San Jose, Calif., March 10, 2000 -- Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., announced that it plans to release key character animation technology as Open Source code for selected features of its 3D Studio MAX R3 software.

Through Open Source, Discreet plans to facilitate and accelerate the integration of the authoring environment with the runtime game engine. This binding of the programming and art disciplines is the future of game development and game play. It facilitates rapid innovation enabled by the flexibility of Open Source. Discreet, already a pioneer in shipping source code with the application, is actively taking the lead in promoting the availability of Open Source code for 3D content creation tools in the games industry.

"You can't deliver a black-box 3D content creation tool to a game development team and expect innovation," says Jeff Yates, games industry manager at Discreet. "Content creation tools have to take better advantage of the fact that game developers are among the brightest and certainly the most adventurous programmers in the world. An Open Source pipeline for information exchange, at the source-code level, enables rapid innovation and deeper integration between authoring tools and next-generation game engines."

Against this backdrop, and in an effort to seize the opportunities presented by Open Source, Discreet is opening access to character animation technology as a byproduct of its core games software offering (3D Studio MAX R3.1 and Character Studio R2.2). Core features of 3D Studio MAX R3.1 whose source code will be released include the following:

Discreet sees this move as a natural continuation of its established position in the game industry, and invites its technology partners and competition to embrace and encourage Open Source in the game development community for the benefit of creative professionals innovating on next-generation technologies.

"At Discreet, we have always shared selected source code with our development community through the Autodesk Developer Network," Yates added. "But now, with the first round of next-generation games already under development, we have to tie into an industry standard that will ensure all game developers have access to our source code with minimal business or legal hassles."

So that the game development community can fully leverage the availability of selected source code, Discreet will launch a new Open Source website for the download of Open Source code that will maximize the use of 3D Studio MAX for next-generation game development. Games programmers will be able to download, use, modify, and optionally upload relevant source code and related technology for Discreet's next-generation game authoring tools. Discreet will provide original samples according to the industry-accepted terms and policies of Open Source development (www.opensource.org) -- namely, developers are free to use, modify, and integrate the samples into any application without restriction. Discreet's new Open Source website location/URL is http://support.discreet.com/%7Emaxopensource. For more information about Discreet products and gaming, go to
http://www.discreet.com/gamezone.

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

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