The Foundry launched 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.
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.
Bruno Nicoletti, CTO, 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," added 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 synchronized 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 artifacts 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, while 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 color correction.
Now shipping, Furnace 4 for Fusion nodelocked licenses are available for: $4,400 / £2,200, with a float priced at: $6,600 / £3,300.
The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk) is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post-production. On Feb. 10, 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award to The Foundry's development team for the Furnace image-processing suite. The company now holds a trio of Academy Award-winning products, including the high-end compositing system Nuke, and keying application Keylight.
The Foundry's products support a wide range of host platforms, including After Effects, Autodesk Media and Ent. systems, Avid DS, Baselight, Film Master, Nuke, Scratch and Shake. The company has also driven OpenFX, an open standard for visual effects plug-ins, now broadly adopted by host and plug-in developers such as Autodesk, Assimilate, FilmLight, Digital Vision, eyeon Software Inc. Grass Valley, Soluciones Graficas por Ordenador (S.G.O.), Photron and others.
Customers include: Digital Domain, The Moving Picture Company, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Warner Bros. and Weta Digital Ltd.
The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
