News Flash!

FOR RELEASE APRIL 6, 1998

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT Steve Herrmann Director, Marketing (210)370-8000 steve_herrmann@newtek.com

Hollie Wendt Communications Consultant (408)688-1193 hollie@earthlink.net

LAS VEGAS (NAB), April 6, 1998 - NewTek, manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video production products, announced today, Aura, a new software program designed as a professional tool for animation, video paint and video layering. Aura's fast, sophisticated painting and animation functions are aimed at professional video and animation artists working in production broadcast or multimedia environments. It dramatically enhances the creative capabilities of any non-linear editing system, character generation program or 3D animation system.

"Aura understands time, animation and video," said Harold Russell, director of product development of NewTek. "Aura's job is to add motion, color and effects to the user's digital creations, regardless of the source - to bring 'animation' to digital creations. Used together, Aura and LightWave 3D or Inspire 3D can be considered a complete production environment unmatched by tools costing hundreds of thousands of dollars."

It's no longer enough for artists, multimedia designers, web creators, cartoonists, animators and others to simply create great images. Now, those images have to adapt easily and quickly to all types of video, multimedia and animated presentations. Aura is a unique balance of paint tools, compositing, cel animation, 2D animation, special effects and character generation, and combines many of the best features of all of these in one very powerful paint system. Aura lets users add motion, color, 2D and 3D elements and special effects, create titles and composites using any digital image and is also ideal for roto-scoping, video painting and layering.

Aura's powerful tools include a full range of standard video and image processing tools, natural media brushes and fully animated brush and video brush operations - including tactile operation that mimics the feel of traditional artist tools. The software supports many different file formats, sequential images and all video frame rates and sizes, so it fits well into any production environment.

Aura works in unlimited numbers of layers that make it easy for users to position keys, 3D animations, video elements, painted layers and effects. Aura's layers are analogous to layers of transparent glass, where the user can paint on any layer without physically changing any other layer. Later, the layers can be merged into a single image or saved as separate layers for further modification.

Aura takes the concept of time into consideration. Any element (a single image, an imported animation, etc.) can be adjusted forward or backward in time, and users can adjust the length, or duration, of any element. This time-based concept is crucial in production video and animation environments, in which time constraints loom large. For example, a user can key a 25-frame animation over a 32-frame video element by stretching the animation to fit the duration of the video. Similarly, a television program's 3D spinning logo can be adjusted and integrated with text and video images to occupy a specific number of seconds of broadcast time.

Aura's time-driven paint operations are perfect for functions such as roto-scoping (painting on multiple layers over video), adding special effects, adding 3D elements and positioning video elements. Besides stretching operations to make elements "fit" particular time allotments, Aura's capabilities include the following:

a brush stroke recorder to give any video animation a "paint on video" look;
light table (also known as onion skin) operations and drawing tablet support to create an ideal "pencil test" system for traditional animators;
support for other software products' layers for easy animation or video output of artwork created in Photoshop, Painter or other popular programs;
support for 3D packages including LightWave 3D, Inspire 3D, 3D Studio Max and Softimage 3D;
more than 1,500 different drawing combinations; choice of pen, pencil, colored pencil, chalk, crayon, airbrush, watercolor, gouache or oil painting;
unlimited layers for still images, animation or video complex composite and layered animation or layered video with image processing;
approximately 2,400 image processing and drawing combinations and effects, including color, merge, impress, shade, lighten, smear, shift, smooth, blur, grain, tint, colorize, perspectives, axis transformations, bump mapping, extrusions, convolutions and mosaic;
support for TrueType fonts and a wide range of available text parameters;
four user-defined color palettes (or color wells), with unlimited (16.7 million) colors and color ranges;
color, chroma, luminance and Alpha channel keying;
variable frame rates for video, film and multimedia;
compatibility with multiple file formats, computer platforms and software applications;
a simple and effective scripting and control language;
a robust plug-in architecture including built in Aura plug-ins (color, motion, speed, keying, texturing, keyframe, calculation, etc.), a third-party software development kit for plug-ins and support for global plug-in compatibility (including support for the Photoshop plug-in architecture);
and thoughtfully designed ergonomics to simplify operations and make them more comfortable and personalized for each user.

NewTek plans to offer additional modules to increase Aura's core feature set and functionality. Theses models will include: 3D tools, film tools, high-definition tools, web tools and cartoon tools.

Price and Availability Aura will be available May 1, 1998 for $695.00
Users can purchase Aura from authorized dealers and Catalogs. Aura runs on Intel and DEC Alpha.

About NewTek With headquarters in San Antonio, NewTek is the leader in providing full-featured video editing and special-effects tools that allow anyone to produce professional video and graphics. The company's products are used worldwide on projects from home video to feature film, including some of the most widely anticipated recent blockbusters, such as Men In Black, Titanic, HBO's From the Earth to the Moon, Lost in Space and The Jackal. Contact NewTek at 8200 IH-10 West, Suite 900, San Antonio, TX 78230. Phone (210)370-8000. FAX (210)370-8001. http://www.newtek.com.

FOR PRESS REVIEW COPIES PLEASE CONTACT DAWN ESTES AT (785)986-6265, EMAIL dawnestes@sprintmail.com.

LightWave 3D, Video Toaster and Video Toaster Flyer, Inspire 3D, Calibar and Aura are trademarks of NewTek. All other brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.