Play Incorporated Ships Amorphium Software,  Enabling Consumers To Create 3D Graphics

What's Amorphium?
Everybody is familiar with 3D graphics  if they've seen "Toy Story" or "A Bug's Life," but only a few people have  had access to sophisticated 3D graphics because they required specialized  technical knowledge and wireframe programs costing thousands of dollars.  Amorphium was designed to bring sophisticated 3D graphics to the rest  of us.

Amorphium is the world's first real-time 3D sculpting and  painting tool for computers, and the first 3D creation tool for normal  people. It introduces a totally new way to create compelling 3D graphics  - by enabling users to interactively 'sculpt' and paint shaded 3D objects  in real-time. It was designed to let anyone to create custom 3D graphics  for web sites, desktop publishing, business graphics, art education and  personal creative projects.

Play's own Electric Image animation software is well known  throughout Hollywood for its visual effects magic in blockbuster movies  like Jurassic Park, Star Wars Special Edition, Men in Black, Titanic and  Terminator 2. For the first time, Amorphium brings this level of sophisticated  3D graphics to anyone with a passion for cool graphics, from school kids  to graphic artists, web developers to professional animators. It was this  breakthrough technology that garnered a lot of attention when the product  was first unveiled.

The software won both Best of Comdex and Best of Macworld  awards, and Time Magazine also featured the product stating: "Now you  can animate, create special effects and do real-time morphing just like  the pros." How does it work? Amorphium's approach enables users to shape  objects with a variety of tools by 'pushing' and 'pulling' on different  parts of the object, much as you would to shape a lump of clay. You can  push, pull, twist, morph and paint easily and interactively. And when  you apply these distortions, you'll see the changes take effect in real-time!

Amorphium is the first tool in history to bring this kind  of graphics power to personal computers, and it doesn't require expensive  graphics accelerator cards. How is this possible? At the heart of Amorphium  is a highly optimized software engine capable of real-time 3D rendering  on personal computers. Play's design team hand-coded Amorphiums engine  from scratch to enable this capability. This technology also enables 3D  modeling techniques that would be difficult or impossible in traditional  3D modeling tools - even with specialty systems costing thousands of dollars  running on high-end graphics workstations. There has never been anything  like Amorphium before.

Professional artists tell us the closest approach to Amorphium's  is Maya's Artisan, a $6,000 plug-in for Maya's $10,000 3D system. Amorphium's  approach eliminates the slow and difficult wireframe editing process associated  with existing 3D systems. Tasks that took painstaking hours with expensive  polygon, spline or NURB-based modeling tools can literally be done in  seconds using Amorphium. Play also simplified the complex 3D-user interface,  which often baffled 3D newcomers. To this end, creating shapes in Amorphium  is more like sculpting with clay than working with graph paper; painting  objects is more like working with a brush than working with math equations.

Amorphium's tools emulate real-world objects and are easily  accessible with only a few clicks of the mouse. Who can use it? From corporate  logos to brochures, web sites to school projects, Amorphium makes 3D accessible  and usable for numerous applications. Because of its real-time 'geometry  airbrushing' approach, Amorphium provides a natural step between programs  such as Photoshop, PhotoDeluxe or Microsoft's Paint, and 3D graphics systems.

Professional or hobbyist graphic artists can create sophisticated  3D objects or compose an entire scene in Amorphium and save in a 2D file  format (TIFF, JPG, BMP, GIF, PICT, PNG, MOV) at any size up to film resolution.  Amorphium can also be used to easily create custom 3D logos, banners,  buttons, animated GIFs, and even interactive 3D environments (VRML) for  personal and corporate web sites. Check out some of our included examples  (these were created primarily by 2D artists, marketing geeks, programmers  and others at Play.

Only a handful of these models were actually created by experienced  3D artists). For the 3D professional, Amorphium fits right in as a new  application, providing a multitude of unique organic sculpting and painting  tools. Amorphium also solves a common problem with computer graphics:  perfection. Amorphium adds realistic imperfections by importing FACT,  3DS, LWO and OBJ formats, and adding scratches, wrinkles, creases, scorch  marks, dings and dents directly to the surface of an object. It also features  a smoothing tool to quickly fix polygonal 'tears' and jaggedness on an  object, which would have required a lengthy process of aligning vertices  in existing wireframe 3D modelers.

What are the system requirements?
32 MB RAM, CD-ROM, 800 X 600 display with 65,000 colors (16-bit) NO 3D

hardware required!
PC: Any Pentium 133 or greater, Windows 95, 98 or NT 4.0 or later
Mac: Any Power Macintosh or iMac, System 8.0 or later

Who do I contact for any questions?
Ben Yoder: 916-851-0800 or
beny@play.com
Play Incorporated
2890 Kilgore Rd. Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 800/306-PLAY - WWW.PLAY.COM

 Amorphium's breakthrough approach eliminates the slow and  difficult wireframe editing associated with existing 3D systems.
Priced at $149.95, Amorphium enables consumers to create custom  3D graphics for web sites, desktop publishing, school projects and personal  creation. Experienced Adobe Photoshop users and 3D graphics professionals  can also use Amorphium's unique sculpting tools to easily create models,  that would be impossible or difficult to create using traditional programs.

