Promoting Open Standards for Visual Effects

Seven companies joined forces at NAB last month to launch The Open Effects Association. This non-profit, UK-based company aims to develop and promote open standards across the visual effects community. Founding members are Assimilate, Autodesk®, Digieffects, FilmLight, The Foundry, GenArts® and RE:Vision Effects. These companies have helped artists create ground-breaking VFX shots on just about everything that hits cinema screens.

The Association's initial focus is to improve the OFX image processing plug-in standard launched by The Foundry in 2004. The goal for the OpenFX API is to reduce the level of development and support required for plug-ins across different compositing and editing host platforms. The OpenFX API has, to date, been adopted by:

• Assimilate® SCRATCH®
  
• Autodesk® Toxik^TM software
  
• FilmLight's Baselight
  
• GenArts® Sapphire® plug-ins
  
• The Foundry's Nuke compositor and Tinder, Keylight and Furnace plug-ins
  
• RE:Vision Effects' ReelSmart^TM Motion Blur and DE:Noise plug-ins
  
• Digital Vision's FilmMaster
  
• Grass Valley's Bones
  
• Eyeon Fusion
  
• Avid DS
  
• Photron's Primatte Keyer

The Association hopes that as a new, independent organization, it will encourage increasingly open communication and collaboration between hosts and plug-in developers and establish a uniform specification to benefit everyone involved, starting with the artists.

Bruno Nicoletti, Chief Technical Officer at The Foundry and main creator of the original OpenFX API comments: "It was always The Foundry's aim to make life easier for everyone. I'm reinvigorated by the formation of this new independent body, delighted to have been appointed to the board and am looking forward to collaborating with the other members and encouraging uptake of OpenFX API as a standard."

Gary Oberbrunner, Chief Scientist, Vice President of Engineering at GenArts and newly appointed Director of the OFX Association adds, "GenArts Sapphire has a well-earned reputation for supporting a wide range of host platforms. We've been supportive of the OpenFX premise since its inception, and Sapphire runs on all major OpenFX hosts. We at GenArts are excited about the OFX Association, and we believe this new approach will enable the industry to advance our common goals more quickly."

If you are interested in learning more or joining the OFX Association, please contact Bruno Nicoletti, bruno@thefoundry.co.uk.

Labels: Autodesk, Avid, DigiEffects, Eyeon Fusion, GenArts, OFX, Re:Vision Effects, The Foundry, Toxik

Video Gogh turns your videos into moving paintings, using RE:Vision Effects optical flow technology to move brush strokes without stuttering artifacts. Video Gogh 3 opens up other possibilities in motion graphic design by introducing the option for users to define their own brushes, which may be animated. Version 3 adds a substantial amount of new visual effects opportunities that many have requested over the years.

Some of the features include:

• Three default brush styles included: Oily, Watercolor and Chalk.
• Custom Brush Set (up to 10): now included is support for animated and custom brush sets. Users can supply custom brush images and for each select different render styles (including render directly as sprite).
• A new "Non-Additive Blending" mode allows you to make properly semi-transparent layers.
• Video Gogh 3 provides an option to paint over the original sequence to avoid holes in result.
• The ability to clip to edges found in the original image is now an option allowing you to paint "tight" or "loose".
• Users can now control separately the growth and death of brush strokes when they become too distant apart or too clustered.
• A better technique has been introduced that performs much better when objects come into frame as a result of panning or other camera (or object) motion.
• In previous versions the initial distribution of brush strokes was not properly randomized, causing brush strokes to appear located on a grid upon initialization. This is been corrected in version 3.
• Users can now control the variability in brush stroke width (including choosing to have no randomness).
• Motion can be calculated using an alternate clip. This is useful if the original clip has low contrast or is difficult to track. This feature is also useful to facilitate layering small regions of the image with the plugin.
• External motion vectors (e.g., from Twixtor or your 3D system) are also supported.
• Brush stroke orientation can now be specified using alternate images. In addition, direction maps (e.g., from a 3D system) may be used to control directions the brush strokes orientation.
• 16 bpc channel image support for applications that support 16bpc for After Effects-compatible plugins.

