Cause And FX

Red Giant releases new effects tools targeted at both professional and indie filmmakers

By Neil Matsumoto

Labels: Red Giant

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Codeveloped by ILM VFX supervisor John Knoll, Knoll Light Factory 3.0 lets you create beautiful and realistic lighting and lens flares.

FLARE ON
Back in the day, a lens flare always was considered a ruined shot, but mainly because of '70s American New Wave filmmakers, flares have become a signature cinematic look. One of Red Giant's coolest products is Knoll Light Factory, which is their 3D lens flare system. Codeveloped by Oscar®-winning ILM VFX supervisor John Knoll (he also codeveloped Photoshop with his brother Thomas), the Lens Flare Render engine in KLF has been used on such films as Star Trek, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Ironman 2. Knoll Light Factory 3.0 makes flare creation even faster, and Red Giant has updated elements in the Flare Render engine to give you better accuracy for high-res shots. According to Knoll, Version 3.0 is the biggest advance to Light Factory in years.

KLF 3 has a completely redesigned user interface and controls that are more intuitive. It offers 28 Elements and 56 Sprites that let you create new lighting designs. Also with KLF 3, you get over 100 Lens Flare Presets, including new ones by Knoll that re-create real lenses and lights for visual effects, motion graphics and sci-fi-type looks.
There are new Behaviors that simulate real-world lighting effects like Strobe, Pulse, Flicker and Blink. The new Edge Reaction contains flares at the edge of a frame for a closer cinematic resemblance. It also can be integrated with After Effects 3D camera and comp lights to be able to move Knoll flares in 3D space and also sync with animated lights.

Knoll Light Factory is part of Red Giant's new Effects Suite 11 and is available for $199 for new customers, which is a 50% reduction from KLF 2.7 ($399). It supports After Effects CS4-CS6, Premiere Pro CS5-CS6 and Final Cut Pro 7.

Check out filmmaker Seth Worley's short film Order Up on the Red Giant site, redgiant.com/orderup, to see cool sci-fi flare examples from Knoll Light Factory 3.

Magic Bullet Looks 2 includes new tools such as three-way color-grading wheels from Colorista II and a cosmetic skin cleanup from Cosmo.

YOU'VE GOT THE LOOK
Magic Bullet Looks 2 gives you a new way of designing your look from the start of your edit to your finished product. What's great about Looks 2 is that professional colorists and novice filmmakers will feel equally comfortable working with the application, whether it's drag-and-drop or using specialized color-grading tools to fine-tune your image. Red Giant has added over 64 new presets from Looks 1, as well as six new tools such as three-way color-grading wheels from Colorista II and a cosmetic skin cleanup from Cosmo. They have also added their most requested feature by users, Video Out capability, which gives you an interactive preview on an external monitor or device.

Looks 2 is now compatible with Final Cut Pro X, but also with After Effects, Final Cut Pro 7, Premiere Pro, Apple Motion, Sony Vegas Pro and Avid Media Composer or as a standalone application. It's part of the Magic Bullet Suite, which runs $799, but you also can purchase an individual license for $399.

For more information on Red Giant products, check out their website at www.redgiantsoftware.com.

Synced In
PluralEyes 3 for Mac OS X
By Neil Matsumoto

After purchasing Singular Software's products and intellectual property earlier this year, Red Giant has recently released PluralEyes 3 for Mac OS X. PluralEyes is the most common audio/video-synching software on the market. Because of the popularity of DSLRs and their lack of sound features, many filmmakers had to learn the process of dual-system sound, where you record a separate audio track to be synced in post. By using a proprietary algorithm, PluralEyes automatically synchronizes audio and video clips without the need for time code, clappers or any special preparation. It does this by analyzing the scratch audio from your camera and then matching the waveforms to your professionally recorded sound. Needless to say, it saves you countless hours in post.

PluralEyes 3 now ships in one package—one price and serial number. Red Giant has integrated features from DualEyes to enable PluralEyes to become a standalone app, supporting multiple workflows. It's also 20x faster than PluralEyes 2.

There's also a new timeline-based UI that visually displays the syncing process happening in real time, as well as new "test and tweak" features that give you more control for the sync, such as Two-Up View and Snap to Sync.

PluralEyes 3 for Mac is available for $199 for new users or $79 if you're a user of PluralEyes 2 and DualEyes. There also will be a free update to the Windows version and Avid Media Composer when they become available.

For more information, visit www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/pluraleyes/.

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