wondertouch, a leading software developer of high performance particle effects creation tools, today announced that new versions for its particleIllusion™ 3.0 and particleIllusion SE line of product offerings on the Mac® OS® X are now available. The updates to particleIllusion 3.0, wondertouch’s industry standard, full-featured standalone particle effects application, and particleIllusion SE, the company’s introductory version, gives digital content creators working on Apple’s advanced operating system more ways to quickly and easily create complex effects: explosions, smoke, fire, sparkles, motion graphics backgrounds, space effects, creatures, and abstract artistic effects. The new changes and enhancements are available to current wondertouch customers free-of-charge.

According to Alan Lorence, president of wondertouch, today’s updated versions provide particleIllusion users on the Mac platform access to the same feature enhancements already updated in particleIllusion products on the Windows platform; made available last December.

“wondertouch continues to provide cross-platform tools that are reliable and flexible and allow our customers to stay ahead of the competition,” said Lorence. “The fact that this update provides significant enhancements to such a mature version of particleIllusion — free-of-charge — illustrates the level of support and commitment that our customers have come to rely upon.”

Vincent MacTiernan, principal and visual effects artist at Extreme Digital Productions, a New York City-based specialist in high end 2D/3D graphics and effects for television and film projects, has been using particleIllusion for the past three years on various high level projects, including HBO/Lovett Productions, Too Hot Not Too Handle: A Global Warming Primer and The History Channel special: Last Stand of the 300. As a particleIllusion 3.0 beta tester on Mac OS X, he’s used the software to create show opens, animations and motion graphics backgrounds for the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360 as well as for the RAW Politics segments (including animations) for Tom Foreman's This Week In Politics.

“Working on a fast paced news program requires graphics and animations to be turned around very quickly and the updated features in particleIllusion are convenient and boost workflow tremendously. The new particleView search engine feature makes finding the thousands of emitters in the particleIllusion library much easier—no more wasting time looking for new emitters—and with the AutoUpdate feature I can now look up and even update/download the emitter types I need for a specific project on-the-fly. Since the emitters install in the same place, you never lose track of where they are located. The real-time render is also extremely fast and considering the complexity of some of the emitters it’s always amazing to watch.”

Highlights of particleIllusion 3.0.7 and particleIllusion SE 2.0.2 for Mac OS X
particleIllusion is widely regarded as one of the most artist-friendly tools for creating complex particle animations. New features and enhancements include:

• Integrated Rendering (particleIllusion 3.0 only; not available in SE) – tighter integration with pIllusionRender, wondertouch’s standalone renderer, allows for automatic rendering of HD and other large-format output, saving time and enhancing workflow. (Previously, large-format output had to be saved in particleIllusion then loaded manually in pIllusionRender.)
• Mac OS X Leopard compatibility – full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, as well as continued compatibility with OS X 10.3 and 10.4.
• Emitter Library AutoUpdate - provides an easy way to check for, download, and install the particleIllusion emitter libraries that are provided free-of-charge by wondertouch each month.
• particleView Search Engine – particleView, wondertouch’s emitter viewer application, features a new search engine to help users find particle emitters within the vast particleIllusion library collection which currently numbers over 2500 emitters for particleIllusion 3.0 and over 2000 emitters for particleIllusion SE. (particleView is installed with both particleIllusion 3.0 and SE, and is also available as a free download from the wondertouch website.)
• Quick Load Library – this new function, added to particleIllusion SE 2.0.2 and enhanced in particleIllusion 3.0.7, makes switching between particleIllusion emitter libraries faster and easier.
• Bug fixes – a long list of issues have been addressed in the latest versions of particleIllusion, providing customers greater stability and enhanced confidence in adding particleIllusion into the production pipeline.

Pricing and Availability
Registered owners of particleIllusion 3.0 and particleIllusion SE can download updates free-of-charge from the wondertouch website, www.wondertouch.com or by contacting info@wondertouch.com