Leading visual effects software
developer The Foundry is delighted to announce the release of 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.
Thousands of leading digital artists worldwide already take advantage
of Furnace to ease the routine processes involved with the creation
of digital visual effects. 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. And The Foundry is
delighted that eyeon has joined the growing list of supported OFX hosts.

Bruno Nicoletti, Chief Technology Officer, 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," commented 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 synchronised 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 artefacts 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, whilst 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 colour correction.

Availability and Pricing
Now shipping, Furnace 4 for Fusion nodelocked licenses are available
for: $4,400 / £2,200, with a float priced at: $6,600 / £3,300.