SIGGRAPH – New Orleans, LA – July 25, 2000 – Discreet, a division of Autodesk Inc., today announced that it plans to release a powerful subset of its industry-leading 3d studio max authoring tool to game players for no charge on the web.

The new product, code-named 3d studio gMAX and based on the upcoming key release of 3d studio max, will serve as an extensible content creation platform for professional and consumer use. Discreet plans to license development rights for 3d studio gMAX to qualified game developers on a per title basis.

This initiative is aimed at servicing the rapidly-growing consumer content creation communities that have grown up on the web around franchise game series such as id Software’s Quake and Microsoft Flight Simulator. “As the leader in the 3D games tool space, Discreet has a clear appreciation of the value consumer communities bring to the games they extend,” says Phillip Miller, senior director of Discreet software products. “We also know that many of our largest game development customers use 3d studio max as the content editing foundation for their games – linking it directly to their game engine with custom plug-ins and user-interfaces. With gMAX, we intend to further accelerate game development by releasing an extensible product that can not only be used to build the game itself, but can then be shipped with the title for use by the creative gamer community.”

Discreet is announcing its new product initiative today for the benefit of game developers who plan to release custom level editing tools with game titles next year. Discreet intends to promote 3d studio gMAX as a means of extending game title longevity through consumer customizations, simultaneously reducing game developer reliance on proprietary tools. This new product will offer a targeted selection of standard 3d studio max features for level layout, 3D polygon modeling, state-of-the-art real time texturing and lighting, and basic animation. 3d studio gMAX is designed to be highly flexible and customizable to meet the diverse demands of individual game titles.

Extensions to the new product can be made by qualified game developers who are licensed by Discreet to create "Game Packs” – collections of plug-ins and scripts. gMAX is designed to support the same operating systems as 3d studio max including Microsoft Windows, the dominant 3D authoring environment for the consumer game content creation community. "We are very excited about expanding our relationship with Discreet," said Ed Fries, vice president of games publishing at Microsoft. "The 3d Studio gMAX initiative will provide an excellent framework for all Windows-based game developers to support. It allows our developers to focus on the game experience without the necessity of creating, supporting and maintaining editing tools. The possibility of supporting gMAX through our Flight Simulator product line, and potentially other Microsoft titles, will definitely expand the play-time and entertainment value that these games offer."

"We are very pleased to be working closely with Discreet to bring 3d studio max and NVIDIA's latest GPU technologies together for the benefit of next generation game developers and consumers," said Sanford Russell, senior director of partner management at NVIDIA.
"Discreet's long term commitment to openness and extensibility of 3d studio max offers great potential for delivering the latest in real time graphics technologies directly into the hands of game artists. Discreet's new initiative to deliver that same core technology to consumers through 3d studio gMAX will provide unparalleled capabilities to game players of all types."

"3d studio gMAX is a great step towards enabling gamers to edit and extend their favorite levels and content," said Steve Smith, business development director, Criterion Software Inc. "Criterion is already developing a range of extensions that provide for seamless integration between 3d studio max and RenderWare based games. Discreet's 3d studio gMAX initiative should allow our investment in the 3d studio max SDK to extend to the 170+ games studios around the world that are developing games using RenderWare, offering gamers a richer, deeper, more personalized game experience."

Discreet’s experience and success in delivering 3d studio max to over 132,000 3D content creators should bring much needed stability and predictability to the consumer content creation community through broad, no-charge consumer access to the 3d studio gMAX foundation. Discreet intends to play an active role in delivering and maintaining the gMAX application within the consumer space through its web-presence and software development infrastructure.

Discreet’s initiative will also address the larger issue surrounding 3D authoring in general – training. By providing familiar tools to the vast number of consumer content creators, Discreet intends to foster and grow the talent pool of 3D-savvy artists and game designers. Game developers can easily continue work today for use in 3d studio gMAX by writing custom interfaces within version 3.1 of 3d studio max. The new product’s platform will be compile-compatible with the next major release of 3d studio max, allowing customizations to migrate to 3d studio gMAX Game Packs with minimal effort.

Discreet plans to license the right to develop and distribute Game Packs for a flat, per-title fee to qualified developers, and to optionally license the right to distribute 3d studio gMAX with their title. Licensed game development teams will be able to use and extend gMax as a game-level building tool for internal production of a specific, named title, and then deploy the corresponding Game Pack. Discreet plans to release development versions of gMAX following the first customer shipment of the next major release of 3d studio max this winter. When the first set of supported Game Packs is released, Discreet plans to have no-charge downloads of 3d studio gMAX available to consumers. Product Licensing and Availability

About: Discreet
Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., is a leader in digital content creation, management, and distribution tools. Discreet develops systems and software for visual effects, 3D animation, editing, and production used in the creation of digital moving pictures for feature films, video, HDTV, broadcast graphics, interactive games, and the Web. Discreet products are used extensively in film and video post-production, games and multimedia, broadcast graphics, programming, and on-air event coverage.

Source: Discreet
Web Site: http://www.discreet.com