Creature House Expression was an award-winning
vector graphics editor developed by
Creature House in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
, founded by Alex S.C. Hsu and Irene H. H. Lee. It was initially marketed through a developer/publisher agreement with
Ray Dream Inc. subsequently
Fractal Design Corporation
MetaCreations was a computer software company that was best known for its graphics applications, notably Ray Dream Studio/Infini D, Fractal Design Painter, Bryce, and Kai's Power Tools.
History
MetaCreations was founded in 1997 by the mer ...
and later
MetaCreations under the trade name Fractal Design Expression.
The software was positioned as a companion to then-
Fractal Design/MetaCreations Painter. Creature House regained full marketing rights from MetaCreations Corp. in late 2000 and published version 2 of the software under its own name as Creature House Expression.
The latest version of Creature House Expression published by Creature House Ltd is version 3.3.
In Sep 2003, Microsoft acquired the software product together with all related trademarks and titles and hired Dr. Alex S. C. Hsu as an architect. Eventually, Alex S. C. Hsu led a new Microsoft team to continue the development of the software under the code name Acrylic as part of a new Expression Suite Project initiated by Alex S. C. Hsu and others. In 2007, the original Expression application became part of
Microsoft's Expression Studio suite of applications, rebranded and rewritten in
WPF as
Microsoft Expression Design
Microsoft Expression Design was Microsoft's commercial professional illustration vector and raster graphic design tool for web images based on Creature House Expression, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2003. It is available free of charge from ...
.
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
XP and Vista versions are available, although
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
support was officially discontinued.
Skeletal stroke
Expression uses a unique technology called
skeletal stroke. There have been a few research papers on this technology, including the work of Alex S. C. Hsu and Irene H. H. Lee, who are the original developers of Expression.
LivingCels
Along with Expression, Create House also developed animation software called LivingCels, featuring the same technology, including skeletal strokes, as in Expression. LivingCels was released as a public preview,
but never made it to final release after Creature House was purchased by Microsoft.
See also
*
Microsoft Expression Design
Microsoft Expression Design was Microsoft's commercial professional illustration vector and raster graphic design tool for web images based on Creature House Expression, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2003. It is available free of charge from ...
, the new product based on Creature House Expression
*
List of vector graphics editors
A number of vector graphics editors exist for various platforms. Potential users of these editors will make a comparison of vector graphics editors based on factors such as the availability for the user's platform, the software license, the feat ...
*
Comparison of vector graphics editors
References
*
*
*
* {{cite web , url=http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft-offers-beta-of-Adobe-rival/2100-1012_3-5740444.html , title=Microsoft offers beta of Adobe rival , website=CNET , date=June 10, 2005 , access-date=February 28, 2012 , last =LeMay , first= Renai
External links
*Creature House page
Expression 3*P&A., Inc. page
Expression 3J
h2>
Download Creature House Expression from Microsoft
Archive.org archive of home pageMicrosoft Expression 3.3 Freeware Windows version
(57.3 MB), requires (No longer available) registration
Microsoft Expression 3.3 Freeware Windows version direct link to above file, does not require registration
Microsoft Expression 3.3 Freeware Mac OS 8/9/X version
(55.8 MB), requires registration; there are versions for Mac OS 8/ 9 and Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
in the archive
Update to Mac OS X version for Mac OS 10.3.5; fixes a startup problem
(2.9 MB), no registration required
November 1996: Fractal Design Ships Expression for Macintosh
Reviews
MacWorld
Freeware
Vector graphics editors
Microsoft Expression products