Category: Technology

NVIDIA Corp. announced three new additions to its suite of professional software products for the film industry:

* Gelato 2.0 rendering software, the latest major release of this product for film studios.* Amaretto, an Autodesk 3ds Max rendering plug-in for Gelato developed by Frantic Films.* Sorbetto lighting technology, an interactive tool that significantly accelerates the creation of realistic lighting.

NaturalMotion Ltd. announced the immediate availability of the companys free endorphin Learning Edition (eLE). Based on the award-winning 3D character animation software endorphin 2.0, the eLE has no time restrictions, includes all relevant product documentation and offers a comprehensive support network via the companys endorphin forum. The software is fully functional; however, it is motion file export disabled and is not to be used for commercial production.

Iridas, which first introduced non-destructive color grading technology in 2003, announced the release of SpeedGrade OnSet, a look creation tool for cinematographers, which provides a means for communicating looks to all parts of the post-production and film finishing pipeline. The new application uses the same .look file format as SpeedGrade DI allowing for direct collaboration between cinematographer and colorist. SpeedGrade OnSet runs on both the Mac and Windows platforms.

Pipelinefx, a leading provider of render farm management software for 3D animation and interactive entertainment companies, will demonstrate version 4.0 of its flagship product, qube!, at SIGGRAPH 2005, being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from July 31 to Aug. 4.

Autodesk Inc. announced that its DCC solutions have been used by digital artists to realize their ideas for eye-catching visual effects in many of this summer's movies.

RE:Vision Effects now offers FieldsKit version 1.5 for After Effects-compatible applications (Adobe After Effects, Autodesk Combustion, Adobe Premiere Pro, Digital Fusion and Apple Final Cut Pro, among others).

At the heart of FieldsKit is FieldsKit Deinterlacer, which deinterlaces video imagery with superior results. Using proprietary field reconstruction and adaptive motion techniques, FieldsKit Deinterlacer can build full frames from fields that are of much higher quality than the standard approaches available in most effects and video editing applications.

Bauhaus Software Inc. unveiled Mirage Nomad, a new tablet PC-based animation and storyboarding system for 2D artists. Mirage Nomad frees artists to draw, paint and animate anywhere. From storyboards and pencil tests, to fully-colored final animation and vfx, Mirage Nomad is a powerful, portable 2D animation studio that easily fits in a backpack.

Iridas, an industry leader in uncompressed playback technologies announced the release of Service Pack 2 for FrameCycler 3.5. This update introduces a key component of the new Iridias color pipeline. With SP2, FrameCycler playback applications now allow users to view sequences with SpeedGrade .look files applied. Color graded playback is thus now possible from every workstation or screening room at any point in the filmmaking process.

Vicon iQ 2.0, the newest version of Vicons motion-capture pipeline software, has been released. Vicon iQ provides an intuitive interface with all of the tools needed to manage, automate, capture and process an entire production. With Version 2.0, Vicon iQ offers a complete realtime environment for setup, calibration and capture with Vicon's ultra high-resolution Vicon MX systems. Vicon iQ 2.0 also takes full advantage of the unique grayscale power of Vicon MX cameras, with all-new processing algorithms to deliver the best accuracy, quality and processing times.