Are you tired of trying to decide which plug-ins you want to purchase? Then look at the Turbo Toolkit as an alternative. The Turbo Toolkit removes the need for decision making regarding which plug-ins to buy, and replaces it with an extremely cost-effective suite of comprehensive tools.

This powerful bundle provides you with instant access to eight Discreet Certified 3ds max Plug-ins including finalToon and finalRender Stage-1 for advanced rendering effects, AfterBurn 3.1 and DreamScape 2.1 for powerful special effects, HumanIK and Absolute Character Tools to help you create convincing character animation, and Kaldera and the soon-to-be-released Texture Layers 2.0 for advanced mapping. It's all here in this one bundle, and since all of the products carry the Discreet Certified 3ds max Plug-in branding, you can be assured of quality and interoperability among the tools.

Until Texture Layers 2.0 is released, Texture Layers 1.0 will be available as a bonus download for the Turbo Toolkit.

rtre™ real time rendering allows you to instantly explore or present any 3D model, however complex- from quick interactive studies to full multimedia presentations of major structures. You can better convey your design intent, with richer, superior quality images that are generated in the blink of an eye.

While rtre™ aids design development; communication and project presentations, it runs completely inside of 3ds max and Autodesk VIZ, updating scene information in real time (even on scenes with hundreds of thousands or millions of polygons) and providing sophisticated capture tools to output still images and video clips for viewing. Also provided is the rtre Publisher module that lets you create single file, interactive, distributable 3D scenes without the need for any separate client application.

Finally, rtre comes with a small standalone application called Texture Manager that gives you the ability to convert your bitmaps into Power of 2 files, perfect for real time usage.

Whether you`re an architect, interior designer, mechanical engineer, land planner, 3D production studio, game designer or other professional, rtre™ is an invaluable tool that lets you visualize your designs and communicate your vision to clients, colleagues and consultants. It`s a must have for anyone who is tired of waiting to see their creations.

You can also apply separate cloth properties to the various panels within your clothing for even more realism! And if you need to get up to speed quickly, and don't want to set cloth properties manually, clothfx comes with over a dozen preset cloth types (like cotton, silk, wool, etc.) to help eliminate the potentially tedious task of refining how your clothing behaves when applied.

Full collision detection (including cloth to cloth collisions) can be run, and provides instant feedback on how well your cloth is performing during a simulation. And for advanced users, you can also stage your simulations in sections to get just the look that's right for you. What this means is that you can run the cloth simulation once, then edit out parts you don't want, and re-run the simulation with similar (or wildly different) settings to get that perfect result without having to start from scratch each time.

finalRender Stage-1 contains many enhancements and new features including a sophisticated, true 3D motion blur that, unlike image based solutions, does not fall apart even under extreme situations. Objects can pass in front of other blurred objects without flaw. Raytraced shadows that touch blurred objects also appear as they should. Distributed, bucket-based rendering is available, meaning you can have several machines on your render farm calculate different portions of the same frame. Micro Triangle Displacement (MTD), blurry reflections, sub-surface scattering, caustics and other key features are all there to help you enhance the quality and realism of your scene.

Also finalRender"s new Global Illumination system offers Hyper-GI: a brand new illumination model based on individual "Light Particles" that are measured accurately in 3D space. This system is incredibly fast and can produce stunning results. finalRender Stage-1 also provides two additional Global Illumination engines so that you can choose the method that works best for your particular project. Rendering animations using Global Illumination is now a simple task that won"t produce flickering.

• Intel Pentium 4 Optimized with Hyper-Threading compliant code
• Intelligent "On Demand" loading/unloading of geometry for rendering acceleration
• Automatic Object Sub-Division based on the new AI-Scene Filter and analyzing tools
• Exceptionally fast raytraced shadows
• Physically correct Depth of Field raytracing
• True Caustic light rendering with extended energy control
• Accurate 3D UltraBlur Algorithm for fast Blurry Renderings
• Geometrically-based direct and indirect light sources
• Fast area shadows
• Robust set of advanced camera types (9 in total including Fisheye and Panorama)
• Real-time volume light rendering
• Wavelength-based Dispersion Rendering Model
• World Exclusive: fully licensed Zauner Shader technology
• Robust, ready-to-program finalRender Plug-In system

This robust solution gives you the ability to render many photorealistic effects ranging from clouds, pyroclastic smoke and dust, to superb explosions, liquid metals, water and various procedurally defined solid objects (HyperSolids). You also get loads of example files and presets to help you become productive quickly.