Compatibility

Video Gogh 3 works in Combustion 3.0.4 and over, After Effects 5.0 and up on Windows, After Effects 7.0 and up on Mac, Final Cut Pro 5.1 and up, and Premiere Pro 1.0 and up on Windows and Premiere Pro CS3 and up on Mac. Fusion 5 32b is also now officially supported. It is planned that Video Gogh 3 will be available in our bundle for Quantel eQ systems available from Video Design Software. Video Gogh may also work in other After Effects-compatible applications; please test the demo before purchase.

Pricing

Video Gogh 3 is $119.95 and the upgrade from previous versions is $39.95. As of today, our Effections bundles for After Effects, Combustion, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and Fusion include Video Gogh 3. (Effections Plus Bundle for After Effects

Demo material, examples and software are available at http://www.revisionfx.com or visit us in person at IBC, in the plug-in pavilion booth 7-K21.

Labels: After Effects, Combustion, Eyeon Fusion, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Re:Vision Effects, Video Gogh

Dave Basulto has put up a video overview at Digital Producer called Getting acquainted with Nuke - Part 1. Check it out!

Already acquainted with Nuke? Get your Nuke plugins at Toolfarm! Toolfarm caters to a lot more than just After Effects, Final Cut Studio and Avid crowd. Check out the expanded list of plug-ins along the left side of the site. We have tons of plug-ins for 3D apps such as Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Maya and 3ds Max. Need Sony Vegas or Eyeon Fusion or something for your Autodesk software? We got'em. Even Protools... yeah, that's right! View all Plug-ins.

Labels: 3dsMax, After Effects, Autodesk, Avid, Eyeon Fusion, Final Cut Pro, LightWave, Maxon Cinema 4D, Maya, Nuke, ProTools, Sony Vegas

The Final Cut Pro version of Topaz Enhance is finally out of the door. Topaz Enhance is a powerful After Effects and Final Cut Pro plug-in suite used for high-end video enhancement and quality improvement.

It can uniquely and effectively increase the actual resolution of videos with unprecedented results.

Topaz Enhance uses "super-resolution" video enhancement technology. This technology permits actual - not interpolated - resolution increase and detail recovery in videos by synthesizing video information from multiple adjacent frames to improve a selected frame. More on super-resolution technology...

• Download Mac Trial (AE & FCP) Intel only
• Download Windows Trial - Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, or Eyeon Digital Fusion

Learn more about Topaz Enhance in Toolfarm's Plug-in Finder.

Labels: After Effects, Eyeon Fusion, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Topaz Enhance

Leading visual effects software developer The Foundry is delighted to announce the release of its Furnace 4 plug-ins for eyeon Software's Fusion. The recently released toolset is brand new to Fusion artists, giving them access to a host of advanced image processing tools designed to enhance workflow and boost productivity in digital visual effects post production.

Thousands of leading digital artists worldwide already take advantage of Furnace to ease the routine processes involved with the creation of digital visual effects. With The Foundry's Furnace 4 for Fusion now shipping, Fusion artists will, for the first time, be able to gain access to a broad range of The Foundry's sophisticated motion estimation technology.

The Furnace 4 for Fusion toolset is born from The Foundry's OFX initiative. Launched in 2004, OFX (Open FX) is free-of-charge, open source plug-in standard for developing 2D digital visual effects. OFX was instantly welcomed for its benefits to digital artists and their clients, and for allowing developers to focus more R&D time on new solutions to advance the art of digital effects. And The Foundry is delighted that eyeon has joined the growing list of supported OFX hosts.

Bruno Nicoletti, Chief Technology Officer, The Foundry commented "eyeon has supported the OFX initiative from very early on and we are thrilled that we are now able to add Fusion to our list of supported OFX hosts. The collaborative efforts of our development teams have culminated in a significant number of our Furnace plug-ins being available for Fusion artists, enabling a broader range of digital artists to take advantage of our advanced motion estimation technology on their compositing application of choice."

"It is no secret that the Furnace plug-ins have been in high demand for some time now. Artists know a good fit when they see one and Furnace and Fusion just makes sense," commented Isaac Guenard, Senior Product Manager at eyeon Software.

