Leading VFX software developer, The Foundry, is delighted to introduce its new plug-in set FurnaceCore at NAB. Furnace was originally developed to enable visual effects artists to increase productivity and help streamline labour-intensive, post-production workflows. In recognition of this, in February 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honoured The Foundry’s development team with a Sci-Tech Award for the technology behind its Furnace image processing suite.

Furnace is now embedded in the workflow pipelines of major post-production facilities and has been used on many Hollywood blockbusters including XMen 3, Watchmen, Spider Man 3, Pirates of The Caribbean and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The increasing popularity of Furnace with the VFX artist community has led to requests for access to a smaller set of Furnace’s tools, optimised for common tasks.

In response to these community needs, The Foundry is launching FurnaceCore which offers the twelve ‘core’ plug-ins from the full Furnace toolset. The plug-ins in FurnaceCore have undergone many enhancements resulting in much improved usability, with simplified parameter layouts and new documentation. The release will be accompanied by online video tutorials showing how to get the best out of the plug-ins.

FurnaceCore will be released in Q2 on Fusion at $1500 and FurnaceCore for Nuke will be incorporated into NukeX when it is released in Q3. A slightly different FurnaceCore set of eight plug-ins is currently available on Final Cut Pro for $500.

FURNACECORE PLUG-INS:

On Nuke & Fusion

Kronos, high quality time warping based on optical flow technologies
MatchGrade, copy the grade from one sequence to another
MotionBlur, add realistic blur based on the motion in the scene
DeNoise, removes or reduces all kinds of noise from your footage
DeGrain, optimised removal of film grain from a plate
ReGrain, add grain to your clean plates or graphics from stock or sample your own
DeFlicker2, removes in-scene flicker from light sources of all kinds
Steadiness, smooth a shots camera move, or lock off a shot completely
RigRemoval, remove unwanted foreground objects from a shot
Align, aligns similar shots automatically
WireRemoval, quickly clean up wires
VectorGenerator, generates motion vectors for use in other nodes (Nuke only)

On Final Cut Pro

Kronos, MatchGrade, MotionBlur, DeNoise, ReGrain, DeFlicker and DirtRemoval

About The Foundry
The Foundry is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post production. On February 10th 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award ® to The Foundry’s development team for the Furnace image processing suite. The company now holds a duo of AMPAS Sci-Tech Award winning products including the high-end compositing system Nuke.

The Foundry’s products support a wide range of host platforms including After Effects, Autodesk ® Media and Entertainment Systems, Avid DS, Baselight, Film Master, Nuke, Scratch, Shake and Final Cut Pro.

The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles. For more information please visit The Foundry’s website at www.thefoundry.co.uk, or call +44 20 7434 0449.