SpeedTree® Cinema Launched, Industrial Light & Magic Licenses

September 10, 2009
  • Offers rapid hand modeling and procedural design
  • Evaluations and licenses available now

COLUMBIA, SC – September 10, 2009 – Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the special effects studio behind some of the greatest movies of all time, has licensed SpeedTree® Cinema, a new product that enables unprecedented speed and precision in the design of virtual trees and plants.

“SpeedTree Cinema gives our team an ideal blend of procedural and hand modeling options,” said Richard Bluff, ILM Digital Matte Department Supervisor. “We are creating exactly the trees we want at a fraction of the time required by other solutions. Every aspect, from height, growth direction and structural parameters, to the placement of individual roots and branches, can be modeled quickly and precisely. It’s an invaluable aid for any feature production where trees appear.” ILM is currently using SpeedTree in a high profile film, but details of specific efforts are not being released at this time.

“We are incredibly proud to count ILM among our customers,” said Michael Sechrest, President of IDV. “Our goal was to create a tool of tremendous value to the film and animation industries, and ILM’s endorsement confirms our success.”

SpeedTree Cinema is the newest member of IDV’s award-winning line of foliage software. Since 2002, a version of SpeedTree for real-time games and other interactive applications has been licensed by an outstanding community of game developers around the world.

Available today for evaluation and license, SpeedTree Cinema will debut publicly next week at the SIGGRAPH exposition in New Orleans. The annual conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and is expected to draw 25,000 members of the computer graphics and interactive technology communities.

Evaluation applications and hands-on demonstrations will be available in SpeedTree’s SIGGRAPH booth, #2700. For those not attending the event, a free trial form, as well as movies and screenshots, are available now at www.speedtree.com.

Industrial Light & Magic

Industrial Light & Magic, founded in 1975 by George Lucas, is the leading effects facility in the world. Awarded 15 Academy Awards for Best Effects and receiving 20 Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards, ILM has played a key role in 7 of the top 10 worldwide box office hits of all time.

SpeedTree® Cinema

SpeedTree® Cinema, a software product developed by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc., includes a modeling tool that delivers a unique combination of procedural and hand modeling options. Controls for many tree parameters are offered in an intuitive interface, and individual branches and roots may be drawn and edited in the application. Thousands of leaf and bark textures and a large and growing list of species are available in the SpeedTree Cinema model library, including palms, broadleaves, pines, cacti, shrubs and flowers. Once created, SpeedTree Cinema models can be exported as a mesh in a number of popular formats.

Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV)

src=/wp-content/uploads/img/IDV_logo.jpgInteractive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV) develops software products with a focus on real-time three dimensional applications for the animation, game development, visual simulation, and animation industries. IDV, a privately held corporation, was founded in 1999 in Columbia, South Carolina. For more information about IDV, visit www.idvinc.com. IDV’s SpeedTree line, first released in 2002, includes an award-winning real-time version that dominates the worldwide game development industry. Many recent games, from console blockbusters to celebrated online role-playing games, have made prominent use of SpeedTree.