Products: Alienbrain

With pressure on budgets and schedules not letting up, interest in productivity software such as digital asset management (DAM) grows. The DAM market is getting hot, in fact. This past January Avid bought NXN Software. Its software, Alienbrain, ranks as one of the more complete DAM apps for film and video post, including animation.

At March's Game Developers Conference, NXN launched Version 7 of Alienbrain Studio, its off-the-shelf product. (Alienbrain VFX is a custom DAM system specifically designed for computer-animated feature films and complex visual effects productions.)

The new version helps coordinate production and creative teams, speeding work through process optimizations, enhanced usability, and innovative upgrades, including new change management functionality. Features include change sets that enable a structured approach to complex projects, an integrated Reference Manager that provides an instant overview of 3D scenes and their related files directly in Alienbrain Studio, and a new Windows Integration Framework (WIF) that is said to simplify the integration of third-party and proprietary tools into the Alienbrain workflow. www.nxn-software.com