Silhouette Roto SA

Silhouette FX last week released a stand-alone version of , its rotoscoping application for manually extracting, isolating or affecting a portion of an image. "Battle tested at large high profile effects facilities, the standalone version makes the ubiquitous task of roto more efficient and easier to integrate into production workflow." It also adds motion-stabilized roto, High Dynamic Range support (e.g., DPX, Cineon and OpenEXR), and Shake export to its feature set, according to the company. The plugin is available now for $400, while the standalone version is $500. Both can be purchased in a bundle for $600.

Silhouette Roto also features support for an unlimited number of animated B-Spline or Bezier shapes, an integrated motion tracker, shape-assisted motion tracking, realistic motion blur, composite preview, multi-processor support, OpenGL-accelerated graphics, mask interchange with Adobe After Effects, and more.

Motion-stabilized roto streamlines productivity by eliminating keyframes caused by an object's motion. Silhouette Roto's integrated motion trackers can be used to translate, rotate, and scale objects automatically, sometimes with no shape keyframes at all. The SA version's support of High Dynamic Range image file formats such as, means that roto in over- or under-exposed areas of the image are made easier and more accurate. Silhouette FX also says that exposure compensation is accelerated in hardware within the main user interface of Silhouette Roto.

The SA version, as well as the new 1.0.6 release of the plug-in version, add Shake rotoshape export to Silhouette Roto's range of shape import and export options. Shapes are exported by Silhouette Roto using the Shake SSF format and the included Shake module imports SSF files into Shake 3.5 rotoshape nodes. The application also supports shape import/export for Avid's Elastic Reality, Commotion, Discreet combustion and flame.

by MacNN Staff