Boulder, CO – March 11, 2002 – Today Electric Rain, Inc.® announced the release of a special edition of their popular Swift 3D® plug-in line, which includes Swift 3D MAX and Swift 3D LW. This special edition offers an additional rendering format allowing users of Discreet® 3ds max and NewTek® LightWave 3D to export their scenes to a format that imports natively into USAnimation.

"Thanks to a fruitful partnership with Electric Rain, we are very pleased to be able to offer to our customers the ability to import 3D animations created with leading applications such as 3ds max and LightWave 3D into USAnimation. Offering comprehensive 3D-to-vector solutions, Electric Rain is a perfect match for USAnimation's vector technology, extending USAnimation to support 3D content. As a customer-driven company, Toon Boom is proud to be the only 2D animation software company to offer toonshader solutions for all of the major 3D applications," comments Joan Vogelesang, Chief Operating Officer at Toon Boom Technologies.

Swift 3D MAX and Swift 3D LW are both plug-ins that serve as rendering components for 3ds max and LightWave 3D respectively. Utilizing Electric Rain’s industry-leading RAViX™ II vector technology, both plug-ins render 3D scenes from their host application to a variety of vector-based file formats, including Macromedia® Flash™ (SWF), AI, EPS and SVG. The new special edition plug-ins will add an additional file format that can be read directly into USAnimation.

“Our RAViX rendering engine has set the standard for rendering 3D scenes to vectors, and we’re excited to broaden the horizons of our technology to incorporate even more export formats,” commented Mike Soucie, President of Electric Rain, Inc. “USAnimation is a best-of-breed 2D animation package, and Electric Rain is happy to supply Toon Boom Technologies with tighter integration between high-end 3D applications and their terrific animation platform.

Swift 3D MAX SE and Swift 3D LW SE are available immediately from the Electric Rain website at www.erain.com. The SRP for both plug-ins is $995.00 USD. Swift 3D MAX SE is compatible with 3ds max and Autodesk® VIZ 3.0 and above, while Swift 3D LW SE works with LightWave 3D 6.5 and above on both Windows® and Macintosh (including Mac OS X) platforms.

About Electric Rain, Inc.
Electric Rain, Inc. is a fast moving 3D and multimedia software company with a vision of bringing easy-to-use 3D and multimedia tools to the masses. Through the release of Swift 3D, the Swift 3D plug-ins for 3ds max, LightWave 3D and SOFTIMAGE|XSI, and the company's proprietary RAViX rendering technology, Electric Rain has quickly become the industry-leading developer and supplier of 3D-to-vector solutions. More information about Electric Rain, its products and technologies is available at www.erain.com or by calling 1-888-613-1500.

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For More Information Contact:
Ed Wunsch - Electric Rain, Inc.
P (303) 543-8233
F (303) 543-8225
E ewunsch@erain.com