Desktop Motion Graphics and Visual Effects Artists will Benefit from Powerful New Creative Features, Interoperability, Interface and Speed Enhancements
MONTREAL, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Discreet, the media and entertainment division of Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) , today announced combustion® 4 software, the highly anticipated upgrade to its visual effects desktop software solution. combustion software for Windows® and Macintosh® will feature a complete set of sophisticated tools for visual effects creation, including vector paint, particles, effects, animation and 3D compositing tools. Version 4 is the company’s most exciting combustion feature upgrade to date, and provides motion graphics and compositing artists new creative capabilities, interface improvements, new paint tools and enhanced interoperability with most 3D animation products including to Discreet’s industry-leading 3ds max® animation software, and Discreet’s cleaner® encoding software and its systems products including flint®, flame®, inferno®, fire® and smoke®.
Chris Williamson, a combustion 4 beta tester at New Zealand effects facility Martin Square Productions is very enthusiastic about the latest upgrade, “The newest version of combustion will be the best yet in my opinion; there is something in it for every caliber of effects artist. It will include the kind of cool new features that make you go ‘wow’. There are plenty of enhancements to make combustion work better within your pipeline-along with base level features making workflow throughput faster and more versatile. In short-combustion 4 is bigger, better, faster and much more!”
“With combustion 4, Discreet takes a major step forward to provide motion graphics artists a unique competitive edge on the desktop that leverages our start-to-finish family of creative tools for visual effects,” said, Martin Vann, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing, Discreet. “combustion 4 continues our mission to offer unparalleled creativity at affordable prices, addressing the needs of the independent artist and smaller boutique as much as those of the large, more specialized production facility.”
Key new features in combustion 4 include:
— Discreet’s Diamond Keyer — the second generation of sophisticated keying algorithms derived from flame, Discreet’s Academy Award(R)-winning online visual effects system. The Diamond Keyer adds a new level of advanced keying technology to the capabilities already available to combustion users via the Discreet Keyer.
— Time-Warp — a fully key-frameable, time-remapping operator for quickly creating slow motion and speed-up effects
— B-spline vector shapes and new point-grouping for faster, more efficient rotoscoping
— New optimized ‘Fast Gaussian Blur’
— Custom capsules — create and save encapsulated single or grouped operator nodes
— Gbuffer builder — enables custom building of Discreet’s Rich Pixel Format (RPF) data structures from bitmap files for more extensive use of combustion’s RPF nodes
— Merge operator — new optimized operator to quickly merge 2 layers of the same size using any of combustion’s transfer nodes
— Numerous UI enhancements including edit — operator, navigation, filtering and compare tool improvements
— New file import/export options — import of images into color mixer, import ASE (ASCII Scene Export) camera targets from 3ds max, import Windows Media, Open EXR compatible output
— Enhanced paint — new paint tools, grids & rulers, Bspline in paint and new customized brushes
— Ability to read media directly from Discreet stone file-systems for enhanced interoperability with Discreet’s online systems: inferno, fire, smoke, flame, flint and backdraft
“With combustion 4, not only is Discreet giving us great new tools such as the Diamond Keyer and Time-Warp, but they’ve provided so many valuable UI enhancements and ingenious time savers like the Capsules that an already great product has just gotten better. This will undoubtedly be the best upgrade yet,” commented combustion 4 beta tester Alan Bell. “I primarily work as a feature film editor, but since adding combustion to my tool set, I have been able to expand my service offering to directors. It is now possible to make film resolution shots in the cutting room. combustion allows me to push limits and explore ideas that I never could before, not to mention the time and money it saves the producers!”
Pricing and Availability
combustion 4 is expected to be available on Windows-March 2005, and for Macintosh-May 2005. combustion 4 software will sell for US $995; upgrade pricing from combustion 3 to combustion 4 software will be US $249.00. Customers who purchase a full commercial or educational seat of combustion 3 software between announcement date and the shipping date, can qualify for a free upgrade to combustion 4 software. For more information, visit www.discreet.com or call 1-800-869-3504.
About combustion
combustion 4 is an all-in-one professional digital visual effects software application for Mac and Windows PCs featuring industry-leading visual effects tools, fully integrated paint and support for other popular desktop animation, imaging and illustration, media mastering and nonlinear editing applications. With combustion 4, artists will have access to 3D compositing, comprehensive motion graphics capabilities, numerous filter and particle effects, advanced color correction, Discreet’s renowned tracking and image stabilization technology, powerful vector paint, warping and morphing, text effects, simple editing, advanced animation and expressions, Flash output and more, all from Discreet’s specially designed, unified and easy-to-use interface.
About Discreet
Discreet empowers media professionals to realize the visual experience and transform their most evocative and ambitious visions into reality. Discreet’s solutions are designed for digital media creation, management and delivery-across all disciplines from film and television visual effects, color grading and editing to animation, game development, web/interactive, and design visualization. Discreet is based in Montreal, Canada and is the media and entertainment division of Autodesk, Inc, the world’s leading design and digital media creation, management, and distribution company. Product and corporate information: www.discreet.com.
Founded in 1982, Autodesk is headquartered in San Rafael, California. For additional information about Autodesk, please visit www.autodesk.com.
NOTE: Discreet is a division of Autodesk, Inc. Discreet, combustion, 3ds max, flint, inferno, fire, smoke, cleaner, backburner and flame are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. in the USA and/or other countries. Academy Award is a trade or servicemark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.
