Products

Software

ANIMATION
Animate Anime

Smith Micro Software, Inc. Productivity and Graphics Group rolled out Anime Studio Pro 10 ($299.99) and Anime Studio Debut 10 ($49.99) for crafting high-quality 2D animations for personal or professional expression, no matter the user experience level. The tools offer increased bone control with rigging options. The independent angle constraints allow bones to keep their global angle and are not affected by inverse kinematics, while the squash-and-stretch feature allows bones to retain their shape and direction as they move. The new Smart Bone Dials let users easily set up movement templates for characters. Anime Studio Debut 10 also introduces users to 2D animation with new design tools.

Artbeats has a new value-add program: The Weekly Free Clip. Customers who make purchases of $199 or higher will receive a second clip - that week's free clip, chosen by the Artbeats staff - at no extra charge during each week in 2014. The free footage will feature a variety of subjects. A limited number of Drive Plates ($899 retail value) will be included as well. The free clips are valued from $199 to $999.

The Foundry's MeshFusion, a Boolean modeling plug-in for Modo, takes away the challenge of complex and frustrating Boolean operations and makes the process of producing high-quality models consistent and accurate. MeshFusion for Modo has been developed by Braid Art Labs based on the previous GroBoto technology. The software enables users to take advantage of Boolean modeling operations for interactively blending, adding, and subtracting objects to create watertight models faster and more efficiently. Users can interactively blend live shapes, seamlessly manipulate and edit the joins between objects, and export a watertight mesh for 3D printing. The plug-in can be used with deformers and other Modo modeling tools. The final mesh is output as a single unified mesh ready for further editing or export to .STL for 3D printing. MeshFusion, priced at $395, is available for Modo 701 on Windows and Mac OS X.

Hardware

VIRTUALIZATION
ON THE GRID

Nvidia is offering designers and engineers, including those working remotely, cost-effective, secure, graphics-intensive applications using Nvidia GRID vGPU (virtual GPU) technology Citrix XenDesktop 7.1 and Citrix XenServer 6.2. Employees can use essentially any computing device to access all their office productivity and design applications virtually from anywhere, without relying on CPU-based graphics to scale on servers. Now, customers can quickly share access on one GPU with many end users, not just one, and reallocate access depending on changing project needs.

MOBILE WORKSTATION
In the Boxx

Boxx Technologies has debuted the new GoBoxx 1920 mobile workstation. The new, portable, and lightweight GoBoxx 1920 features a 4th generation (Haswell) Intel Core i7 mobile processor (up to 3.9ghz in turbo mode) as well as Nvidia Quadro K2100M workstation graphics and up to 32gb of 1600mhz DDR3 memory for 64-bit applications, resulting in professional-grade performance for CAD, animation, motion media, and rendering applications.

MONITOR
4k Viewing

Panasonic is shipping the new BT-4LH310, a 31-inch 4,096x2,160-resolution LCD monitor that's designed for 4k/2k monitoring. Priced at $28,000, the BT-4LH310 can be used in a video village for live viewing of 4k cameras and graphic devices, as well as for viewing 4k or HD dailies. The IPS LCD panel provides native viewing of 4k DCI content, as well as UHD/QFHD 3,840x2,160, by means of a slight matte crop. In both DCI 4k and UHD/QFHD, the image is displayed in its original native resolution and aspect ratio. Features include a wide viewing angle and faithful reproduction of up to 1.07 billion colors.