Every detail has been addressed within AfterBurn 3.0. Specialized "Daemons" give you the power to create wind that can move even the smallest wisp of smoke in any desired direction. Some of these Daemons will even allow you to drill holes through your volumetric clouds!

Another powerful feature is the ability to control and fine-tune the coloration, opacity and illumination of your AfterBurn effects based on factors like particle age, particle velocity, distance from the emitter and much more. You can even render out your volumetrics using G-Buffer channels and apply glows or other post processes to your AfterBurn effects selectively!

AfterBurn 3.0 also includes a special shader called the Octane Shader; an insanely fast renderer designed specifically to handle thin smoke and similar effects that do not require full 3D shading.

For existing users, look at what has been added:

AFCs: AfterBurn has always used Animation Flow Curves to vary parameters over particle age. Besides corner and smooth knot types, AFC"s now supports the Bezier key type, which allows more control over the curve shape. Bezier knots and handles can even be animated over the time!

Gradients: Along with linear interpolation, Gradients now support TCB interpolation as well. With this new addition, it is much easier to achieve non-linear color transitions between keys.

Interpolation Controllers: In AfterBurn 3.0, both AFCs and Gradients have many new ways of interpolation. User will be able to choose between particle age, particle velocity, distance from emitter, distance from any object and expression editor. By using these new controllers, it is possible to create astonishing animations that were practically impossible to create before.

Xplode Daemon: With new algorithms, calculations are up to several times faster! New color blending

High resolution geometry with complex mapping (including bumps, opacity and displacement) can also have its mapping rendered via Kaldera and projected onto lower resolution, game or production ready versions of the same asset, all while preserving the original"s look and feel.

This is all achieved through the use of Kaldera"s sophisticated processing engine that traverses an object"s UVW coordinates like a scanline renderer. When it finds a "hit", it captures that point on the surface and all attributes associated with that point (including normals direction and distance, color, opacity, etc.). Once it finishes scanning the object, it can build up to 10 different maps that can be applied to the object. Lighting, Alpha, Shadow, Atmospheric, Diffuse, Height and Custom maps can all be generated independently for your all of your assets. Just look at the features and controls Kaldera offers:

• The Source objects don"t need to have any mapping channels applied
• You can have as many Source Objects as you want
• You have a big arsenal of tools to resolve hits between the Source and Target objects. This includes:
• Use of two cage meshes to define the ray shooting start position and ray length
• Use of different Material IDs or face selections to include and exclude faces from the Source object in the render
• You can use 3ds max standard modifiers like Select Mesh and Delete Mesh to temporarily delete unwanted faces before processing Kaldera mapping
• You can mix different normals results using the alpha channel to blend the Normals Map without adding any extra geometry
• A Normals Map is included with Kaldera to let you render and preview normals map results

Central to ACT 1.6 are its cgMuscle and cgTube primitives. These are the fundamental building blocks for creating muscle rigs and skins for your characters. And building them couldn`t be easier. cgMuscles and cgTubes are fully parametric objects, so you can quickly drag them out in the 3ds max viewports like you would any other primitive type. Once built, you attach them to your existing skeleton and can immediately begin to test their motion. Since the ACT primitives have their dynamics built into their core, they will automatically begin to squash and stretch as your skeleton moves. And you have complete control over that motion with a number of powerful dynamics engines to tweak your results. Finally, once you have the cgMuscles moving and deforming the way you like, you can add the special ACT deformation to your character`s skin so that it reacts realistically to the musculature you`ve built beneath it.