Furnace 4 for Fusion includes: Align, BlockTexture, ChannelRepair, ColourAlign, ColourMatte, Contrast, Correlate, DeBlur, DeFlicker, DeFlicker2, DeGrain, DeNoise, Depth, DirtRemoval, FrameRepair, Kronos, MatchGrade, MotionBlur, MotionMatch, MotionMatte, MotionSmooth, PixelTexture, ReGrain, RigRemoval, ScratchRepair, ShadowRemoval, SmartFill, Splicer, Steadiness, Tile and WireRemoval.

Highlights Include:

Contrast allows the user to extract hidden detail from dark areas of an image without overexposing the bright areas. Based on the adaptive contrast enhancement algorithm in Apical's Iridix product, Contrast behaves like the human visual system by being adaptive and spatially varying.

DeFlicker1 and DeFlicker2 are fully automated plug-ins designed to remove luminance flicker in a sequence. DeFlicker1 is particularly good at coping with flicker that does not originate from the original scene, e.g. ageing film, dust and chemical exposure. DeFlicker2 is designed to remove in-scene flicker, poorly synchronised light rigs, stray light etc. Both of The Foundry's DeFlicker solutions can remove multiple over-lapping phase different flickers, while adapting to cope with motion in the sequence.

DeNoise is a noise and grain removal plug-in that uses advanced motion estimation technology along the direction of motion, thus reducing the noise without introducing any of the artefacts typically associated with noise reduction.

FrameRepair quickly replaces damaged or missing frames by interpolating pixels from images either side, producing a seamless repair.

Kronos uses The Foundry's advanced motion estimation technology to build in-between frames in a sequence. Kronos can be used to speed up (with motion blur) or slow down an image sequence. Artists have the option of supplying foreground mattes, to give retimed objects tight crisp edges and the latest version will detect and account for occluded regions of the image.

ReGrain and DeGrain are a pair of advanced grain management tools. DeGrain is an intelligent solution designed to remove the maximum amount of grain without damaging the image. ReGrain duplicates grain either from a sample image or stock footage and applies it to a new sequence.

WireRemoval is an automatic tool for removing straight or curved wires from a sequence, whilst preserving the images grain and background detail. WireRemoval comes with a whole bunch of tools to tackle variable width over the wire's length, as well as wire tracking and automatic colour correction. Availability and Pricing
Now shipping, Furnace 4 for Fusion node-locked licenses are available for: $4,400 / £2,200, with a float priced at: $6,600 / £3,300.

Labels: Eyeon Fusion, Furnace, The Foundry

New version features over 30 new effects and many enhancements

Available immediately for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Combustion and Fusion.

Cambridge, MA. October 30, 2007 - GenArts, Inc., a leading provider of visual effects plug-ins for the film, broadcast and video industries, today announced the immediate availability of Sapphire Plug-ins version 2 for After Effects and compatible products including Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Autodesk Combustion, and Eyeon Fusion. The new release features over 30 new effects, plus many new parameters and improvements to existing effects in the package.

For over a decade, GenArts Sapphire Plug-ins have set the standard for sophisticated, organic visual effects which natively integrate with leading editing and compositing systems. Version 2 contains all of the visual effects and features that have established Sapphire Plug-ins as an indispensable part of the digital artist's toolkit - and introduces more than 30 new and innovative effects. FilmDamage, ZDefocus, Cartoon, BleachBypass, GradientMulti, SwishPan, Light3D, Deband, and TextureNeurons are a few of the new plug-ins in the collection of over 200 image processing and synthesis effects. Many new effects were designed to improve users' workflow while others offer easy ways to create eye-catching visuals, such as FilmDamage - which simulates aged film by adding scratches, dust, stains, grain, shake and flicker. Enhancements to existing effects in the package include a revamped RackDefocus, 4 new Glares and 14 new LensFlares.

"GenArts has the highest quality plug-ins you can find. I love the new effects in Sapphire 2 such as WarpMagnify, SwishPan and DissolveGlow, and I expect to use Vignette every day," comments Jack Tunnicliffe, Senior Effects Artist at Java Post Production. "The LensFlare additions are also fabulous."

