New Orleans, LA – May 29th, 2002 – Digimation, Inc. announced today the immediate availability of SpeedTreeMAX™ - a powerful new virtual tree creation plug-in developed by Interactive Data Visualization (IDV) for use with Discreet’s 3ds max 4x

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Trees created with SpeedTreeMAX are comprised of only a few thousand polygons, making it the first virtual tree creation software that offers 3ds max users an easy and resource-friendly way to create exceptionally realistic, customized and animated trees with realistic wind effects.

Trees are created by selecting from a number of controls, such as leaf density, number of branches, tree height and breadth. The SpeedTreeMAX plug-in can also create additional trees or forests with the help of a randomly generated seed, permitting the quick creation of new trees that are similar but not identical to those already in the scene. The software also allows the user to create an infinite variety of trees, and have them blow in the wind, at any wind speed from gentle breeze to hurricane. Through clever texture management, SpeedTreeMAX significantly reduces the amount of rendering time traditionally associated with high quality detailed trees, and is moderately priced.

3ds max users will find a wide range of features in SpeedTreeMAX including:
• Wind Effects - based on 3ds max Wind Space Warps
• SpeedTreeCAD - stand alone tree editing application - with editable level of detail
• Tree Library - standard library of over 70 trees from 30 different species
• SpeedShadow - generate raytrace-like shadows in a fraction of the time
• Forest Generator/ Foresting Controls - outline an area to populate it with trees, as each tree has a unique seed value there are no easily spotted repetitions or copies.
• Billboarding - planar or crosshatch tree billboards integrate with foresting control
• Millions of variations - SpeedTreeMAX is based on procedural technology, so once a tree is defined, an entirely new tree of the same species can be defined with one keystroke.

“For the first time, there is a tree plug-in that is capable of creating highly realistic trees, with full wind support, that enables you to add many low polygon trees to your scenes”, observed Todd Peterson, Digimation’s Senior Product Manager. “SpeedTree is a breakthrough in the battle between realism and polygon counts. You can now create realistic looking trees that have less than 10,000 polygons, instead of the usual 50,000 to 500,000 polygon trees generated by other programs. With wind and billboarding support, you can add just about as many trees to a scene as you would ever need. It’s a wonderful tool for creating your own trees as well!!”

“Necessity was the mother of SpeedTree. We were given an assignment to animate a 26-acre urban area that contained well over 1,000 trees. Normally we would use billboards, but our client wanted to fly close and watch them moving in the breeze. Current 3D tree solutions required 75,000 triangles per tree, making our scene contain 75 million triangles before we added the first street light. We didn’t have the memory or rendering power to make it happen within our budget. Fortunately, SpeedTree was created, allowing us to beautifully render the area using less than 850,000 triangles”, said Chris King, President of IDV.
Free Trial Version
A free trial version of SpeedTree is available at http://www.maxusers.com/ in the Demo Plugins/3ds max 4 demos section of the site. The SpeedTreeMAX Demo contains the plug-in, SpeedTreeCAD, 3 sample trees, and the index of the full library and is valid for a 3-day trial period.

Pricing & System Requirements
SpeedTree is priced at an MSRP of $395 US and is developed to work with 3ds max 4.x

About Digimation
Digimation, Inc., the preferred plug-in publisher for Discreet's 3ds maxä and the exclusive distributor of Viewpoint 3D models, has developed and distributed plug-in technology for 3ds max as well as stand-alone graphic oriented programs since 1992. Digimation is known for such plug-in technology as Bones Pro, Shag:Hair and Illustrate! 5. SpeedTreeMaxä and other Digimation Plug-ins can be purchased through http://www.digimation.com/ or by contacting Digimation directly at 504-468-7898.

About Interactive Data Visualization
Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. is a worldwide provider of software products and services in the fields of animation, visual simulation, and engineering visualization. Founded in 1999 by a team of experienced software engineers, IDV's mission is to provide visualization software that is innovative in its design and robust in its function. IDV is a privately held corporation, located in Columbia, South Carolina. For more information about IDV, visit http://www.idvinc.com/.

Digimation, and the Digimation logo are registered trademarks of Digimation, Inc. Autodesk, the autodesk logo, and 3ds max and Discreet are trademarks, of autodesk, Inc. SpeedTreeMAX is a registered trademark of Interactive Data Visualization.