Visual Effects and Rotoscoping

Official Press Release from Silhouette FX

May 12th, 2008 – Available immediately is a major new release of the industry leading rotoscoping and paint system, Silhouette. v3 breaks new ground and greatly raises the bar in the post-production tools industry. Leading a list of major improvements and innovations is an entirely stereoscopic workflow. All capabilities of Silhouette including its award winning roto and paint as well as its new keying, effects and compositing features are stereo enabled. EXR integrated stereo footage can be used as well as media in any of Silhouette’s newly expanded range of file formats. Clips can be previewed as anaglyphs, side-by-side or stacked. Many of the world’s foremost special effects systems are “node-based”. Silhouette
has always been node-based as well but the nodes have been hidden. In v3, Silhouette’s node basis is brought out to the user with roto and paint being just two of the available nodes. The keyer node quickly and simply creates mattes with minimal parameters even if you are dealing with fine hair detail, smoke, or reflections. It is easy to use, yet provides the needed tools when faced with good, bad, or ugly shots — tools such as DV/HD de-artifacting, multiple matte creation, color suppression and sophisticated matte manipulation. The Effects node allows you to apply the many brush types available in the Paint node as filter effects to shapes or layers. The ability to apply the brushes as filter effects was previously available in Paint, but has been separated out into a separate node laying the basis for future additions. Another major enhancement to Silhouette is its new planar tracker. A markerless image tracking system, planar tracking uses thousands of points within the areas defined by user created shapes. You can select either single or multiple layers as well as multiple shapes within layers for planar tracking. Each layer will have a different
tracking result based on the shapes contained within that layer and is transformed automatically during the tracking process. Other additions to Silhouette’s tracking SILHOUETTEFX INTRODUCES WORLD’S FIRST
STEREO ROTO, PAINT, KEYING AND EFFECTS SUITE Version 3 of the acclaimed roto and paint system Silhouette has been released. In addition to a fully stereoscopic workflow, v3 adds planar tracking,X?Splines, comprehensive keyer, 64?bit versions, and a lot more. If it has to do
with rotoscoping or paint, it’s in here!

More capabilities include the import of Shake® tracker files and many new options for exporting or converting tracker information. Silhouette’s paint system (which formerly had been an option but is now standard) has been greatly enhanced. Of its stereo integration, Aidan Fraser of Laika had this
to say: “I just finished one of the most difficult rig paint-out shots I’ve ever seen. It simply wouldn’t have been possible without the stereo tools in Silhouette 3.” Silhouette paint now allows four simultaneous clone sources backed by an unlimited number of clips and sources can be flipped, flopped, and automatically match moved against any layer.
v3 adds support for X-Splines, an extremely flexible yet easy-to-use shape type. On export to systems that are not X-Spline capable, the shapes are automatically and faithfully converted into Bezier splines.

Other enhancements include:

- 64-bit execution under compatible Windows and Linux operating systems
enabling efficient handling of frames far larger than 4K.
- 3:2 pulldown and pullup are now supported to allow for conversion of film
footage from 30fps to 24fps(pullup) and 24fps to 30fps(pulldown).
- IFF, PNG and TARGA file formats can now be loaded and saved and
support for DPX rendering has been added.
- As an After Effects® version of Silhouette itself will no longer be sold, a free
After Effects Silhouette Shape Import/Export plug-in has been created to
import and export Silhouette shapes.
- Silhouette can now import shapes in the Shake 4.x SSF shape format.
- Shapes can now be exported in Elastic Reality format.

Pricing information is as follows: Silhouette v3: $995, Silhouette Floating License
Server and 3 Licenses: $3495, Silhouette v3 Floating License - Add On: $1295.
Upgrade information is as follows: Silhouette Roto/Paint Standalone to Silhouette
v3 Upgrade: $195, Silhouette Roto Standalone to Silhouette v3 Upgrade: $295,
Silhouette Roto/Paint AE/FCP to Silhouette v3 Standalone Upgrade: $345,
Silhouette Roto AE/FCP to Silhouette v3 Standalone Upgrade: $395.