Foundry Furnace 3 Plug-ins for Shake

Leading visual effects developer The Foundry kicks off 2006 with the
launch of Furnace 3 for Shake, a major product release including brand
new image processing plug-ins designed to significantly enhance
workflow and productivity for Shake artists.

Furnace, available for Linux and OSX, is already a popular suite of
image processing tools, designed to tackle every day compositing tasks,
and the new release delivers Shake artists with an additional 11
plug-ins, many of which automate time-consuming processes in the
creation of digital visual effects.

Furnace 3 is the result of continual research by The Foundry into
advanced image processing algorithms, notably motion estimation
technology, and benefits from The Foundry’s comprehensive roots-up
knowledge of the post production industry. The new plug-ins include a
sophisticated DeBlur solution, which automatically removes motion and
out-of-focus blur, MatchGrade for automatic colour histogram matching,
and Tracker, a multi-point tracker which can track the most challenging
regions within a moving image.

Since its launch in 2002, Furnace is now deployed by the world’s
leading post production facilities including Double Negative, Rhythm
& Hues, Weta Digital, Pacific Title and Art Studio, Moving Picture
Company, Cinesite UK, Framestore CFC, Animal Logic and Gray Matter.

“With Furnace 3 the toolbox just expanded again,” said Mike Seymour,
InCase Sydney, and co-founder of FXguide.com. “The Foundry provides
real image-processing tools I can actually use in production. Now with
Furnace 3 ‘ this is my No.1 plug-in/spark requirement on new systems.”

"Furnace is one of the most advanced toolsets available for Shake
artists” commented Simon Anderson, Photon VFX, New Zealand. "Furnace 3
gives you a superior collection of plug-ins that deliver quick and easy
solutions to every day tasks, giving you great results and saving
hours.
I wouldn’t be without it.”

The Foundry products are widely acclaimed across the industry, having
recently been used by digital artists on a wide range of projects
including; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, King Kong,
and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

– ColourAlign. Automatically removes any discrepancy
in the alignment of the three colour channels in an image.

– Depth. Generates a relative depth matte from a
sequence. The depth matte has many applications including the ability
to introduce new objects such as smoke and sparks more realistically as
they are able to travel behind foreground objects.

– DeNoise. Is a fully motion compensated noise and
grain removal plug-in. DeNoise reduces noise without introducing any of
the artefacts typically associated with noise reduction. It is even
able to remove the extreme levels of grain typically found in the blue
channel of some film stocks.

– DeBlur. Automatically removes global motion blur or out-of-focus blur from a sequence.

– MatchGrade. Automatically grades one image to
match another Allowing sequences that were shot with different lighting
to have the same look. It also performs severe histogram corrections
with ease, such as those required for day to night transformations.

– MatteToRoto. Quickly and effortlessly edit and
tidy ill-defined RGB and alpha mattes without the need for
time-consuming rotoscoping. The plug-in requires the artist to simply
position a cross hair at the edge of the matte and MatteToRoto will
produce a roto with a soft-edge falloff and associated alpha channel
with a single click of the mouse.

– MotionBlur. Uses The Foundry’s advanced motion estimation technology to add motion blur to a sequence.

– MotionMatte. Given a sequence with a foreground
object moving relative to the background, MotionMatte generates a
segmented version of the foreground and associated alpha matte, with
minimal user intervention.

– PlanarPatcher. Tracks planar regions in a
sequence. The plug-in allows artists to create new image elements such
as hand-painted frame repairs and accurately patch them over a complete
clip, taking into account any perspective changes, rotations and zooms.

– Splicer. Stitches together arbitrarily shaped
images or parts of an image. Given a rough join position, the plug-in
automatically finds the most visually believable seam along the border
between the images.

– Tracker. Is a multi-point tracker designed to
robustly track the most challenging of regions. It will accurately
handle regions of occlusion (where the tracking point goes behind
another object or off the edge of an image) and copes well with scale
and rotational changes to the tracked region.

Furnace 3 node-locked is priced at: $4,000 / £2,200, with Furnace 3
float priced at: $6,000 / £3,300. Existing customers can upgrade for
$2,000 / £1,100 node-locked and $3,000 / £1,650 floating.