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Video/VFX Enhanced Effects Autodesk announced extensions for the Autodesk Smoke 2009 finishing effects system and the 2009 versions of Autodesk Inferno, Autodesk Flame, and Autodesk Flint visual effects systems. Now avail- able to customers with a subscription, the new software extensions provide many new features, such as an enhanced float- ing point tool set, support for additional compressed formats, improved interoper- ability with the Autodesk Lustre, Smoke editorial workflow enhancements, real- time deliverables for mastering to multiple formats without rendering, and more than 80 new particle system presets for Inferno, Flame, and Flint. The company also introduced the Autodesk Lustre 2009 digital color-grad- ing system and Autodesk Incinerator 2009, a real-time system accelerator for Lustre. Lustre 2009 is designed to improve the color-grading workflow with its stereoscopic grading, project manage- ment, multilayer timeline shot prioritization, customizable sensitivity settings for the Autodesk Control Surface, and improved interoperability with the Flame, Inferno, Flint, and Smoke visual effects and finish- ing systems. Incinerator 2009 harnesses parallel processing, server, and networking technologies to provide real-time color grading for demanding digital-intermedi- ate, feature-film projects. Autodesk Lustre 2009 is now available for Red Hat Enter- prise Linux and Microsoft Windows XP operating systems, whereas Incinerator 2009 is shipping for Linux systems. Autodesk; www.autodesk.com TeXTuring Luxology has upgraded its ImageSynth image processing tool to Version 2. Image- Synth 2, infused with up to 10 times faster performance, enables artists to process images into seamless textures, synthetic images, and backgrounds, as well as generate high-resolution images from low-resolution sources. Available in a stand-alone version and as a plug-in for Adobe Creative Suite 4, ImageSynth is especially useful when working with "noisy" images, such as those depicting crowds or beach pebbles, as examples. The tool creates royalty-free images that can be tiled together seamlessly to create backgrounds, brushes, or texture maps. Version 2 boasts a new algorithm threaded for use on dual-core systems, improved memory management to handle larger scenes, and new control over chunk size and orientation. ImageSynth 2 is now avail- able for $99 to new users and as a $49 upgrade to existing ImageSynth users. ImageSynth works with Adobe Photoshop CS3 or higher. Luxology; www.luxology.com daTa TranslaTion Okino Computer Graphics, a provider of 3D data translation solutions, is shipping its third-generation, solids-based Catia V4+V5 R19 and ACIS SAT CAD importers. Based on components from Dassault Systèmes and Spatial, the importers provide accurate, high-quality import conversions because they share the same runtime code used by Catia V5 modeling software and the Spatial ACIS modeling engine. Okino's CAD data-optimization routines enable complex assemblies to be imported, opti- mized, reduced, composed, and loaded into 3D packages, such as Autodesk's 3ds Max and Maya, NewTek's LightWave, Softimage XSI (now owned by Autodesk), Maxon's Cinema 4D, Adobe's Director, Google's SketchUp, and others. The Catia and ACIS CAD importers provide various data-import options, extensive tessellation controls, model healing and erroneous surface repairs, and selective layer import for Catia V4 and V5 files. The company also announced that a secondary data-conversion pipeline in its PolyTrans CAD enables STK users to evaluate the new Collada model import capability of AGI's STK software. Okino's PolyTrans CAD converts native CAD file formats, such as ACIS SAT, Alias .wire, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD DXF/DWG, Catia V4+5, DWF, IGES, JT Open, Para- solid, Pro/Engineer, Rhino-3D, Solid Edge, SolidWorks, STEP, STL, XGL, U3D, VDA- FS, XGL, and X3D. Users gain control over final scene complexity, as well as tools for small parts removal, robust hierarchy/scene optimization, and polygon reduction. Okino Computer Graphics; www.okino.com For additional product news and information, visit CGW.com 48 January 2009 SOFTWARE January 2009, Volume 32, Number 1: COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD (USPS 665-250) (ISSN-0271-4159) is published monthly (12 issues) by COP Communica- tions, Inc. 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