July 9 - 7:55pm EDT   GenArts has announced a monthly rental option for its flagship plugin effects, Sapphire. The plugins can be rented for $170 per month; far less than the $1699 purchase cost of the plug-in for After Effects or Final Cut Pro. This option is designed to allow artists who work on a project basis to avoid purchasing the costly full license of the Adobe After Effects plug-in or an Apple Final Cut Pro FxPlug. GenArts allows rental users to apply up to two months of rental fees as credit towards purchasing a permanent license of Sapphire. [full story]

June 17 - 7:10pm EDT   Noise Industries and Idustrial Revolution have launched a new particle generation plug-in, ParticleMetrix, for visual effects applications. The plug-in works with Apple's Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express and Motion, along with Adobe's After Effects CS3 and CS4. ParticleMetrix is based on FxFactory and converts objects and text into particle effects, such as snow, fire, ice, bubbles, sparkles and more. The plug-in provides a library of pre-designed effects, with controls for rotation, size, gravity and other custom settings. [full story]

May 6 - 3:25pm EDT   Boris FX has released a free EPS Extrusion Filter for Boris Continuum Complete 6 AE customers. The filter can be used to import and extrude Adobe Illustrator layered vector logos and graphics in Adobe After Effects. Users can take advantage of full integration with AE's 3D camera and lighting systems, with the same 3D material presets and free-form deformation properties found in other Boris filters. [full story]

May 5 - 7:50pm EDT   SUGARfx has released two new plug-ins, SUGARfx H.U.D., and SUGARfx Radial Wave. Each plug-in extends the visual-effects capabilities of Adobe After Effects CS3/CS4, Apple Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Express. The H.U.D. plug-in layers the original footage to appear as though the viewer is looking through different pieces of technology, such as an old camera or binoculars. [full story]

April 17 - 11:20am EDT   Noise Industries has announced updates for three FxFactory-based plug-ins, intended for use in After Effects CS3 and CS4 along with Final Cut Studio and Express. EasyLooks 2.5 simplifies color grading, with options including diffusion and brightness adjustments. The update implements a faster rendering pipeline, as well as a vignette effect, new overlay controls and a three-way color corrector. [full story]

April 15 - 8:50pm EDT   Boinx Software and Noise Industries have released FxTiles, a collection of 3D filters and transitions based on FxFactory for Final Cut Pro, Motion, Final Cut Express and Adobe After Effects. The plug-ins are designed for video and post-production users. A Flip filter divides the source image into tiles and then flips them into 3D space, while a Shatter filter animates the tiles and a Spread filter offsets each tile. [full story]

February 5 - 4:35pm EST   Boris FX has published Boris Continuum Complete 6 AE, an updated version of its filter collection for After Effects and Premiere Pro. The upgrade provides just under 200 extra filters for video editors, including 13 new ones, such as Extruded Text, Extruded Spline, Layer Deformer and DV Fixer. Users can now also import After Effects Mask Paths into filters, which help to control geometry. [full story]

January 12 - 11:50am EST   Red Giant has released Magic Bullet Quick Looks, a new set of color-correction plug-ins for video editors. The software represents a scaled-down version of Magic Bullet Looks, which provides a full range of tools for tweaking visual styles. Quick Looks eliminates most custom options in favor of over 100 presets, based on the cinematography of famous films and TV shows. [full story]

December 12 - 9:25am EST   Adobe has posted an update to After Effects CS4, the most recent version of its video effects software. The patch, v9.0.1, makes upgrades to Mocha, enabling it to properly read QuickTime files. Also improved are Dynamic Link workflows, though Adobe has not specified the differences in the new code. [full story]

November 20 - 1:50am EST   Cycore has released two effects packages for Adobe After Effects, CFX Path Tools and CFX Sphere Utilities. CFX Path Tools contains two plug-ins that utilize After Effects mask path functions. "Wiggle Stroke" allows for basic frame wiggling or even geometric wire animations. Three basic modifiers are used to displace the stroke, including basic noise, wave noise, and wave functions. "Rakka" can handle multiple repetitions of a layer, allowing it to be animated along a mask path. Controls are provided for the flow design and characteristics. [full story]

November 19 - 1:25pm EST   Digieffects has published a new plug-in collection, Simulate: Camera, intended for the video software in Adobe's Creative Suite 4. The plug-ins are intended to simulate various camera and film errors, which can add interest to footage that is otherwise too sanitized. Archive is used to reproduce various decay and contamination effects, while Overexpose is able to ramp up highlights and generate flickering. [full story]

November 10 - 12:25pm EST   Red Giant Software has released Red Giant Warp, a new sets of effects generation plug-ins for video editing suites. Contained in Warp are three different tools, beginning with Corner Pin, which takes material from outside clips and pins it with a different perspective inside a working video. The plug-in additionally sports extra offset controls and integration with Mocha for After Effects. [full story]

November 7 - 9:30am EST   Noise Industries has released FxFactory Pro 2.0.5, adding support for After Effects CS4 and four new plug-ins. The plug-ins include Random Close Up, Whoosh, Cube and Upscale. Concurrent to the new release is the new free plug-in, Pan and Zoom. FxFactory Pro offers a total of 140 plug-ins, with hardware acceleration and high-quality source compatibility. The plug-ins also allow for customization. [full story]

September 30 - 1:25pm EDT   With Adobe Creative Suite 4 launching next month, Boris FX says it will offer free updates to compatible plug-ins for Boris Continuum customers. The full list includes Boris Continuum Complete 5 AE, Final Effects Complete 5 AE, Boris RED 4.x, Boris FX 9.x, Boris Graffiti 5.x, Boris Blue 2.5, or any Boris Continuum Unit. The company specializes in 3D compositing and vector graphic products for broadcast, post-production, film and multimedia markets. [full story]

September 23 - 1:50pm EDT   Adobe is calling the latest release of its ubiquitous Creative Suite a milestone -- but users expecting a radical change will probably disagree. CS4 is less about fancy new features, and more about workflow -- that is, making the products work better together. The Suite, officially unveiled Monday night, contains hundreds of refinements designed to "bring down the walls" in the creative process, by making it easier to move content between applications and by adopting a consistent user interface across the entire suite. Adobe has also added more web-accessible content and Connect Pro meeting software for instant communication between artists and developers. There are ... [full story]