New director brings significant expertise in 3D and character animation
solutions and will oversee implementation of Havok's world-wide next
generation product strategies.
San Francisco, California - August 18, 2004
- Havok, developers of middleware physics tools and technologies for
the gaming and film industries, announced an expansion to its
management team in the United States, naming Jeff Yates as Director of
Product Management. Yates will drive the implementation of word-wide
product strategies and manage launches of Havok's new middleware
products and technologies.
"We're particularly pleased to have
Jeff join Havok. He is recognized as one of the very best executives in
the industry and brings a wealth of insight and experience to Havok
both at product and senior executive levels. We are extending our
product line with exciting new middleware components and asset
processing pipelines and are working with our customers to embed our
middleware solutions into their 3D content creation production
pipelines. Jeff's extensive experience building production tools and
designing efficient workflows for 3D artists and animators will help us
meet our customers' most critical needs through their transition to
next generation consoles."
David O'Meara, CEO, Havok
Yates brings to Havok over 15 years experience developing commercial software
solutions for creators of interactive and high-fidelity 3D content in
cutting edge games and blockbuster movies. Yates most recently served
as Engineering Director for Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc.
During his 7 years at Autodesk, Yates helped direct development of 3ds
max and Character Studio, one of the leading content creation solutions
for the games and movie special effects industries. He has also logged
over 8 years directing engineering, customer relationships, and product
strategies at Alias | Wavefront and Electronic Arts. Jeff's focus and
formal education are in software and mechanical engineering. He earned
his bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from Purdue
University before pursuing his career in the commercial software
industry.
"I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to join Havok's
talented team. Now is the right time for middleware and content
creation to move closer together. Havok has outstanding technology and
a solid reputation with game developers, as well as a compelling
strategy for future products - I'm looking forward to helping extend
that legacy as the art and engineering processes converge in the years
ahead."
Jeff Yates, Director of Product Management, Havok
About Havok
Havok is the developer of Havok 2, the fastest, most flexible and robust
cross platform gameplay dynamics and physics solution available. Havok
2 provides a dynamics workflow framework with exporters for 3ds max and
Maya, XML serialization, visual debugging and profiling tools and the
industry's most experienced game dynamics support team. Havok 2
delivers a complete and fully customizable solution with support for
collision detection, rigid body physics, character controller,
vehicles, ragdolls and bone dynamics. The Havok 2 dynamics engine is
easily integrated with all third party and in-house rendering engines
including RenderWare, Unreal, Gamebryo, and Source and is optimized for
PlayStation©2, XboxTM,
GameCubeTM
and the PC. Over 70 top game developers such as EA, Ion Storm,
Nihilistic, Pandemic, People Can Fly, Red Storm, Remedy, Sammy, Sega,
Shiny, Sony Cambridge, Turbine, VUG and Z-Axis have licensed Havok 2
for their titles.
Havok has offices in Dublin, Ireland and San Francisco. For more
information on Havok visit http://www.havok.com .
