Autodesk Acquires Softimage
InBrief: Last week Autodesk and Avid announced that Autodesk would acquire substantially all of the assets of Avid’s Softimage business unit for approximately $35 million. Autodesk said it was interested in the company because of its strength in the 3D games market. Founded in Montreal, Canada, in 1986, Softimage has been available only for the Windows PC market and competes with products such as LightWave 3D and Cinema 4D. Autodesk plans to utilize Autodesk FBX as a lingua franca file exchange between all of its 3D software tools, including those picked up by RealVIZ. To read the full press release go here.
LightWave 3D Earns “3D Product of the Year”
MacUser Magazine has awarded NewTek’s LightWave 3D “3D Product of the Year” for 2008. The full list of MacUser 2008 Award winners can be found here. The MacUser Innovation of the Year award was given to Apple for its MacBook Air.
SketchUp Goes Parametric – New Russian Tool
WorldCAD Access has noted Russian software company, LEDAS, and their new Driving Dimensions plugin for SketchUp. With this new plugin — only available for Windows unfortunately — users have very limited but true parametric capabilities in SketchUp. Visit the Driving Dimensions website to learn more.