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CafeFX Relies on LightWave 3D^®
for Sin City Visual Effects

San Antonio, Texas – April 13, 2005

VFX House Supplies Nearly 600 Shots for Hit Movie

NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, today announced that CafeFX used LightWave 3D® for the 3D elements in nearly 600 shots produced for the blockbuster film Sin City, a stylistic groundbreaker directed by Robert Rodriguez that is now filling theaters coast to coast. Based on Frank Miller's acclaimed graphic novels, the film visually recreates the noir graphic style Miller used in his stories, requiring virtually every shot to include effects work. Jeff Goldman and Everett Burrell supervised two of CafeFX's teams for the work on Sin City; Goldman commented that of the nearly 600 shots, "Virtually all used LightWave®, but probably a good 550 were primarily LightWave due to the amount of 3D CG required for the shot."

"LightWave has a strong and growing presence in feature film visual effects," said Jay Roth, Vice President of 3D Product Management for NewTek. "And the talented artists at CafeFX are among the leaders using LightWave for groundbreaking photoreal effects. We're committed to making sure that LightWave keeps such artists at the leading edge for visual effects work with a tool that is powerful, flexible, fast, and lets the artist concentrate on being creative, rather than figuring out the technology."

Sin City tells three of the stories from Miller's graphic novels; CafeFX produced the visual effects for "The Big Fat Kill" segment of the film. The majority of the segment was shot with the actors on green screen sets, and CafeFX melded the live action plates with complete CG environments, everything from room interiors to brooding cityscapes, including the weather, since the story takes place in nearly constant rain. Some exterior shots are entirely LightWave, such as driving sequences where no live action plate was shot. A key requirement was to create a motion picture that was visually a match for the stark black-and-white style, with only splashes of color on key items that Miller had used for the comic; the digital artists at CafeFX took a very creative approach in recreating the style and feel, meeting Rodriguez's goal of remaining faithful to Miller's vision.

"LightWave has been our primary 3D tool for years at CafeFX, and we use LightWave for pretty much all types of work," said Goldman. "For Sin City it proved very quick at creating the type of layouts and environments that the virtual sets required. A small team of talented artists with good generalist skills can complete a lot of work using LightWave; for modeling, texturing, layout, lighting and rendering, it's a powerful and straightforward tool. We like to say that LightWave can do 90% of what you need to do very well, and for that we push it hard. Other tools may be better at the remaining 10%, but we keep coming back to LightWave for the majority of our layout work."

Pricing and Availability

LightWave 3D [8] is available now for Mac and Windows platforms for $2799 (inc GST) full-version and $899 (inc GST) upgrade.

Newtek in Australia and New Zealand

NewTek products proudly distributed in Australia and New Zealand by New Magic Australia.

About New Magic Australia Pty Ltd

About NewTek

With headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, NewTek is a leading provider of full-featured video editing, animation and special effects tools including TriCaster(TM), VT[4](TM) and LightWave 3D®, winner of the 2003 Primetime Emmy® Engineering Award. NewTek launched the desktop video revolution in 1990 with the release of the legendary Video Toaster®. The company's products are used worldwide on projects ranging from home video to feature film. Recent television and film projects using NewTek production tools include Sin City, The Aviator, Flight of the Phoenix, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Aliens of the Deep, "I, Robot", Spiderman 2, The Last Samurai, Battlestar: Galactica, Firefly, Smallville, Star Trek: Enterprise, Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight, Recent game titles include Doom III, Unreal Tournament, Serious Sam for XBox, Age of Mythology, Civilization III, Dead to Rights, Baldur's Gate II, EverQuest and Escape From Monkey Island.