Sapphire 2 includes support for the latest versions of all After Effects and compatible host applications including Adobe CS3 and the "Smart FX" API which provides more efficient processing and support for 32bit image formats. All platforms running v2 will have improved rendering speed.

"We are thrilled with this new release. After Effects, Final Cut Pro and the other compatible products have become integral parts of our high-end users' workflow as we see more and more clients working on multiple host platforms. Version 2 further extends their creative capabilities with many innovative effects and additional functionality," says Anish Dhanda, Managing Director of GenArts.

Key New Features of Sapphire Plug-ins 2 for After Effects and Compatible Products:

• FilmDamage simulates aged film by adding scratches, dust, stains, grain, shake, flicker, etc.
• ZDefocus defocuses areas of the source clip by different amounts using depth values from a z-buffer input.
• Cartoon gives cartoon-like looks with exaggerated edges and flat areas of color.
• Light3D performs 3D relighting of a clip using an input clip describing the surface normals.
• Vignette darkens the outer edges of a clip with various shape options.
• BleachBypass generates a stylized version of the source clip by simulating a bleach bypass process.
• Other new effects include: BlurDirectional, CartoonPaint, Posterize, Deband, DogVision, TileScramble, WarpMagnify, WarpCornerPin, GradientMulti, Shape, TextureTiles, TextureNeurons, TextureLoops, TextureFlux, SwishPan, DissolveGlow, DissolveFilm, FeedbackDistort, Convolve, ConvolveComp, ZConvolve, ZGlow, TriTone, QuadTone, Invert, ShowBadColors and ChannelSwitcher.
• LensFlare has 14 new flare types, new parameters to adjust the look of the flares and an optional Matte input which allows selective blocking or colorizing of flares.
• LensFlareAutoTrack can track and render flares at multiple hotspots.
• RackDefocus has new shape options and improved performance.
• Glare includes 4 new glare types and improved performance.
• Adobe's "Smart FX" API is supported for AE7 and CS3 with more efficient processing and reading of 32bit image formats.
• Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard are supported.

Availability and Pricing

Sapphire Plug-ins version 2 for After Effects and compatible products can be purchased directly from GenArts or through their worldwide channel of authorized resellers. Pricing for Sapphire 2 is $1699 for the entire package or $599 for one of four individual box sets. Special upgrade pricing for existing v1 customers is offered for $599 and $199, respectively. A free trial of the software is available online at www.genarts.com. Sapphire Plug-ins version 2 will also be available on Quantel generationQ products with VDS Synapse. For more information about Sapphire on Quantel please contact VDS.

About GenArts, Inc. Founded in 1996 in Cambridge, Mass., GenArts, Inc. is the premier provider of digital visual effects plug-ins for the film, broadcast and video industries. Their product, Sapphire Plug-ins, equips digital artists with a collection of over 200 state-of-the-art image processing and synthesis effects such as: Glows, EdgeRays, LensFlare, Lightning, FilmEffect, Warps and Textures. The effects seamlessly integrate into a number of editing and compositing systems including: Adobe® After Effects®, Premiere® Pro and Premiere® Elements; Apple® Final Cut Pro® and Shake®; Avid® AVX Products; Autodesk® Compositing & Editing Systems, and Combustion®; Eyeon® Fusion®; and Quantel® generationQ products. Sapphire Plug-ins have become the industry standard for high-end visual effects creation by providing unrivaled image quality, a unique organic look, and ease of use. They have been used extensively in an array of television programs, music videos and feature films, including: Pirates of the Caribbean 1, 2, and 3, Spider-Man 1, 2 and 3, Superman Returns, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars - Episode I, II and III, Sin City, The Matrix trilogy, X-Men 1, 2 and 3, Titanic, Lost and CSI. Additional GenArts product information can be found at www.genarts.com.

Labels: After Effects, Combustion, Eyeon Fusion, Final Cut Pro, GenArts, Sapphire

IBC 2007, Amsterdam, Booth #7.528, 7th September, 2007. Leading visual effects software developer The Foundry is delighted to announce that it will be offering visitors to IBC 2007 a sneak preview of the next major release of its powerful compositing application, Nuke. Visitors to booth 7.528 will be able to catch a glimpse of the eagerly awaited Nuke 5, which will include improvements to the user interface, the addition of Python for scripting, and support for stereoscopic workflow.

