Press Release#19

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Press Release - for Immediate Release    Title: Dan Ritchie announces PD Pro Digital Painter 3.5  *** FX artist invites you to paint with force fields. Santa Clarita, California, October 6, 2005 - Dan Ritchie, author of PD Pro Digital Painter and Project Dogwaffle Paint and Animation software, announced today the availability of his newest release - PD Pro version 3.5 "I'm very pleased with this release", said Ritchie, "we've worked hard for several months to add new features and improve existing ones. We've been pushing the idea of realtime filters and tools for quite a while now, because realtime is simply more intuitive. Realtime lets artist do their work not only faster, but also better. Plus, we've been able to add some fun through a Mod/Med music player (ModDog) and other gadgets courtesy of our new scripting capability." Version 3.5 of PD Pro Digital Painter includes many enhancements and new features, many of which were developed over the last 3-4 months:  * Significant speed enhancements through MMX support for real-time effects  * Bug fixes (yes, there were just a few)  * more helpful tooltips for and even shorter learning curve  * Improved animation capabilities such as retiming  * Working with separate color channels  * preparing for compositing by premultiplying with Alpha  * improved brush transparency control  * Many more new filters & existing filters with new options.  * Internal support for the 3rd party Lua scripting language  * For developers, a programmable and scriptable GUI  (Gui Server)  * Particle brushes that change size over time, great for thick shrubbery  * drawing particles with alpha for 3D compositing and game sprites  * Force fields, based on images, which affect the particles. "We've also made logical choices to improve our tools", added Ritchie. "For example, giving a preview window to the Raw file loader makes it so much simpler to get the correct results without a hassle. We've also listened to our users, such as game art developers. There's a new style to let particles render into the Alpha channel, which is perfect for creating lush foliage textures." Would you like to know more?  http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatsnew/3_5 **** Optipustics: Painting with Force fields Painting with particle brushes under the influence of force fields opens up a whole new universe of possibilities. Particles (Optipustics) have been part of Dogwaffle for years. Now, in addition to Gravity, mouse speed and other parameters, they can be subject to force fields which are generated from an image's contours and value- or color gradients. This can result in new types of art from psychedelic to surreally abstract, not to mention cool and realistic. Adds natural flow to particles in motion. Looks great animated too. There are also new color options such as tinting the particle's color gradient against the primary brush color, or affecting it with a Fog color. There are also new styles that include a mode whereby a particle starts with a user-defined size and gradually shrink to disappear into oblivion at the end of the particle's lifespan. Would you like to know more?  http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/whatsnew/3_5/forcefield.html **** DogLua - Lua scripting for Dogwaffle Another relationship that has formed over the last few months has been with Italian software developer Marco Pontello who has created DogLua - a plugin which adds a great scriptable interface for Lua scripting to Dogwaffle. His fast implementation, based on a Jit (just in time) compiler, adds great new capabilities to the already feature-rich paint and animation system. New special FX filters have already emerged, scripted in Lua. PD Pro 3.5 now has built-in support for Lua with a tab in the Plugins window to execute scripts, and a browser to aid in developement. These features are also made available to users of the freeware version of Dogwaffle. Would you like to know more?  http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/lua **** Pricing & Availability PD Pro 3.5 replaces the prior 3.2 release and sells for only $97, making it a very affordable companion for any visual artist on the PC. It is now available on the BMT store and will soon be at Renderosity, Regnow and others. Would you like to know more?   http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/sales Current users of version 3.x will be able to update to 3.5 for free. In the near future an updater will be made available for current users of version 3.x.     **** About Dan Ritchie and PD Pro Digital Painter Dan Ritchie lives in Southern California and is the author of a novel, "Silver Squirrel". He is also a 3D animator and special FX artist. PD Pro and Project Dogwaffle are the results of 8 years of software development and code optimizations. It has grown into a very fast tool for painting on stills and animations, for post-production and much more. Would you like to know more?  http://www.squirreldome.com *** About TheBest3D.com Based in San Diego, California, TheBest3D.com is partnered with Dan Ritchie to market Project Dogwaffle and PD Pro Digital Painter. It is the website host for many resources including patches, galleries, brushes, scripts and reviews. *** Press Contact Philip Staiger email: dogwaffle (at) thebest3d (dot) com  web:   http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/presszone phone:  +1-858-208-7377 © Copyright Dan Ritchie 1997-2005. Project Dogwaffle, PD Pro Digital Painter and Silver Squirrel are trademarks of Dan Ritchie.  All other trademarks  are the property of their respective owners and only used for identification purposes.