( BW)(TX-CURIOUS-LABS) Curious Labs Announces 'Poser 5'; Next Release to Include Dynamic Hair, Cloth, Firefly Renderer, and Photo-Based Facial Modeling Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SIGGRAPH 2002 SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 23, 2002--Curious Labs, Inc. today announced `Poser(R) 5', the eagerly anticipated new version of their award-winning 3D-character animation tool for artists and animators. Poser 5 will deliver unprecedented features combined with an ease of use that will enable artists, hobbyists and creative professionals access to technologies never before offered in one package. Poser 5 is expected to be available in late summer 2002 with a suggested retail price of US $549. Upgrades from previous versions of Poser and Poser Pro Pack will be available through a tiered price structure. "Poser has always been an innovative tool for the creation of 3D-character content," said Steve Cooper, president of Curious Labs. "Poser's formula for success has been a simple one. Make difficult 3D-character tools easy to master, and price those tools so that any artist can afford to buy them. Poser 5 is no exception to that formula. Dynamic cloth and strand based hair, photo-based facial modeling, and our exotic new FireFly(TM) Renderer would be impossible to find in any one 3D package without the addition of plug-ins. But these are just some of the new features in Poser 5. And of course, because it's Poser, using these exciting new features will be easy and acquiring them will be affordable." Poser 5 key new features include: -- Firefly(TM)Renderer- hybrid Micro-polygon Subdivision Surface and Raytracer render engine that enables: -- Rendertime smoothing of facets -- Displacement mapping -- 3D motion blur -- Depth of field -- Procedural textures -- Luminosity, refraction and reflection -- Shader Tree with material nodes -- Dynamic Cloth with physics and parameter controlled clothattributes -- Dynamic Hair with growth, styling and physics controls -- Facial Photo-based Modeling with scanned 3D human head andtexture database -- FacePutty(TM) for interactive sculpting, and caricature and random head generators -- All new highly accurate 3D human figures with fully articulated hands and feet, featuring photo-realistic texture maps and facial morphs from RuntimeDNA -- MorphPutty(TM) Tool -- Collision Detection -- Content Paradise Portal for in-Poser 5 access to online contentresources Poser 5 will initially be available for Windows; details about a Macintosh version will be announced later this summer. More information on Poser 5 will be made available at: www.curiouslabs.com.