NEW ORLEANS -- July 24, 2000 -- Curious Labs, Inc. has announced the availability of Poser 4.0.3 at Siggraph 2000 in New Orleans -- under the new Curious Labs brand and logo. The popular 3D animation and design tool is scheduled to begin shipping in Q3, 2000. Curious Labs, Inc. was co-founded in March 2000 by Poser's original core development and marketing team from Fractal Design and MetaCreations.

CEO Larry Weinberg, the creator of Poser, Steve Cooper, president, and Seath Ahrens, vice president of research and development founded Curious Labs, assembling the largest group of former MetaCreations employees to re-launch the Poser brand. Curious Labs plans to grow by hiring additional marketing, sales, service and support professionals, together with developers and engineers to ensure the continued development and extension of Poser.

"We are very excited to re-introduce Poser back to the market under the new company name, Curious Labs," said Weinberg. "Together with egi.sys AG, we are able to continue our vision of bringing affordable and compelling creative tools to high-end and first-time users alike. Curious Labs is committed to the continual innovation and growth of this successful and proven product line." Working together in partnership with its parent corporation, egi.sys AG in Tubingen, Germany, Curious Labs plans to begin shipping localized French, German and Japanese versions of Poser in the future.

In addition, Curious Labs has also announced the `Poser Pro Pack', a set of new plug-ins and application enhancements that expand Poser 4's set of features to provide Web developers, animation producers and advanced users greater functionality. The Poser Pro Pack's combination of updaters and add-ons are exclusive to Poser 4

The Poser Pro Pack comes separately from Poser 4. "The Poser Pro Pack will add features to Poser 4 that will tailor functionality to the individual user's needs," said Cooper. "The Pro Pack will allow professional users to integrate 3D characters into other 3D tools, easily create character content for the Web, and discover a whole new level of productivity in Poser 4,"

The Poser Pro Pack includes Poser 4 updates, interface improvements and features such as:

-- multiple view ports of a scene
-- easier custom character set-up
-- faster on-screen 3D performance
-- motion blur for final rendered animations
-- Python scripting environment controls

Using new plug-ins included in the Poser Pro Pack, Poser 4 will be able to share character animation, figure bending, scene and key frame data for integration within LightWave[6] and 3D Studio Max R3, two of the most widely recognized professional 3D applications. Web developers looking to include photo realistic 3D object and 3D character content will be able to export Metastream 3 files. For web-deployable 2D content, the Poser Pro Pack will export vector converted Flash animations from any Poser scene.

About Curious Labs, Inc.
Curious Labs, Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of egi.sys AG, designs, develops, and publishes software tools such as Poser, which focus on 3D human and character visualization for artists, designers, and web developers. The company is located in Santa Cruz, California. For more information, go to http://www.curiouslabs.com.

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About egi.sys AG
egi.sys AG, designs and develops tools, technologies, databases, and solutions that utilize 3D animated models and motion data, integrate within popular applications such as Microsoft Office, and can be delivered via the Internet. The company was founded by an independent research group from the University of Tubingen, Germany. For more information, go to http://www.egisys.de or http://www.egisys.com.