Real-time Character Animation Software with Intuitive Drag-and-Drop User Interface; Improves Productivity and Streamlines Workflow

“There is no easier or faster way to animate 3D characters than with MOTIONBUILDER 4.0,” said Michel Besner, president of Kaydara. "With MOTIONBUILDER, 3D animators can transcend the tools and focus on what’s really important – creating the best quality content possible on time and on budget.”

Specifically designed for professional 3D character animation, MOTIONBUILDER 4.0 builds on the solid FiLMBOX foundation by enhancing various essential tools as well as introducing entirely new character animation features for increased productivity. With a new, more intuitive drag-and-drop workflow, MOTIONBUILDER 4.0 features an ease of use never before achieved by any other professional 3D software. New feature highlights in MOTIONBUILDER include:

Automatic Character Rigging saves animators a significant amount of time when compared to manual rigging. Motion retargeting also allows animators to use diverse motion data in one, unified animation environment.

Lip-Sync / Facial Animation provides a powerful lip-synchronization tool that uses Kaydara’s Voice Reality phoneme-extraction technology to create compelling lip-sync in real-time. Voice Reality has the most comprehensive phoneme coverage of any real-time lip-sync tool on the market and is as easy to use as loading an audio file.

Real-time Display provides instant feedback and eliminates the production delays associated with the rendering process. With Real-time Display there are no limited resolution or limited frame-rate previews.

Drag-and-Drop Contextual Interface is an intuitive, drag-and-drop contextual approach to content creation that simplifies the animation process and significantly lowers the learning curve. When objects or elements are selected, the tools and properties for that object or element become instantly available in the interface. Also, the tools that an animator would need to modify elements are automatically displayed for easy access.

MOTIONBUILDER 4.0 also natively supports Kaydara’s FBX file interchange format, a powerful format for 3D data that allows MOTIONBUILDER users to quickly and easily acquire and exchange 3D assets and media from a wide variety of sources. FBX is widely supported by 3D content and streaming media vendors such as Alias|Wavefront, Autodesk/discreet, DI-O-Matic, 2D3, Digimask, Expression Tools, InSpeck, Motek, NewTek, QEDsoft, Reflex3D, Softimage, Turbosquid, Vicon, Viewpoint and Zygote.

Pricing and Availability
Kaydara MOTIONBUILDER 4.0 will be available in August 2002 at a base price of $USD 3,495. MOTIONBUILDER 4.0 runs on Microsoft Windows NT/2000, Apple OS X, and Red Hat Linux.

About Kaydara Inc.
Founded in 1993, Kaydara Inc. is a leading provider of solutions for the acquisition, authoring, and delivery of digital media content for film, television, broadcast, Web, and game development applications. Its award-winning FiLMBOX product lines enable content developers to acquire, manage, and deliver secure 3D mixed-media content in real-time, and have been used worldwide by award-winning clients, including Manex Visual Effects, Black Entertainment Television, ExMachina, MainFrame Entertainment. Kaydara is a privately held company headquartered in Montréal, Québec. To find out more about Kaydara, visit www.kaydara.com.