Since taking on the development of Nuke The Foundry's goal has been to remain true to the original concept of developing a comprehensive compositing solution that is 'designed by artists for artists'. With user requirements as the driver, The Foundry has concentrated on enriching and refining the product, building on its already strong foundations and focussing development efforts on areas that required renovation. Nuke 5 is the first major step towards this goal.

"We'd been looking at Nuke for months and always thought of it as a very forward-thinking piece of software. When we considered all of the options that could be the foundation of our pipeline for the future, we chose Nuke. More than any compositing package we considered, Nuke seems to embody the best grasp of where things are going." Robin Hackl, Managing Director, Image-Engine Design Inc

Applying over a decade of software development experience and close collaboration with the growing Nuke community, The Foundry has reworked Nuke's UI to improve the user experience and make it more approachable for a broader range of artists. In addition to augmenting the existing floating window layouts with a flexible panes and panels system, Nuke 5 will feature per-node inputs, and expanded LUT support for file I/O colourspace conversion.

Since its inception, Nuke's extensive scripting capabilities have been a key feature for many of its adopters, and The Foundry is taking this to the next level by adding support for the Python scripting language for the next release.

The Foundry's product development has long-benefited from close working relationships with some of the industry's leading post production facilities. The latest challenge facing these cutting edge artists is the dramatic increase in volumes of stereoscopic projects. The Foundry has responded by laying the groundwork for efficient multi-view compositing in Nuke 5.

"With the latest Nuke developments we are reinforcing our commitment to deliver first-class products that assist creativity, workflow and productivity, no matter how demanding the pipeline," said Dr Bill Collis, CEO, The Foundry. "Close relationships with our Nuke and plug-in customers are fundamental to our work - we listen to what they say they need for their pipelines today and tomorrow and this drives our R&D."

Available on Linux, Windows, and Mac platforms Nuke delivers unparalleled speed, an extensible 64-channel architecture, and powerful feature set unrivalled in the desktop market. Nuke 5 will be available towards the end of the year.

The Foundry will be demonstrating Furnace 4 for Shake, Furnace 4 for Nuke, Nuke 4.7 along with technology demonstrations of version 5, an alpha demo of Furnace 4 for Fusion and Furnace 3 for Autodesk® Systems Products on booth 7.528 at IBC 2007.

Labels: Eyeon Fusion, Furnace, Nuke, Shake, The Foundry

IBC 2007, Amsterdam, Booth #7.528, 7th September, 2007. Leading visual effects software developer The Foundry has announced that it will be giving IBC 2007 visitors a sneak preview of its Furnace 4 plug-ins for eyeon Software's Fusion. The soon to be released toolset will be brand new to Fusion artists, giving them access to a host of advanced image processing tools that will enhance workflow and boost productivity in digital visual effects post production.

Thousands of leading digital artists worldwide already take advantage of Furnace to ease the routine processes involved with the creation of digital visual effects. With The Foundry's Furnace 4 for Fusion shipping soon, Fusion artists will, for the first time, be able to gain access to a broad range of The Foundry's sophisticated motion estimation technology.

The Furnace 4 for Fusion toolset is born from The Foundry's OFX initiative. Launched in 2004, OFX (Open FX) is free-of-charge, open source plug-in standard for developing 2D digital visual effects. OFX was instantly welcomed for its benefits to digital artists and their clients, and for allowing developers to focus more R&D time on new solutions to advance the art of digital effects. And The Foundry is delighted that eyeon has joined the growing list of supported OFX hosts.

Bruno Nicoletti, Chief Technology Officer, The Foundry commented eyeon has supported the OFX initiative from very early on and we are thrilled that we will soon be able to add Fusion to our list of supported OFX hosts. The collaborative efforts of our development teams will soon culminate in a significant number of our Furnace plug-ins being available for Fusion artists, enabling a broader range of digital artists to take advantage of our advanced motion estimation technology on their compositing application of choice."

Labels: Eyeon Fusion, Furnace, The Foundry