provide two powerful options for posing characters. Combining the intuitiveness of inverse kinematics and the precision control of forward kinematics, users will make the most of any animation situation.

* Range editing increases productivity by allowing movement sequences to be edited over a series of keyframes with one single action.

* Support for Motion Capture Data provides a quick, easy, and powerful method for editing mocap sequences, applying mocap data to different models, or converting between mocap file formats.

* Blend Editing allows user to copy/paste individual body part movements between different models.

* Built-in rendering provides complete movement creation, pre-visualization, and presentation functionality.

* The walk generator creates instant, natural, and fully customized walk sequences with intuitive parameters such as velocity, distance, and step count.

* The file browser saves time by allowing users to preview animation and extract movement without opening extra files.

Two powerful options - Life Forms 3.0 and Life Forms Studio 3.0

Recognizing the wide variety of Life Forms 3.0's applications and end users, Credo Interactive will release two concurrent versions of Life Forms: Life Forms 3.0 and Life Forms Studio 3.0.

Life Forms 3.0 is for novice 3D animators and is compatible with common file formats from many entry-level 3D packages (see below for details). Life Forms 3.0 includes approximately 50 ready-to-use animations, 40 motion capture files and over a dozen Life Forms ready models.

Life Forms Studio 3.0 is for professional users and is compatible with common file formats from many of today's high-end professional packages, including motion capture data (see below for details). Life Forms Studio 3.0 ships with PowerMoves 1&2, Credo's popular 3D animation and motion capture libraries. PowerMoves 1&2 includes more than 600 ready-to-use Life Forms animations, 120 motion capture files and five additional life forms ready models. Life Forms Studio 3.0 also encompasses all of the content included with Life Forms 3.0.

Pricing, Availability, and Data Sharing Compatibility

Life Forms 3.0

Pricing: SRP - $299 US
Available: Mac version available now, Windows version - July 15th..
Platform: Mac + Win 95/NT
Compatibility: Infini-D, Extreme 3D, 3D Studio Release 4, Pixel Putty, VRML 1.0,
and online 3D worlds.

Future Import/Export Plugins for Life Forms 3.0 will include support for TrueSpace users.

Life Forms Studio 3.0

Pricing: SRP - $495 US (limited 90 day offer! Regular SRP - $695 US)***
Available: Mac version available now, Windows version - July 15th.
Platform: Mac + Win 95/NT
Compatibility: Motion Capture Data (Acclaim and BioVision), Alias/Wavefront,
ElectricImage, Cinema 4DXL, VRML 97, Infini-D, Extreme 3D,
3D Studio Release 4, Pixel Putty, VRML 1.0, and online 3D worlds.

Future Import/Export Plugins for Life Forms Studio 3.0 will include support for LightWave 3D, 3D Studio Max, and Strata StudioPro.

*** Life Forms Studio 3.0 will be offered for a special new release price of $495 US for 90 days after shipping commences. The regular suggested price is $695 US.

About Credo Interactive Inc.

Based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, Credo Interactive Inc. is a leader in providing innovative tools and solutions for 3D character movement. Recently identified as one of Canada's top-25 up-and-coming software companies by the Financial Post, Credo Interactive continues to create new and exciting character animation solutions, including the PowerMoves, the ultimate 3D animation library, and Life Forms, an innovative character movement tool for 3D animation, dance choreography, avatar creation, movement planning, game development, multimedia content creation and education.

Life Forms was the first movement tool for 3D character animation and has been used for pre-visualization in such Hollywood features as Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, Batman and Robin, and Barb Wire.