The VALIS Group Announces FLO'WEB, METAFLO'WEB, and MOVIEFLO'WEB with Amazing New ANIMAFLEX Animation Engine; Includes Plug-In for Netscape and Other Popular Browsers Plus Adobe Photoshop Compatible Plug-In Capability

Business Wire, Jan 9, 1997

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 9, 1997--During MacWorld & Consumer Electronics Shows (CES), The VALIS Group today announced FLO'WEB $199, METAFLO'WEB $599, and MOVIEFLO'WEB $799 versions of their award-winning FLO' image distortion programs which are enhanced with a new proprietary engine for producing eye-popping, EXTREMELY COMPACT ANIMATIONS PLAYABLE ON THE WEB (email: valisgroup@aol.com ; URL: http://www.valisgroup.com ).

The new product line includes all the features of the previous versions of the FLO' product line, plus the ANIMAFLEX ANIMATION ENGINE with a NETSCAPE and WEB BROWSER COMPATIBLE Plug-in ANIMAFLEX PLAYER, and is scheduled to ship Jan. 14, 1997.

The entire FLO' product line is exclusively published by The VALIS Group. The VALIS Group will continue to ship and support the FLO' product line without the WEB features and both lines of product will continue to include the Photoshop compatible Plug-in. Regular and WEB versions of METAFLO' and MOVIEFLO' also import the Photoshop floating layered format and CMYK files. The VALIS Group has lowered their suggested list prices to the existing FLO' product line without the AnimaFlex WEB feature as follows: FLO' $149, METAFLO' $449, MOVIEFLO' $599.

Upgrades will continue to be available to existing and future FLO' product line customers. The new version numbers for the product line are:

-- FLO' Regular or with WEB 2.62

-- METAFLO' Regular or with WEB 2.03

-- MOVIEFLO' Regular or with WEB 2.04

AnimaFlex animations are extremely compact, fast and offer streamed playback for the Web using a plug-in compatible with popular WEB browsers. On a typical PPC Mac or a Pentium-based PC, a full-screen, 30 second animation of a warping and morphing face and the file size would be less than 40 kilobytes. Playback dimensions are scalable without affecting the file size, and animations can begin streamed playback after downloading the first few kilobytes. In addition, animations can automatically scale to achieve smooth playback on slower computers.

The Web enhanced versions, FLO'WEB, METAFLO'WEB, and MOVIEFLO'WEB are available for the Mac/Power Macintosh platform from The VALIS Group. AnimaFlex animations created with the more advanced METAFLO' or MOVIEFLO' can include semi-transparent layers, morphing, masked text, or other elements warping and flying around. They also support QuickTime, sequential file output, and high-quality rendering modes. By linking any of the FLO'WEB product line to other programs using the Photoshop Plug-in, users can easily and quickly paint, edit, reshape and directly create animations from one or many images, layers and/or movies for playback on Netscape and the WEB.

All the METAFLO' 2.x and MOVIEFLO' 2.x multi-layered distortion software packages are loaded with other resolution-independent advanced features for high-end production and support for industry compatible formats, in addition to the new Animaflex format for WEB output, including:

Features

-- OUTLINE MASKS: METAFLO' and MOVIEFLO' provide fully editable and resolution independent masks based on their ROC mathematical region technology. These masks are rendered on the fly, they can have variable opacity levels (different parts of the mask with different opacity), as well as control over edge transparency and thickness.

-- RESHAPE TOOL: The new Reshape tool for outlining any part of an image and pouring that shape into a new shape for still image design, morphing and special effects.

-- LAYERS PALLETTE: METAFLO' and MOVIEFLO' have layer management which allows easy positioning of layers as well as control over visibility and opacity.

-- UNLIMITED UNDO/REDO: every operation is saved and editable.

-- UNLIMITED number of keyframes.

-- ALPHA CHANNEL support and masking tools - 256 level alpha channel is automatically distorted with each image layer; support for import and manipulation of blue screen.

-- UNSHARP MASKS for compositing - Transparency level control on every layer plus multiple levels of transparency on each layer.

-- SUB-PIXEL sampling rendering engine.

-- DISTORTION/WARPING ENGINE based on fluid mechanics.

-- INSTANT ANIMATION PREVIEW MODE for testing animations prior to rendering.

-- PROFESSIONAL QUALITY: no edge or tearing artifacts; distortions are far superior to morphing programs.

AnimaFlex Player

The new release of FLO, METAFLO', and MOVIEFLO' includes both Mac (68k and PPC) and Windows (95/NT) versions of the AnimaFlex player plug-in. The AnimaFlex player supports streaming to start playing animations before the entire file has downloaded, and it uses sophisticated processor threading on Windows 95/NT.

Download VALIS AnimaFlex Player

The new AnimaFlex Plug-in for the FLO' WEB product line, will soon be available for download from The VALIS Group Web site (see "Press Releases") page (www.valisgroup.com) and may be freely distributed. Many example animations will be viewable. For a just released copy of the player for Mac and/or Windows, contact The VALIS Group by email at valisgroup@aol.com to receive the ANIMAFLEX PLAYER immediately or call 415/435-5404.