Tweak Software's RV 3.12, which automatically combines shots for 2K and stereo 3D playback containing multiple resolutions, frame rates and even color spaces, is now in beta and will be released officially this fall.
RV is used by VFX supervisors at top VFX and animation studios, including Digital Domain, Aardman, ILM, Weta and Zoic Studios, to review shots during their complex dailies workflows. Alongside compositors like The Foundry's Nuke or a proprietary in-house system, RV can playback DPX, Cineon, OpenEXR film, HD resolution and stereo sequences for review on a desktop or through a projector. The 64-bit package also runs on Linux, Windows and Mac.

RV sessions can be synched over a local network or the Web. An artist can then create a "Sync Link" to paste into chat and instantly connect with other artists, a supe or the director at various locations. Michael Bay used RV to remotely review stereo shots created by ILM's San Francisco and Singapore studios for Transformers 3 (seen above, copyright Paramount Pictures).

But the new version, said co-founder Seth Rosenthal during SIGGRAPH, will appeal to more studios of every size, thanks to a number of, er, tweaks to an already robust sequence viewer.

First, he said, any studio can now use Javascript to pull RV into its existing Web-based project management systems, like Shotgun, or open a Web page inside RV to enable other collaborative workflows online. Python was added as a native scripting language to give in-house programmers the ability to create even more advanced, data-driven Web apps to control RV and let artists collaborate via the Internet.

More popular digital formats are also now supported, specifically RED and ARRIRAW, and you can now specify Color Decision List values in RV session files. Tweak is also thinking about smaller-scale stereo productions, and the new HDMI 1.4a and DVI support means shops of any size can buy a consumer 3DTV and, with RV, turn them to a 3D playback device.

"RV isn't just a high-end tool, though places like ILM and Weta have customized it to work seamlessly with their pipelines. It's also very much an artist tool," said Rosenthal. "We wanted to give folks at every budget access to the same tools but also give them options, like HDMI, for creating more affordable setups to look at sequences during post." He said more features aimed at individual artists will be coming to RV next year.

Rosenthal founded Tweak with fellow ILM alums Jim Hourihan and Alan Trombla. Hourihan, the creator of Dynamation particle system that is now inside Maya, has two Scientific and Technical Academy Awards to his credit.