Autodesk and mental images Enter into a Long Term Partnership in Advanced Rendering Technology
Industry Leaders to Jointly Develop Integrated Rendering Solutions;
Discreet to Offer mental ray Rendering Software Worldwide

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (April 15, 1999) - - Autodesk, Inc., today that it has entered into a long-term license and research and development agreement with mental images® GmbH & Co. to have its advanced rendering solutions available to all Autodesk products. In a first step, Discreet, a division of Autodesk, and mental images will jointly develop advanced rendering solutions for 3D Studio MAX® R3, the new release of the world's best-selling 3D modeling and animation software for Windows NT. As part of the joint development and license agreement between the two companies, mental ray®, mental images' photorealistic, programmable and interactive rendering software, will be available as a separate product through selected Discreet 3D Studio MAX resellers worldwide.

The new agreement builds on Autodesk's long-standing relationship with mental images to jointly develop geometry approximation and surface modeling technology, and further establishes Discreet as the source of the most advanced rendering and surface modeling solutions for digital content creation. As an initial technology demonstration, rendering with mental ray 2.0 directly from 3D Studio MAX R3 will be shown at the Discreet booth (#S4009) at NAB. "MAX R3's connection to mental ray is practically transparent," said Jon Bell, noted 3D Studio MAX animator and author currently testing the software. "The artist controls mental ray using familiar MAX controls, and the results are both phenomenal and amazingly fast".

"Today's announcement extends our long-term strategic partnership with mental images by broadening our joint development activities beyond surface approximation and modeling to include today's most advanced rendering technology," said Jim Guerard, vice president of marketing and product management at Discreet. "Our ability to now sell mental ray as an advanced rendering option for MAX R3 and to jointly develop future interactive rendering technologies with mental images continues Discreet on its mission of providing ultimate flexibility as well as the broadest and most powerful solutions to the industry in record time."

"We are excited about expanding our relationship with Autodesk," said Rolf Herken, president and director of research and development of Berlin-based mental images. "The Discreet product line provides an excellent framework for the integration of mental images' rendering and surface modeling technologies. This agreement is also exciting because mental ray's unique rendering capabilities will not only be available to the Discreet worldwide customer base but to anyone in need of rendering technology that allows for the creation of any imaginable visual effect."

mental ray generates images of outstanding quality and unsurpassed realism and achieves scalable performance through the exploitation of parallelism on both multiprocessor machines and across heterogeneous networks of machines. The software uses advanced and proprietary acceleration and recursive sampling techniques for fast rendering on even the smallest, single processor machines. The forthcoming mental ray 2.1 is the first rendering software, which combines the physically correct simulation of the behavior of light with full programmability for the creation of any imaginable visual phenomena.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing and availability will be announced in Q2 1999.

About mental images
mental images, founded in 1986, is a recognized leader in providing rendering technology to the entertainment, computer-aided design, scientific visualization, architecture and other industries that require sophisticated images. Users of mental ray include most of the leading special effects and digital film studios, game developer companies, and companies in automotive and aerospace industries. For more information, please visit mental images' web site at www.mentalimages.com.

About Discreet
Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., develops systems and software for visual effects, 3D animation, editing and production used in the creation of digital moving pictures for video, HDTV, the web, broadcast graphics, interactive games and feature films, including the last three years' winners of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Discreet products are used extensively in film and video post production, games, multimedia, broadcast graphics programming and on-air event coverage. Software by Discreet is also popular with designers and architects for 3D visualization and conceptualization. Discreet was recently recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a Scientific and Engineering Award for flame* and inferno*.

Headquartered in Montreal, Discreet was established in 1999 when Autodesk acquired Discreet Logic and merged its operations with Kinetix, the San Francisco-based multimedia business unit that Autodesk created in 1996. For more information please visit the Discreet Web sites at www.ktx.com and www.discreet.com.

About Autodesk
Autodesk is the world's leading supplier of PC design software and digital content creation. The fourth largest PC software company in the world, Autodesk has more than four million customers in over 150 countries. For more information, contact any Authorized Autodesk Reseller, call Autodesk at 800-964-6432, or visit www.autodesk.com. Discreet product information is available at 800 869-3504 or via the web at www.discreet.com. Autodesk shares are traded on the Nasdaq national market under the symbol ADSK.

Discreet is a division of Autodesk, Inc. Autodesk, and 3D Studio MAX Studio are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. in the United States and in certain other countries. mental ray and mental images are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin, Germany. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks are referred to solely for the purposes of identification and belong to their respective holders.