DISCREET XBOX MIDDLEWARE
FEBRUARY 13, 2001

Discreet, a division of Autodesk, has entered into a development relationship with Microsoft to provide animation tools for the Xbox. Discreet will provide architectural and feature changes to its 3D modeling, rendering, and animation package, 3ds max, for Xbox game developers. Discreet has engineered its recent release of 3ds max 4 so that Xbox developers can integrate vertex and pixel shaders directly into the 3ds max viewport. This unique technology will allow Xbox artists and game designers to collaborate more closely than before.

The 3ds max 4 viewport allows game developers to actually see hardware-rendered, textured models animating in real-time as they would appear in a finished Xbox game.

"The makers of Xbox have a goal of putting the artists and game designers in charge of development," said Drew Angeloff, Xbox Tools Program Manager. "By doing this we hope to leverage the skills of these incredibly talented people so every game has awesome artwork and graphics, as well as fantastic gameplay. 3ds max 4 is a huge step forward in freeing artists from guesswork, and is an incredible tool to help these people create great games."

"As NVIDIA will be providing both the graphics processing unit (GPU) and the media communication processor for Xbox, our close development relationship with Discreet clearly will benefit game developers who choose to create exciting titles using 3ds max 4," said Sanford Russell, senior director of partner relations for NVIDIA.