Autodesk Combustion 4

Autodesk today announced it has begun shipping for Macintosh. Combustion 4, Autodesk's desktop visual effects software consists of a powerful feature set including vector paint, particles, effects, animation and 3D compositing. Version 4 streamlines the creative process for visual graphics creation by providing enhanced interoperability with third-party desktop applications, improved paint tools and workflow efficiency. "Autodesk Combustion software can be used in the creation process to realize compelling visual effects sequences for motion pictures, television episodics and cutting edge commercials," including Fantastic Four feature film and the Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica television series., etc. It is available now for $1000, while upgrades from v4 are $250.

Combustion 4 features a new Diamond Keyer, the second generation of the company's sophisticated keying algorithms, used to remove green screen/ blue screen background data in film or video. Derived from Autodesk's Discreet Flame, an online visual effects system, it adds a new level of advanced keying technology to Combustion. It also features Time-Warp, a fully key-frameable, time-remapping operator for quickly creating slow motion and speed-up effects and support for B-spline vector shapes as well as a new point-grouping for faster, more efficient rotoscoping.

"This release of Combustion 4 for the Macintosh underscores Autodesk's commitment to providing the best visual effects technology on the best OS platforms that allows motion graphics artists to realize their creative ideas," said Marc Petit, vice president of product development and operations at Autodesk Media & Entertainment division. "Our Macintosh customers will be very pleased with this latest release of Combustion, bringing the advanced Diamond Keyer from our professional systems products to the desktop level."

Autodesk also added support for custom capsules. Users can create and save encapsulated single or grouped operator nodes. Combustion 4 features an optimized 'Fast Gaussian Blur,' which removes fine image detail for a smoothing effect that can simulate motion or a blurred speed look as well as includes a new optimized operator to quickly merge two layers of the same size using any of the transfer nodes in Combustion software. Autodesk to said the update brings enhanced paint features, including new paint tools, grids and rulers, Bspline in paint and new customized brushes.

by MacNN Staff