Compositing.fr : Effets visuels

The Foundry montrera la semaine prochaine, au NAB 2011, les nouvelles fonctionnalités du prochain Storm, Mari 1.3, Nuke & NukeX 6.3 (nouvelles splines, grid warpers, 3d particles, planar tracker, denoiser, piste audio scratch track, deep 3d compositing ...), et une preview de Katana.

Retrouvez The Foundry au stand SL5625 du 11 au 14 Avril au NAB, Las Vegas.

London, January 4th, 2011 – Leading visual effects software developer, The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk), today provided an insight into its plans for KATANA.

KATANA is an environment for preparing 3D assets for rendering. It allows artists to define and control look and lighting whilst maintaining performance with very large datasets. KATANA operates non-destructively using a rule-based approach, allowing modeling, look development, animation and lighting teams to work in parallel.

Originally developed in house at Sony Pictures Imageworks to handle increasingly complex workflows on productions such as Spider-Man and Superman Returns, the commercial development of KATANA was taken on by The Foundry in November 2009 as part of a unique collaboration between the two companies.

The Foundry's engineering effort, in consultation with a broad range of users, is ensuring KATANA becomes a flexible product that can ultimately integrate with any pipeline and any renderer in any facility.
These consultations have now developed into much more in-depth collaborations with a number of key sites including MPC and Digital Domain who are now using KATANA in alpha.

“Since Inception KATANA has been one of the pillars of the production pipeline here at Imageworks and continues to prove itself on such rigorous productions as G-Force, Watchmen, Alice in Wonderland and animated features such as Monster House, Surf’s Up, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and The Smurfs."

“We are excited to see KATANA cutting its teeth outside the halls of Imageworks and becoming available for artists and facilities everywhere.  The Foundry is a tremendous partner and by broadening the adoption of KATANA and product support, a new generation of artists and productions can benefit from this innovative production-proven technology.”
Rob Bredow, Chief Technology Officer, Sony Pictures Imageworks

"Many brilliant technical innovations come out of production, but historically those breakthroughs remain only within the production company.  The Foundry works with digital studios to make those innovations widespread, which benefits the entire industry.  I look for KATANA to have a similar impact on the industry that Nuke has achieved."
Cliff Plumer, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Domain.

"Like most large VFX studios, we maintain a complex suite of proprietary software to enable us to render ever increasing complexity, quantity and visual quality. We are excited about KATANA's potential to offer a solid, flexible, off-the-shelf foundation that we can build upon so that we can focus more of our efforts on what we do best, pushing the boundaries of CG, trusting The Foundry to do what they do best, delivering high quality, scalable software."
Davie Johnston, Director of Technology, MPC

As the first commercial dedicated scene development tool, KATANA will enable facilities large and small to build highly scalable lighting pipelines without a large internal engineering effort.

KATANA is scheduled for commercial release in 2011.

Le premier logiciel de montage que j'avais pu tester chez France Televisions il y a maintenant 11 ans est disponible désormais gratuitement en opensource. Voici les specs actuelles, en anglais :

Academy® and Emmy® award-winning Lightworks was introduced in 1989 as the first and most advanced non-linear editing system on the market. Used by editors such as Chris Gill and multi Oscar-winning Thelma Schoonmaker, Lightworks offers intuitive controls, advanced real time effects, 2K native support with DPX or RED, and multi-camera editing features that remain unmatched. With wide support for codecs, including EditShare’s Universal Media Files, Lightworks achieves a level of unsurpassed interoperability by offering seamless media sharing with Avid and Final Cut Pro. This new workflow enables Lightworks artists to collaboratively edit projects with a much wider group of editors.
Feature Highlights:

FORMATS AND CODECS
AVI, QuickTime, MXF, DPX and RED R3D, DV, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, P2, AVC Intra, DNxHD, ProRes. Real-time up and down-scaling, from SD to 2K.

MULTI-CAM
Advanced multi-cam editing with unlimited sources and dual-SDI outputs, so you can simultaneously view your source angles in sync with your edit.

THIRD PARTY SUPPORT
Support for Adobe After Effects, Boris, Combustion, Sapphire and many more.

EFFECTS
Real time video and audio effects, including primary and selective colour correction, are all guaranteed in resolutions up to 2K, thanks to Lightworks powerful GPU based effects engine.

AUDIO
Sub-frame audio editing, direct-to-timeline voice over tool, Mackie protocol support, real time playback of mixed sample and bit rates, and guaranteed real time multi-track audio.

PROJECT SHARING
The most advanced Project Sharing capabilities available, allowing editors to access each others’ work with the click of a button. Instant Save technology ensures you’ll never lose your work again.

OUTPUT
Full-screen video output through a DVI-attached LCD display, with support up to 2K Full Frame, offering an inexpensive monitoring option, with no need for SDI hardware.

MULTI-CHANNEL INGEST
Lightworks is the only NLE available to offer multi-channel ingest, with support for synchronised capture, making it ideal for advanced 3D Stereoscopic projects.

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