 This new approach makes 3D creation easy enough for school  kids, yet powerful enough for professional animators." Since it was first  unveiled, Amorphium has garnered a great deal of attention for its breakthrough  technology, including winning both Best of Comdex and Best of Macworld  awards.

A wide variety of 3D tools are available in Amorphium, including  interactive sculpting, painting, distortion tools, energy balls, displacement  mapping, texture mapping, true 3D morphing, and powerful 3D text generation.

 Create Amorphium lets you create in three dimensions as simply  as shaping clay with your fingers. Push, pull, twist and tweak with dozens  of interactive tools - all in real-time. You can even use a traditional  potter's wheel! Animate Amorphium's powerful animation tools let your  creations jump, bounce, and wiggle. Even make your words zoom, spin and  tumble. Then save your animations out as movies or eye-catching animated  GIFs for the web. Paint Paint right onto 3D shapes - and with more than  just colors! Paint textures, make things shiny or dull, rough or smooth  - move lights, create shadows.

It's easy and it's all instant with Amorphium. Text Bring  words to life with dramatic depth and motion. Just type in your text and  select any TrueType font. Amorphium will create a 3D sculpture of your  words that you can instantly bend, mold, paint and animate.

Compose Amorphium's Composer let's you combine objects,  pick backgrounds, even add fog and smoke to your scene. Then save it all  in any standard file format (BMP, JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, PICT, MOV) and  in any size up to film resolution.

Internet Amorphium makes it easy to create sensational  3D graphics for any web site. Create 3D logos, 3D banners, animated GIFs,  3D buttons and even interactive 3D environments (VRML)

Organic 3D Sculpting - Creating amazing organic sculptures  is easy with Amorphium, because the experience is much more like sculpting  with clay than working with graph paper. You can start with a primitive  shape like a cylinder, sphere or block, or import a 3D object from another  program. You can even set your object spinning with the Potter's Wheel  feature and shape it as it spins with any of Amorphium's amazing variety  of sculpting tools.
Amorphium emulates real-world objects, entirely eliminating the complex  user interfaces which often baffle the 3D newcomer

3D Painting - Painting in Amorphium is as close to  using a real paint brush as you can get on a computer. Amorphium allows  you to control the size, shape, radius, pressure and even tilt of your  brush. Amorphium is also the only 3D program to provide full support for  Wacom's amazing new Intuous Graphics Tablet 3D Model Detailing

Texture Mapping - Amorphium also solves another common  problem with 3D models: perfection. Many 3D models are geometrically too  perfect when created, while their real-world counterparts display small  flaws or wear and tear.

Amorphium lets you import objects from Electric Image, 3D  Studio MAX, Alias/Wavefront, LightWave 3D and AutoCAD. Then add imperfections  like scratches, wrinkles, creases, scorch marks, dings, and dents, to  give your models a degree of realism you never thought possible Fully  Interactive

Environment - All operations occur on shaded, 3D solid  objects in real-time. Tools simulate real-world 3D sculpting, painting,  and other tools. OpenGL, Direct 3D, and an included highly-optimized 3D  software render engine are supported

Tools - Brush, Smudge, Spheric Brush, Normal Brush,  and Smooth tools can have any of twenty-six 3D shapes, as well as adjustable  flux, radius, pressure, symmetry, tilt and depth. Tools are used for distortions,  3D painting, and masking operations. Axes-lock is available at any time

Distortions - Interactive 3D distortions include rotate,  bank, scale, stretch, center, variable undo, noise, smooth, waves, tsunami,  equalize, contrast, bottle, bulge, button, belly, flatten, spikes, shear,  bend, radial shear, taper, twist and twirl

Tasks - Allows batch processing of any series of actions  which can be recorded, modified, selectively played back, and saved to  disk

Mask Operations - A mask can be defined by 3D painting,  oval, rectangular regions, and can be displayed, smoothed, and inverted.  Masked areas can be protected from further modifications. Masked areas  can be selectively displaced Displacement

Mapping - Imported textures can be mapped using planar,  cylindrical, or spherical displacement mapping. Adjustable brightness,  contrast, and color / alpha channel definition

BioSpheres - Energy balls can be used to define geometry.  Spheres have adjustable oblateness, radius, positive or negative energy  influence, smoothing and threshold

3D Painting and Optics - True 3D paint capabilities  including flood fill, eyedropper and traditional paint brush inks. Custom  color swatches can be saved to disk. User control of diffuse, specular,  and ambient lighting conditions

Geometric Primitives - Parameter-driven shape primitives  include Sphere, Tetrahedron, Cylinder, Cone, Doughnut, Cube, Cylinder  with caps, and other standard shapes

3D Text Generation - 3D Models can be automatically  created using any installed TrueType font. Typed text can be bold, italic,  flat, extruded, and contain filled letter shapes

Composer - Arrange and animate models with a built-in  high-quality anti-aliased 3D rendering engine. Supports keyframed interpolation,  background texture, fog, smoke, shadows, and adjustable resolutions up  to 4096 by 4096 Model

Import and Export - Supports industry-standard file  formats, including FACT, DXF, 3DS, LWO, and OBJ Texture

Import and Export - Standard bitmap texture formats  can be used as backgrounds, displacement maps, and color maps. BMP, JPEG,  PNG, GIF, TIFF, PICT and QuickTime movie file formats are supported

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