Autodesk Reports Record Revenues

Autodesk, the developers of leading industry CAD and 3D applications like Autodesk Maya, Autodesk MotionBuilder and related products for Mac-based 3D and video professionals announced yesterday record revenues for the most recent quarter. The company had revenues of $450 million for the quarter ending July 31, 2006. These results compare to $375 million for the year-ago quarter, a 21 percent increase. Autodesk's cash and cash equivalents now total $468 million.

Architosh Commentary: With demand and profits high, the company can well afford R&D in more cross-platform technologies, positioning itself for possible expansion in Linux support in the CAD and 3D world, while expanding its Mac OS X product offerings. It should be noted that the Linux requests in highend 3D and visual effects and compositing software is coming primarily from large film and independent VFX studios. This demand will likely continue reflecting interest in Linux in a broad range of industries and in foreign markets. Similarly, "virtualization" technologies on the Apple hardware platform will continue to drive interest in consolidating multiple operating systems and applications around Apple's very robust Mac Pro Quad Xeon workstations.

Nemetschek News

In-Brief: Nemetschek North America is touting the design work of one its customers, New York City-based interior design firm, Daniele Perna Designs, for creating a striking environment of contrasts that defies the laws of physics for The Shoe Lounge, in Philadelphia's City Center. Read here for more.

IMSI Design News

In-Brief: IMSI's TurboCAD team is promoting their relatively new TurboCAD 3D Mac with a "Make the leap to 3D" offer. Good for existing TurboCAD 2D Mac customers, users can upgrade to the 3D version of the program and save $400USD. Even if you don't use the 2D product and want to possibly consider the feature-filled 3D version, you could purchase both at $99USD each and save $300 on the regular price of TurboCAD 3D. Architosh reviewed TurboCAD 2D Mac recently here.

This offer expires August 31, 2006. Don't wait!

Luxology Wins Apple Award

Coming out of Apple's WWDC event -- the one that just happened -- Architosh would like to remind folks who may not have heard, that Luxology won a prestigious Apple Design Award at WWDC 2006.

Luxology's innovative 3D modeling, rendering and painting software was voted Best OS X Graphics Application at the 11th Annual Apple Design Awards.

"With so many outstanding entries this year, we are particularly gratified that modo was recognized for excellence in OS X graphics," said Brad Peebler, president and co-founder of Luxology, in a prepared statement. "We take a lot of pride in having developed a modern software architecture that delivers both performance and an artistic user experience."

modo 202 is one of the early Universalized Mac 3D applications on the market. It retails for $895.USD. For more information go to:

www.luxology.com

Other News

Earlier in the week we reported on our SIGGRAPH talks with NewTek about LightWave 3D version 9. The new version offers stunning rendering performance improvements, node-based editing (a la Pixar's RenderMan), support for real-world cameras and a lot more. Oh, and Universal support is mentioned in the report too.

Our final Architosh SIGGRAPH report (we think it may be our final, hmm?) mentioned new Mac 3D applications on the horizon. Read on.

Yesterday we reported on Amapi Pro 7.51, now in the hands of e-frontier, the Shade folks from Japan. They plan on integrating leading Amapi Pro technologies into their other products and advancing the software. We mentioned what happens to the French Amapi Pro development team in the report as well.

If you have not checked out all nine (9) pages of our SIGGRAPH 2006 show photos then start here.