And now with ACT 1.6 Pro, you now get another powerful addition: cgAdam and cgEve. These fully set up and ready-to-animate models come with complete set of bones, cgMuscles and sub-skin surface made from cgTubes. They are a great reference for you to be able to see how and where muscles are set up.

In contrast to other terrain creation tools for 3ds max, DreamScape`s Terra module uses new rendering technologies that occupies much less of your computer memory, making it possible to render exceptionally large, detailed terrains even on a modest host system. You can easily tweak terrain properties, interactively paint elevations and apply natural erosion effects using an intuitive and friendly user interface.

You can also build convincing skies in a matter of minutes that mimic the advanced illumination properties of the real sky and contain multiple layers of animatable clouds. From bright, sunny days to overcast, dreary afternoons, DreamScape 2 can deliver the look that you need. And beautifully animated sunsets and sunrises are handled automatically; just animate DreamScape`s Sun light and the sky will react accordingly.

Lastly, DreamScape`s SeaMaterial can help you generate realistic sea surfaces including reflections, refraction, bump mapping, procedurally generated foam and underwater scenery. This material is then applied to DreamScape's procedural Sea Surface object. The Sea Surface has built-in deformation based on oceanographic studies and is powered by advanced FOV-based mesh creation algorithms. This means that beyond superb motion, everything outside the camera's field of view will be eliminated so that expansive ocean scenes won't bring your system to it's knees when rendering. And with the addition of new naval dynamics, you can toss objects into your water and have them interact in a realistic and accurate fashion.

So if you need a powerful and robust tool for creating "real world" environments, then DreamScape 2 is the right choice.

Multiple styles of technical illustration and cel shading looks are supported and you can create your own impressive naturalistic effects such as woodcut-style cross-hatching or pen-and-ink drawings with our advanced controls, and save them to your own library for quick application whenever you need that particular look.

And since finalToon is implemented as a 3ds max™ Render Effect, you can enjoy all the great benefits of mixing and matching 2D and 3D elements in one render pass without having to sacrifice one renderer for another! Even more impressive is that finalToon fully supports finalRender® Stage-1 and all of its advanced options including Global Illumination rendering, which means your cartoon style objects will affect your GI solution! A truly incredible and powerful combination!

Another feature that makes finalToon so special is its ability to render reflections and refractions of all ink lines along with their relevant effects! This feature is currently unique to finalToon and is a huge benefit for 3ds max users.

Finally, it is worth noting that with a number of 3ds max users being heavily involved in web content design, finalToon offers a robust web-enabled output solution complete with Shockwave Flash and Adobe Illustrator support.

And since HumanIK was developed by the same team that brought you FiLMBOX™ and MotionBuilder™, you can be assured that it will fit directly into your existing animation pipeline giving you a dependable solution for both the import of motion capture data (including the popular .bvh, .htr, .asf and .fbx formats) and export of data (through the .fbx file format) above and beyond its excellent 3ds max workflow. This means that you"ll be able to seamlessly move your characters and animation into 3ds max no matter where they were created.

Speaking of 3ds max, for all existing character studio® users, HumanIK is an excellent companion tool for you too as it compliments and extends the strengths of Discreet"s own plug-in suite. Human IK is also full scriptable through the MAXScript language, meaning technical directors can tweak the user interface and controls to suit a particular project"s needs. As a character animator and production artist, you couldn"t ask for a more complete solution.

• Automatic character rigging complete with Positional and Rotational pinning
• BodyGenerator: a powerful max script for the quick creation of human bone structures
• Easily accessible, fully customizable user interface
• Seamless integration with the 3ds max environment
• Support for all bone and object structures native to 3ds max
• Compatibility with the 3ds max controller, for procedural animations and easy to use function curves
• Easy motion retargeting between HumanIK&trade-based characters
• Support for all major motion capture formats (.bvh, .htr, .asf, .fbx)
• Full access to MAXScript, so tools can be easily customized
• Full BodyGenerator™ source code, in MAXScript
• Works in parallel with character studio, complementing the Physique and Crowd components.