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[ CGSociety CGNews | 17 November 2005 ] Avid Technology announces the availability of Avid Alienbrain Studio 7.5, a major new version to its digital asset management software. Designed to meet the needs of art teams working on file-intensive game development and industrial design projects, Alienbrain Studio 7.5 comes in two new configurations with new pricing: Alienbrain Essentials, at US$495, and Alienbrain Advanced priced at US$1495.
Alienbrain Studio 7.5 also boosts team productivity with new features to improve system reliability and increase software interoperability. These include: the Server Health Monitor, a live database monitoring and diagnostic tool; full compliance with Microsoft .NET framework with native Alienbrain functionality, and updates to the plug-ins for the leading 3D modeling and animation packages. In addition, a free Alienbrain Reader is now available that allows casual users to access specific asset revisions and perform non-modifying operations.

Alienbrain Essentials offers two optimized editions for mid-size productions. Essentials for Artists for US$695, features a highly visual user interface with fast previews and thumbnails and unrivalled third-party integration support into the latest releases of leading 2D and 3D design packages. At US$495, Essentials for

Alienbrain Advanced, targeted at mixed or complex productions and priced at US$1,495, offers full project control with extensive reporting and communication tools designed for team leads and project managers. In addition to the feature set of Essentials, the Advanced package includes powerful reporting and workflow capabilities, cross-platform support for Mac OS X and Linux users, and additional plug-ins for high-end design and animation applications like Alias StudioTools.

Other feature highlights of Alienbrain Studio 7.5 include the Server Health Monitor, a modular server-side watchdog process for operational conditions of the Alienbrain server processes that tracks available disk space, memory consumption, transactions and database journal operations. System status is reported to the administrator’s desktop and uses visual alerts to reduce the risks of unscheduled downtime and improve overall system availability.

Enhanced 3D integration. Alienbrain Studio 7.5 allows 3D tool developers to easily integrate asset management procedures into custom pipeline tools through native 3D scripting languages such as MEL and maxscript. In addition, Alienbrain Studio 7.5 supports the latest releases of major 3D applications, including SOFTMAGE|XSI 5.0, Alias Maya 7 and Autodesk Media and Entertainment 3ds Max software.

Related links:
AVID
Alienbrain
Alienbrain Studio 7.5

M-Files 是一款很有意思的文档管理系统。她通过整合于Windows系统的界面，按虚拟磁盘的方式提供对文档存放、分配、权限等管理操作。对于那些中小型公司来说，选择M-Files将不再需要为其他系统支付高昂的费用。不管是简单的 Office 文件还是复杂的 CAD 图形，M-Files都能让这些文档在您掌握之中。

Familiar Interface
M-Files integrates into the operating system of your PC. The M-Files user interface
resembles the Windows file system, which is familiar to most users. That is why M-Files is intuitive and easy to use. You may list or modify documents by means of Windows Explorer (My Computer).
Opening a document in M-Files is as easy as opening a Word document saved on a conventional hard disk. Saving documents is even easier. You do not have to look for an appropriate location of a file or a document. In fact, M-Files is much easier to use compared to accessing documents on the hard disk of your own PC.

Dynamic Viewing Hierarchies
You can locate documents easily and quickly through several different viewing hierarchies. You do not have to know which folder the document is in. Instead, you can choose a view according to your needs for browsing. You may want to view documents organized according to project or document type, and in the next moment browse them according to customer and project. You may choose viewing hierarchy easily and quickly in a way that was not possible before.

Search Options
Due to the versatile search options of M-Files you will have no problems in locating documents from a large vault in seconds. The quick search option enables you to locate documents very quickly. All you have to do is to type in a word and you will instantly see all related documents.
It is also possible to use more versatile search criteria. You may locate documents according to document owner, document properties etc. by using Search in M-Files option.

Saving Documents Directly from Applications
With M-Files you can save new documents directly from any application. You only need to fill in a document card that contains detailed information about a document, for example the document title, class, purpose of use, project etc. You may decide which document fields must be filled in and which ones can be left open. M-Files saves time and trouble by filling in parts of the document card automatically.

Editing Documents
When a user wants to edit a document, she/he will check it out of the vault. While one user edits a document, others may view the same document as a read only version. This eliminates problems caused by simultaneous editing. All documents that are checked out are marked with a sign. This makes it quick and easy to see whether a certain document is currently being edited by someone.
Once a user has finished editing a document, she/he checks it in the vault, and the next user may start editing it. M-Files automatically makes a new version of each edited document.

Version History
M-Files protects documents from accidental changes. Each time you want to edit a document you check it out of the vault for your own use. Other users may open the document as a read only version while you are editing it. Others may start editing the document after you have checked it in to the vault.
Each time a document is checked out, M-Files automatically saves a new version of it. Because of this, all previous versions of the document are always available and users can see what changes have been made. Each version can also be tagged to help recognize different versions, e.g. differentiate the sketches from the approved versions.

Distributing Documents
With M-Files all documents are available to the members of a team or an organization regardless of their location. Remote users can use the integrated Windows client of M-Files, or you can use M-Files Web Access to make documents available to anybody who has a web browser (including Linux and Mac users).
The users may be divided into different teams by assigning different user rights. This enables them to access defined areas or documents of the vault. You can even collaborate on documents with your customers by defining their staff as external users in your document vault. External users can access only those documents that you have specifically made visible to these users.
M-Files takes an entirely new approach to working over remote connections. It has been designed to work quickly even over slow connections without limiting browsing or editing. You will not see any difference in the user interface when working at different locations. You will see all documents as if they were saved on the hard disk of your PC. Accessing documents from home is just as quick and easy as at your office PC and accessing documents over M-Files is far easier than over a network share.

User Rights
M-Files brings flexibility to the user rights management. You may use both Windows user accounts or M-Files user accounts. Using M-Files user accounts eliminates the need for additional software (such as VPN) in working over remote connections. In addition, you may assign user rights on a document-by-document basis. Every user does not need to edit all documents. For some users viewing documents as read only versions is sufficient, and some users do not need to have any access to the documents or even see that they exist. M-Files means ease of use and an easy way of defining the user roles and the rights related to them.

M-Files API
M-Files is easy to install and take into use without any customization. However, with M-Files API (Application Programming Interface) you can further extend the functionality of M-Files according to your own needs. For example, you can generate different kinds of reports using M-Files API. You can use M-Files API with all common programming languages, including Visual Basic, VBScript and .NET languages.

Getting Started
Unlike most document management systems, M-Files is extremely easy to install and take into use.
It takes only one user to take the software into use. Later on it can be extended to a larger system that covers the entire organization. You will not have to introduce an entirely new company-wide system at once. Instead, a few users may start using M-Files. Others will join them once they see the benefits it brings in practice. Making the purchase decision is quick and risk free because you may test the software in advance and start using it with a limited number of users.