London – Visual effects software developer The Foundry announced its latest version of HIERO, a revolutionary shot management, conform and review tool.
In addition HIEROPLAYER is a brand new addition to the HIERO family, and will give artists the ability to view their VFX shots in the context of a timeline – ideal for collaborating and critiquing shots at a workstation. Both releases will be available to purchase this Autumn.
HIERO 1.5
Windows OS support in version 1.5 brings HIERO onto all three platforms. This advance will allow even more studios and facilities to adopt HIERO into their pipelines.
HIERO users will now be able to utilize a broadcast monitor to review footage on compatible Blackmagic and AJA SDI-Out Hardware. The Broadcast Monitor Out functionality will give HIERO operators the ability to accurately check that the color space and aspect ratio is exactly the same as it would be when the footage is broadcast.
With the addition of Multi-Channel Image Support, users will now also be able to view all the image layers of multi-channel EXRs for CG passes. Operators will have access to more than just the RGBA pass and view all of the image passes that EXR files can contain, just as they can in NUKE.
HIERO 1.5 also adds support for playback of native ARRIRAW camera footage. Users can either edit directly with the raw footage or transcode out to other image formats using HIERO’s export system.
HIEROPLAYER
The Foundry is also pleased to announce HIEROPLAYER, a brand new application that enables artists to view their VFX shots in context. HIEROPLAYER can open HIERO projects, allowing artists to see their shots in context of a conformed, multi-track timeline and seamlessly critique versions of their renders.
Artists will be able to playback the same formats that NUKE knows about (including multi-channel EXRs, and audio), organize and tag their comp elements into Clip Bins, and even knock together basic ‘scratch edits’. HIEROPLAYER is a VFX timeline tool built for artists. It works seamlessly with NUKE and HIERO out of the box and via Python scripting, can also be integrated into other apps in your pipeline.
Ant Nasce, HIERO Product Manager at The Foundry comments: “With the addition of broadcast monitor support, HIERO 1.5 is now the ideal tool for doing VFX reviews. We’re excited to make HIERO available for Windows, (as well as Linux and Mac) which means that you can now run HIERO in the OS your facility prefers. HIEROPLAYER is a new VFX timeline tool that we believe artists (and supervisors alike) are going to love, because it bridges another missing link in the post-production pipeline.”
CG AWARD WINNER
HIERO is the 2012 winner of the 3D World’s New Application Award. This award recognizes the best new content creation applications that have been released over the past year, which provide stable, useful and useable tools for the CG artist. HIERO was announced as the winner on 5th September, fighting off competition from Forger and Abobe’s Photoshop Touch.
Source: The Foundry