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Digital NatureTools v4.0 for Maya v3.0x Now Shipping!

Los Angeles -March 19, 2001 - Demonstrating its continued commitment to providing creative artists with the best possible tools for developing digital content, Areté Entertainment announces the release of Digital NatureTools v4.0 for Maya v3.0.

Digital NatureTools v4.0 introduces Pyro, the CGW Innovation Award-winning fire and smoke simulator. Pyro uses advanced physics-based algorithms to generate fully volumetric, photo-real flame and smoke structures that can be customized and rendered seamlessly with other Maya scene elements. This is a must-have tool for Maya animators.

In addition, Digital NatureTools v4.0 features significant feature and performance upgrades to Psunami, Psyclone, and P_Liquid including curved boat wakes, object raytracing inside of clouds, and faster particle-to-liquid surface conversion.

Digital NatureTools v4.0 for Maya v3.0 will include the following NEW features and enhancements:

Psunami: Introducing Curved Wakes! Now you can create non-linear wakes. Simply create path for your boat and Psunami will automatically generate the physically correct wave pattern.

Psyclone: Object interaction! Now you can obtain the correct optical images for objects placed inside the cloud volume. Great for cloud fly-throughs. Clouds can now be rendered in raytraced reflections.

P_Liquid: Up to 10x faster particle-to-liquid surface generation. Also featured enhanced raytracing support

Pyro: NEW Fire and Smoke plug-in! A complete set of tools and shaders for creating coupled smoke and fire motion that accurately captures real fire dynamics. Pyro then performs full volumetric rendering of the resulting inferno. Pyro is based on Areté Entertainment's proprietary ISURFR technology. This Implicit Surface Rendering technology is a fast, flexible volumetric rendering framework capable of generating, animating, and imaging a wide range of complex surface types.

About Areté Entertainment, Inc.

Areté Entertainment is the leading provider of atmospheric and oceanographic special FX software. Areté Entertainment’s software has been used in a wide variety of commercials, games, scientific applications and feature films including "Titanic", "Castaway", "Truman Show", "Deep Blue Sea" and "What Dreams May Come".