Archive of the 2D Category

Got a nice demo today of the leaps and bounds being taken by The Foundry‘s new and upcoming versions of its Nuke compositing software (version 5.2 was unveiled this week at NAB, and 6.0 will come out later this year). Lots of improvements worth checking out.

But when the demo was over, Foundry guys gave me a little lesson in the context of product development work. They revealed they have come up with an impressive little, for lack of a better name right now, plug-in called Rolling Shutter which, as the name implies, is designed to help filmmakers address and smooth out artifacts that can occasionally pop out of bits of footage shot with CMOS-chip-based digital cameras. In a technology demo, the tool clearly eased blur and quiver in test frames impacted by the rolling shutter technology that is part of CMOS design. (It’s all very complicated, but as I understand it, the rolling shutter exposes different portions of the frame at different periods in time, and certain anomolies can crop up in frames or between frames under particular circumstances in such footage.) more

As usual, Autodesk is busy at NAB with new products—most notably, Flare 2010, which the company calls “a creative companion” to Flame and Inferno, designed to perform a mix of advanced tasks and support tasks that can be handled by junior level artists who collaborate with senior-level Flame and Inferno colleagues.

But the company’s real innovation at the show may be its steadfast focus on looking for ways to drive business to its users by offering them solutions for new and evolving workflows those customers will be getting themselves involved with in the coming weeks and months. Bruno Sargeant, a broadcast market manager for Autodesk, told me today that the company is working closely to develop not only new tools, but techniques in collaboration with artists in various market segments that can them port over to other market segments. more

Two weeks ago Red Giant Software announced version 2 of its Trapcode Particular and ToonIt plug-ins for Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Avid. ToonIt 2 is shipping; Particular 2 will ship this summer. Sean Safreed gave me a demo of both at Red Giant Software’s booth today.

ToonIt’s now in the position of competing with the native Cartoon effect in After Effects Creative Suite 4. So as one way to go beyond simple “cartoonification,” ToonIt 2 features new “natural media” effects such as simulated airbrush, bristle paint, gouache, and scratch board styles. There are also about 50 new presets, as well as a randomization button for settings, to give one’s creative process a kickstart. more

When a company with a product line as big and deep as Autodesk makes its NAB presentation, you’ll forgive them for thinking like an auto company and describing the updated apps as their 2009 product lineup.

Trevor Boyer has already posted notes about Autodesk’s Sunday press conference. While each of the major products announced have plenty of notable and usable improvements, I’ll vote for lower price points and ability to work with compressed media as the most significant moves that herald future trends. Smoke 2009′s $64,000 tab for a turnkey hardware/software finishing machine–storage included–is a great breakthrough. For the first time, (fiscal) hope is offered to those many mid-level shops which blanch when faced with six-figure offerings from Autodesk, Quantel, et.al. (At present, this was described as an introductory price available through July 21, 2008. It’s a little unclear what happens after that; maybe if enough new buyers are attracted, the price will hold.) more

There was something of a Yogi Berra moment at the Hard Rock Cafe on Sunday when Avid‘s new executive VP and then the new CEO took the stage to pledge that this time we’re going to get it right.

Oh no, I thought, not another set of promises about working well with others and thinking outside the box. Well, we got those promises again. And yes there were some snickers around the floor of Hard Rock’s music venue (Avid’s traditional space over their years at NAB) at inappropriate times from the hundreds in the audience of users along with a smattering of press.

After all, neither CEO Gary Greenfield nor Kirk Arnold, executive vp and gm of Avid Video, have any video industry experience. (Give Avid’s board credit though–both of these very recent hires have solid reps for turning around high tech companies.) more

First, let me say: I realized just this week that I’m truly over the name change and Autodesk feels natural. Maybe it was the sheer, wasabi-colored curtains floating around the booth that gave it that reassuringly Discreet-hip vibe. Maybe also the poker card swag with the old symbols, those tribal fish and branch graphics, paired with hefty poker chips.

But on to news and business. The user group was SRO at about 1500 souls. There to see, among other things, scaleable InfiniBand workflow blending multi-core HP workstations, the Discreet-legacy apps, plus things like Toxik, Backdraft and the new Incinerator accelerator which allows real-time digital 2K color grading for Lustre, and enables highly interactive sessions. (EFilm‘s already signed up to deploy a custom version of the Lustre/Incinerator as part of their Eworks). The new stuff is all part of an ongoing Autodesk push to put decades of know how about processing and IT to work. Maurice Patel describes it as “leveraging the raw performance of modern IT and translating it for media requirements.” more

Folks from the U.K.’s The Foundry were very pleased to be touting this afternoon the new release of their Nuke compositing software–Nuke 4.7. It’s the first new version of the product since Foundry took over development, marketing, and sales of Nuke from Digital Domain, and Bill Collins, PhD., Foundry’s CEO, made it quite clear that Nuke represents the company’s compositing future, even though Shake (latest version 4.10) continues to spread in popularity throughout the industry.

The idea, Collins says, is to put some Nuke capabilities into new versions of Shake, and many Shake capabilities into Nuke, and then, eventually phase out Shake in favor of Nuke. He expects that transition to take approximately two years, since the company will continue to support existing Shake customers until their natural upgrade cycle comes up again. The movement to Nuke, he insists, will be “easy” for Shake users because of the increased power of the Nuke platform. The new version, for instance, includes, among other things, optical flow node, support for HDRI, RAW and Quicktime, FrameCycler Professional 2006, Truelight, universal binary for Mac OS X and lots of other funky stuff.

–Michael Goldman

Las Vegas, Nevada — NAB — April 16, 2007 — NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, today announced launch plans for their latest development, LightWave Rendition for Adobe® Photoshop®. The product created by NewTek‘s 3D division provides photorealistic 3D render output, such as recently used in the feature film “300®, for Adobe‘s just revealed Photoshop CS3 Extended. Based upon the Emmy® Award-winning render engine native to LightWave 3D®, Rendition™ for Adobe Photoshop gives creative artists the ability to render models imported through Photoshop CS3 and deliver the richness of detail, textures and lighting attributes found in the original 3D object format, all within the Photoshop environment. Read on at The Briefing Room: 2007 NAB Newslink

Teamworking in post is all the rage. You can‘t read far though the slew of pre-show press releases to learn that playing well with others will be a big part of the news at NAB 07

Quantel does its part with the launch of Genetic Engineering at their Sunday press conference. No need to worry about stem cells piling up on your NLE though: the Brit company is talking about overturning the traditional way of looking at SANs (storage area networks), allowing Q users to hook together any of its products–whether eQ, iQ, or Pablo–and getting access to the same clips at the same time without copying, reformatting, or moving the media. more

Chyron is touting its all HD booth at this year’s NAB show, a first for the company. At the press conference, SD and HD weren‘t even a topic of discussion for the 41-year-old company: that‘s so yesterday.

The Melville, New York, company traditionally holds the show‘s first press conference, an 8am Sunday breakfast slot that doesn‘t automatically make it beloved of reporters, though Chyron can always be relied upon to offer a good spread and non-stop product introductions.

But we weren‘t here just for another CG rollout. But rather the company played up its sharpened market sensibility and product mix: profit margins moved from 62% to 67% over the past year, it‘s now debt free, and over the past two years the product line has been completely revamped and rationalized–that is, products fit together, work together into some greater whole. more