(March 16, 1999) NewTek, manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video production products, announced today that its LightWave 3D animation software was used to produce Casterman's Amerzone, the first-prize winner in the game category at Imagina 99, the European version of SIGGRAPH.

"LightWave 3D was the only 3D package used in the production of Amerzone," said Gregory Duquesne, the technical director and leader of the Amerzone production team. "For this project, we needed a 3D animation package that would give us powerful modeling tools and the best rendering quality possible. We also needed a tool that could handle some very large and complex scenes in a highly detailed environment. LightWave 3D proved to be the best solution around: It is a very solid production tool, and the rendering quality clearly surpassed that of all its competitors."

Amerzone was based on the unique comic book characters created by Benoit Sokal, a famous European comic book artist who also headed the Amerzone project. Four years ago, Sokal started to use the computer as a design tool and began working on a computer game. His original idea was to create an immersive 3D environment, in the tradition of Myst, that would put the player into the universe of Amerzone, a world he developed previously in one of his comic books.

" Amerzone has some unusual computer graphics imagery featuring lots of natural scenes, such as rainforests and volcanoes," explained Duquesne. "LightWave 3D proved to be the ideal choice for making these computer graphics come to life."

In addition to its powerful modeling tools, rendering quality, proven production performance, multi-platform operation and economic value, LightWave 3D also offered the Amerzone team a robust plug-in architecture.

"The modeler in LightWave 3D was very powerful and enabled us to do all the modeling we had to do, from trees and landscapes to complex interiors, machines, animals and human characters," said Duquesne. "The plug-in architecture was also invaluable to create volumetric effects that were not available when we purchased the product three years ago, allowing us to create specialized shaders and to create a system that permitted the modeling and rendering of thousands of trees in a single scene."

The resulting Amerzone game was published by Casterman, one of Europe's top publishers. Casterman specializes in comic books, including Tintin, one of the world's best-selling titles with 150,000 copies sold. The production team included three computer graphics artists in addition to Duquesne and Sokal. The animation sequences were handled by Grid, a Belgian company that specializes in LightWave 3D.

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