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Services News Mixamo and Xaitment team up
AUTODESK SOFTIMAGE 2010 Area of Expertise: 3D suite Those worried that XSI might disappear after Softimage’s acquisition by Autodesk last year are finding their fears unfounded, as the company continues to update the popular suite. The latest 2010 edition sees significant speed improvements with regards to data handling, optimised for multi-core and 64-bit CPUs to make large-scale numberic operations much quicker to execute than previously. It also integrates the full version of Face Robot, the once separately-sold facial animation add-on, to quickly animate facial expressions for large numbers of 3D faces. The ICE workflow has also been enhanced with a new performance bottleneck analyser, plus support for more custom-node creations for C++ CONTACT: 1 Meadow Gate Avenue, Farnborough Business Park, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 6FG, UK
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programmers; while the Fcurve editor has been sped up when working on large numbers of curves and keys. Other user interface improvements include Scintilla text editors, viewport display of bones in shaded views, and the ability to temporarily hide objects during animation playback.
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German AI firm Xaitment has entered into a partnership with character animation service Mixamo in a bid to jointly create ‘simpler and faster techniques for applying realistic AI and animations to game characters’. The two companies will look to ensure that Xaitment’s xaitControl tool can seamlessly work with Mixamo’s character animations within any game development platform. “We’re really excited to be working with Mixamo,” said Markus Schneider, executive vice president for Americas and Asia at Xaitment. “Our focus has always been on simplifying the application of advanced artificial intelligence for game characters.
By offering developers an extremely fast method of creating a vast range of realistic character movements, Mixamo complements our strategy perfectly. I look forward to blending our offerings and revolutionising the way designers and artists create animations for their games.” Nazim Kareemi, CEO and co-founder of Mixamo added: “Our joint partnership presents a very compelling opportunity for game developers to use xaitControl to drive Mixamo’s high-quality character animations. Our vision at Mixamo is to simplify 3D character animation for game developers. The relationship with xaitment brings us closer to achieving this goal.” www.mixamo.com
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