Maxon Software Featured in Spider-Man 3 Effects Pipeline Maxon BodyPaint 3D and Cinema 4D exclusive 3D texturing and digital matte environment software used.

Maxon's software played an important role in the making of Spider-Man™ 3 according to visual effects powerhouse Sony Pictures Imageworks, Inc. For this record-smashing blockbuster, Sony Pictures Imageworks utilized Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D as part of their production pipeline to bring the third installment of the Spider-Man franchise to the big screen. Maxon's BodyPaint 3D and Cinema 4D were among the 3D texturing and digital matte environment software used by Imageworks on Spider-Man 3.

While the talented texture artists at Sony Pictures Imageworks used Maxon's products to create detailed textures on objects as minute as a grain of sand and as extensive as multifaceted cityscapes. Concurrently, the equally talented artists in the matte department were busy using Cinema 4D to create realistic digital environments and repaint sky elements in numerous scenes as diverse as the storm in the bell-tower sequence to the richly colored sunrise sky featured at the culmination of the climactic battle sequence.

The texture work on Spider-Man 3 encompassed an array of characters (Black-suited Spider-Man, Peter Parker, Venom, Flint Marko/Sandman, Harry Osborn, and Mary Jane), vast environments (dozens of highly detailed New York skyscrapers, buildings, street and cityscapes, and an enormous subway cavern), costumes, vehicles, weapons, construction props, alien goo, even detailed individual grains of sand.

Maxon's software is designed to integrate into any pipeline, and facilitate a flexible work environment that accommodates an artist's workflow and creativity. So it easily plugged into the Sony Pictures Imageworks' production pipeline alongside its proprietary tools and other graphics applications.

"BodyPaint 3D integrates extremely well. This gave us the complete toolset we needed for all our texture mapping needs on Spider-Man 3," remarks Elbert Yen, Texture Paint Lead at Sony Pictures Imageworks. "I especially like BodyPaint 3D's feature of keeping discrete layers for each texture map and allowing the texture artist to paint on and map individual layers separately. By keeping the texture maps in multi-layered Photoshop files, BodyPaint 3D is more flexible and robust than other 3D texturing programs I've tried."

Maxon's products also lived up to their reputation for being stable and robust.

"Many of our largest skyscraper models, as well as the subway cavern on Spider-Man 3, utilized multi-layered texture maps as large as 8K square (8192 x 8192 pixels), really pushing the software to its limits," added Yen, "but BodyPaint 3D performed like a champ and we were able to paint and publish all the maps without a hitch." The world's moviegoers were caught in the web of Columbia Pictures' Spider-Man 3 at the global box office opening weekend as the film grossed $382 million worldwide, the highest opening ever in motion picture history.

Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. is an Academy Award®-winning, state-of-the-art visual effects and character animation company dedicated to the art and artistry of digital production and character creation. The company has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Oscars® for its work on Spider-Man™ 2 and the CG animated short film The ChubbChubbs!, as well as nominations for Superman Returns, Monster House, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Spider-Man™, Hollow Man, Stuart Little and Starship Troopers. Imageworks continues to raise the level in the visual effects and character animation industry, becoming a major force by providing leading edge technology to its world-class artists. Imageworks is a division of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, which oversees the digital production and online entertainment assets of Sony Pictures Entertainment.