Apple has officially announced it has acquired the technologies from Silicon Grail, including the RAYZ and Chalice product lines, according to the Website. As noted in a report here several days ago, Silicon Grail was founded to produce "efficient, cost-effective, software-based compositing solutions optimized for feature film and large format resolutions."

RAYZ 2.2 is the latest incarnation of the company's film compositing software. It was developed from scratch by Silicon Grail's Academy Award winning development team. The software "facilitates the smooth and easy set up of shots. The customizable interface conforms quickly to individual working styles, and permits a very quick test-and-edit shot development cycle." The application previously ran on Linux (Intel, Alpha, PowerPC), Windows NT/2000, and SGI IRIX / IRIX64.

Chalice is a robust and interactive compositor for film industry professionals, offering a sophisticated memory management system and image slicing, which allows large data sets to be processed efficiently. The software was available both IRIX and Windows NT-based workstations. The software is optimized to handle large data sets at feature film resolution and extended color-bit depth and offers comprehensive tools for converting to and from the Kodak Cineon 10-bit log data format. It works in multiple bit depths (8-bit, 16-bit, or float) and offers complete control over setting white points and black levels for compositing computer-generated imagery and for film output.

by MacNN Staff