NEWS BRIEFS
New Orleans, LA — NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, announced that Digital Domain used its LightWave 3D animation software to create key animations in one of this summer’s hottest movies, X-MEN.
“Dealing with high polygon counts like we encountered in the animations for this movie is something at which LightWave excels,” said David Prescott, Digital Domain’s computer graphics supervisor.
In addition to creating all of the Statue of Liberty shots for X-MEN, Digital Domain used LightWave for color and lighting the X-Jet, for the “strap” sequence that takes place inside the Liberty head and for the statue’s torch destruction scene at the end of the movie.
“LightWave’s ability to render photorealistic environments made up of high-resolution data sets and texture maps, and to do it quickly, is an asset we relied upon for many scenes in X-MEN, such as the Statue of Liberty,” said Branden Smith, a digital extension lead at Digital Domain.
Production time pressures helped guide Digital Domain toward LightWave, a known and proven tool in the digital studio’s 3D arsenal. “X-MEN had a short production schedule and LightWave was certainly up to the task at hand,” said Prescott.
“We wanted to be able to give the director, Bryan Singer and Mike Fink, as much flexibility as possible, which meant giving them as much time as they needed to tweak each shot without worrying about being able to deliver on schedule,” said Smith. “We counted on the productivity that the LightWave environment offers to get the job done.”
Digital Domain uses LightWave frequently in a variety of projects, including the feature films Titanic, The Fifth Element, Red Corner and many of its TV commercials, such as Pontiac “Metal City” and “Metal Desert,” some Dodge spots currently airing and the new American Express “Blue” campaign. “Over the years, LightWave has become one of our foremost tools,” said Prescott.
LightWave, a leader in special effects production in the film and television industry, provides the most complete feature set of any 3D animation tool available. LightWave offers breakthrough rendering technologies, advanced animation tools and a new modeling paradigm as well as improved workflow, better control over texturing, customizable user interface and extensive improvements to real-time views. LightWave is the only 3D software system that runs on Macintosh, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Alpha and Silicon Graphics systems.
With headquarters in San Antonio, NewTek is a leading provider of full-featured video editing, animation and special effects tools. The company’s products are used worldwide on projects ranging from home video to feature film. Recent film and television projects include X-Men The Movie, Scary Movie, Pitch Black, Shakespeare in Love, the latest James Bond film, The World is Not Enough, Roughnecks: Starship Troopers, Star Trek: Voyager, The X-Files, Ally McBeal and Family Law. Visit http://www.newtek.com for more information.
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