The Foundry has announced Furnace 4 plug-ins for Shake, a major product release comprising next-generation motion estimation technology and a host of other tools, designed to ease the routine processes involved with the production of digital visual effects.
Furnace, available for Linux and OSX, was originally launched in 2002 and has become popular suite of image processing plug-ins to enhance workflow and boost productivity. A key focus for the new Furnace 4 release has been to take advantage of the latest advances in technology, combined with more than seven years of The Foundry's own research into motion estimation, to deliver optimized output, enhanced speed, a more intuitive user interface and improve the user experience.
In addition to significant optimization across a number of the existing plug-ins, the latest release features eight brand new tools. These include: Contrast which, utilizing the latest dynamic range compression technology from Apical, will automatically detect and enhance the shadow region, within filmed or HD footage, without blowing out highlights in other parts of the image; DeFlicker2, a fully automated plug-in that will remove in-scene flicker caused by poorly synchronized light rigs or stray lights; and RotoTracker, which tracks a rotoshape through a sequence, keeping it accurately attached to an object even as it changes shape.
"Our artists are employed across a wide variety of high-profile projects," said Nick Cannon, head of Technology, Film, MPC. "To guarantee we continue to meet clients' demands we require sophisticated digital tools to help us get the job done. The Foundry's Furnace is an impressive digital toolset that delivers time and time again, a first-class collection of tools, which should be on any Shake artist's wish list."
One of the most notable advances in Furnace 4 is its ability to separately calculate, pre-generate and utilize motion vectors. Many of the Furnace plug-ins use motion vectors and rather than calculating the vectors on a per-plug-in basis, it is now possible to calculate them once using the new VectorGenerator plug-in. This new technique has many advantages although the most significant is speed enhancement.
Other features include:
* ShadowRemoval: removes translucent objects such as shadows from a sequence. The artist loosely highlights the area to be removed and ShadowRemoval will perform a seamless extraction of the unwanted object.
* VectorConverter: is a tool designed to convert images representing motion vector fields, originating from other vendor applications, into the vector format used in Furnace by providing a simple interface to rewire, scale, offset and invert the color channels.
* VectorGenerator: utilizes The Foundry's next-generation motion estimation engine to produce accurate sets of vectors between frames. By using VectorGenerator the artist only needs to calculate the vectors once and the user can input them into many of the Furnace plug-ins, saving bundles of time.
* VectorWarper: allows the user to warp an image sequence using vectors from a different image sequence. This plug-in can be used creatively to produce unusual temporal image effects.
Now shipping, Furnace 4 node-locked is priced at: $4,400 / £2,200, with Furnace 4 float priced at: $6,600 / £3,300. Existing customers can upgrade for $2,200 / £1,100 node-locked and $3,300 / £1,650 floating.
The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk) is a London-based software developer specializing in visual effects technology for the film and video markets. The company employs more than a dozen people and develops and markets plug-ins on a range of host applications, including Autodesk's After Effects, Apple's Shake and Avid|DS. The company now also successfully licenses its sophisticated image processing technology to third parties, expanding its scope beyond plug-ins. The Foundry has used its considerable influence to drive the development of an open standard for visual effects plug-ins known as OpenFX, which is gaining wide acceptance by host and plug-in developers, such as Grass Valley, FilmLight, Autodesk, D2 Software and others. The Foundry's Furnace development team was honored with a 2006 Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its role in the design and development of the Furnace plug-ins. The Foundry recently announced that it has acquired NUKE from D2 Software.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
