Short, Back and Sides, CGI Style

Another marker on the road to total CGI photo-reality was announced today by SplutterFish LLC at this year’s Siggraph in San Diego, Calif., taking place this week.

The high-end 3D rendering software solutions provider (and maker of the award-winning Brazil Rendering System) says Joe Alter’s Shave and a Haircut for 3ds max is now available. “Both SplutterFish and Joe Alter are known throughout the 3D creative community for developing leading-edge technologies,” says SplutterFish CEO Scott Kirvan. “Shave and a Haircut for 3ds max is an achievement because it affords customers one of the industry’s most highly regarded CG hair solutions.”

Shave and a Haircut is a CG hair grooming, dynamics, and rendering system originally developed to create photorealistic hair for characters, animals, and people. Shave has been heralded as not only the most powerful hair creation package in the industry, but also the easiest to use. Along the way, Shave has acquired new features, which extend its capabilities to leaves, grass, and other highly complex organic systems. The software makes extensive use of OpenGL in its own interface, to afford interactive styling and animation of hair, a feature that is unique to Shave.

“It’s the perfect hair-styling interface that allows you to add hair to objects just for the fun of it,” says beta tester Andre Richard. “Additionally, the quick previews and real-time dynamics make styling very efficient and lets users know exactly, and instantly, how hair will react in an animation. SplutterFish’s meticulous engineering of the software makes it not only reliable, but a joy to work with.”

Shave and a Haircut for 3ds max fully integrates with Discreet’s 3ds max 3, 3ds max 4, 3ds max 5 animation software, and Autodesk VIZ, Autodesk’s visualization software. It will be available to both individual artists and production facilities in bundles. Each bundle will include one workstation and eight render nodes with floating license capability, at a cost of $485 (USD). Shave is available for

purchase online at the SplutterFish website and from its international reseller representatives. For sales information, contact SplutterFish at sales@splutterfish.com.