SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 and SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT 1.8 Unveiled

Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVID), today announced the latest versions of its 3D animation software packages: SOFTIMAGE ®|XSI ® 6.5 and SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT ® 1.8. Softimage also announced plans to repackage its Essentials and Advanced versions of SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 software to meet the specific needs of artists and studios, respectively. The latest version of SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT will offer enhancements for game development pipelines, along with hours of new training material. SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 and SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT 1.8 software are expected to be available Fall 2007, and the company will demonstrate these new products at the SIGGRAPH 2007 convention in San Diego, CA (August 7-9) www.softimage.com/events/sig07 .

“Since our founding by Daniel Langlois, twenty years ago, Softimage has always prided itself on helping 3D artists unleash their creativity and to make the impossible come to life,” said Marc Stevens, vice president and general manager for Softimage. “Once again, we have been listening to our customers and prospects and we followed their advice when we made these improvements to our features, packaging and pricing. We believe that the changes we are making will set a new standard for value and productivity in the industry,”

Both SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 Essentials and Advanced software will include more than thirty enhancements that were developed for key customers such as Lionhead Studios , Valve , EA , Animal Logic , Nerdcorps , Pandemic and NCSoft . Some of the new enhancements, which improve production efficiency and meet the specific workflow needs of the game development, visual effects and visualization industries, include:

In addition, each SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 application delivers specific features designed to meet the needs of target customers:

– SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 Essentials – equips artists with the
features they need to create compelling 3D characters and
content for games, film and television. The Essentials version
now includes Hair & Fur, and Syflex Cloth capabilities. The
price for Essentials will increase to $2,995 USMSRP;
maintenance remains unchanged at $799 USMSRP, and upgrades
remain unchanged at $999 USMSRP. XSI 6.5 Essentials will only
be available to new customers and customers on active
maintenance.

– SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 XSI Advanced – enables technical directors
and studio IT managers to set up and run a creative animation
facility with a robust toolset, including everything in the
SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5 XSI Essentials package, plus Behavior, a
crowd and behavioral simulation system, as well as five
additional XSI Batch rendering licenses. The price for
Advanced will decrease to $4,995 USMSRP and maintenance will
decrease to $1333 USMSRP.

Since Softimage opened its rendering application programming interface (API) for the SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6 software, the community of third-party developers for SOFTIMAGE|XSI has shown impressive growth. While mental ray ® software from mental images ® remains the deeply integrated core renderer in XSI software, the open API allows rendering technology partners to develop and integrate their respective render engines with a similar level of integration and control into SOFTIMAGE|XSI software. Several rendering partners who are already evaluating integrating their technology into XSI software have announced ‘ or are expected to announce ‘ shipping products at SIGGRAPH 2007.

SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT is an advanced software package that delivers life-like 3D character facial animation for use in games, film and television, and offers greater speed and control than any other commercially available solution. SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT 1.8 will offer specific new features that focus on game development pipeline efficiencies, including: