Leading Television Content Producers Leverage wondertouch Particle Effects Solutions to Create Hit Episodic Programming, Commercials and Promos

Las Vegas (April 18, 2005) - At the NAB 2005 convention, wondertouch™, a leading developer of high performance visual effects software tools, today announced that its line of particle effects solutions have been deployed by leading production and post production companies and boutiques to create stellar entertainment on this season's episodic television programming, television commercials and broadcast promos. The long-running hit television series' "JAG," "Navy/NCIS," and "Star Trek: Enterprise"; the celebrated daytime drama "Passions"; leading entertainment news show "Access Hollywood"; children's favorites "Flipper and Lopaka III - The Search for Neptune's Trident" and "Tabaluga III"; the new PBS children's series, "The Biscuit Brothers"; various sports programs including "NBA on TNT" and Big Playstation Saturday on TBS (College Football); promotions on the Cartoon Network, TBS and TNT; and national commercial spots for Nokia, are among the titles entertaining audiences worldwide.

Alan Lorence, president of wondertouch, states that television is a key market segment for wondertouch. "Our television clients work in highly competitive production environments and demand high performance solutions that not only deliver high-quality output but are flexible, fast and easy enough to enable them to get that output in a timely and cost-effective manner. We remain committed to meeting these needs with a line of products that can be deployed from conceptualization to final effect output and allow artists a wide spectrum of creative options."

Robi Roncarelli, industry forecaster and publisher of the Roncarelli Report on the Computer Animation Industry - 2004, asserts that computer animation industry growth continues, but the parameters are changing.

"Tools to lower production times and costs are being sought by all as production budgets tighten and competition increases. Performance animation, motion capture, lip-sync, facial animation, 3D scanners, image modelers, specific task plug-ins, environmental effects, greenscreen - content producers are searching for flexible, easy-to-use software that work in a range of environments, such as the particle effects solutions from wondertouch."

Stuart Roholt, digital effects supervisor at NBC Studios in Los Angeles, is currently using particleIllusion™ to create visual effects on the hit soap opera, "Passions." "At any given moment I might be called on to create out-of-this-world effects as well as those that match, look and move in a realistic way. With particleIllusion I can do both. Its power, versatility and compatibility with leading compositing applications have made it a staple tool in our production arsenal."

wonderotuch's particle effects solutions are being used by Austin-based The Animation Farm to create animated interstitials between segments on the "The Biscuit Brothers," a new PBS live action and animated television series that introduces children ages 3-7 to musical concepts in an imaginative, high-energy, fun-filled way.

"Being able to browse particleIllusion's formidable preset library of effects allows us to quickly conceptualize the effect we're looking for. Sometimes we use a preset out-of-the-box, at other times we replace them with our own images but maintain the original motion tracking," said Greg Omelchuck, art director at The Animation Farm. "In a "Biscuit Brothers" scene called "Crazy Classics," we took a particleIllusion preset of a fountain spray and imported it to one of our 3D packages to create a series of musical notes. The net result looked like it took hours to create, when in reality we were able to achieve 3D quality results quickly and without effort."

Yoram Gross-EM.TV, internationally recognized as Australia's leading producer of quality children's and family entertainment, presently relies on particleIllusion 2.0 SE on Mac OS X to produce effects for 26, 24-min. episodes on the children's animated television series', "Flipper and Lopaka III - The Search for Neptune's Trident" and "Tabaluga III."

"As in any complex CG television production, 'Flipper and Lopaka III' challenges us to marry different source materials into one scene. Typically many of our special effects - twisters, blizzards, storms and secondary scene fillers such as blowing leaves, floating debris, plant life, mist and clouds - are created in post or are previously animated effects created in 2D that need 'polish'," said Douglas Njegovan, 3D SFX animator at Yoram Gross. "Deploying particleIllusion together with Adobe After Effects, we are able to quickly customize the existing particleIllusion libraries with our own artwork and seamlessly match the effects design to our characters and background painting style to give viewers the impression that all the effects were generated from the same source."

wondertouch's particleIllusion has been a staple at Eden FX for the past three years on numerous film, television and commercial projects. Presently the software is being used to create Emmy Award-winning visual effects to the syndicated TV series "Star Trek: Enterprise," as well as "JAG," and "Navy/NCIS," and a commercial for Nokia.

"We are always looking for ways to wring the next level of performance out of our toolkits. wondertouch's particleIllusion is one such solution that delivers," said Stephen Pugh, visual effects producer at Eden FX. "A large part of our work for science fiction television involves the creation of various nebulae, spatial distortions, and exotic weaponry. However, during production on a recent Nokia commercial we used it to quickly develop several different looks for a flashing, psychedelic disco dance floor. I had become used to seeing particleIllusion used for organic effects and volumetric renderings, but it was great to see it used successfully for something so completely different from my expectations."

For the past several years, Turner Studios has relied on particleIllusion to create promos for its myriad sports programs including "NBA on TNT" and the recently completed "Big Playstation Saturday" (College Football). The Turner Studios post production staff also uses the software to create promos for various Cartoon Network, TNT and TBS promotions. "Our client base is extremely varied since we support all of the Turner Entertainment Networks domestically and in and Latin America," says Ken Brady, director of technical operations, Turner Studios. "The particleIllusion software gives our editors an added toolset that none of our editing platforms provide, including Avid, Discreet, and Quantel. particleIllusion is very easy to use and allows us to quickly create innovative and high quality effects, preview our designs, and render out the final keyable images into our finished programming, with minimal operator input."

About particleIllusion

particleIllusion is a standalone particle effects application designed as an easy-to-use, low-cost, high performance tool to quickly and simply add particle effects to any image, animation, or video footage. particleIllusion features an ever-growing collection of hundreds of preset effects such as smoke, fire, explosions, water effects, sparkles, colorful artistic effects, and many others. particleIllusion features OpenGL hardware acceleration to provide real-time (or near real-time) previews of most effects and ultra-fast rendering of final output.

About wondertouch

wondertouch, headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., is an award-winning software developer specializing in particle effects for the visual effects industry. The company's flagship product, particleIllusion, a sprite-based particle effects application is focused towards the needs of creative professionals working in the film post-production and pre-visualization, standard and HD video, commercial broadcast, interactive game, and Web graphics industries.

wondertouch software products are available directly from wondertouch. Additional information on wondertouch can be obtained on the Web at www.wondertouch.com.