Lighting and Workflow – Autodesk – NAB 2011
April 12, 2011 – Las Vegas, NV – Autodesk debuted thier 2012 Creative Finishing Software products at the NAB show this year. Based on optimized workflow and productivity improvements, the tools were introduced on multiple platforms. The software that was featured at the show included Flame Premium 2012, Flare, Smoke 2012, Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2012 and 3ds Max Entertainment Creation Suite 2012.
The products are now available on both Windows and Mac platforms. The main overall enhancement is the interoperbility of tools – the 3ds Max product now has a 1 button interface to other tools including flash. The flame and smoke products now have support for 3D CGI effects which allow 2D elemets to be added with 3D effects. They also introduced a number of relighting products. The lighting tool now supports depth, so it can be re-dimensionalized to support S3D development. The lighting tool is also supplemented by a defocus tool and depth of field control. The depth of field tool does not follow a fixed workflow path, so the tool can be utilized in any order in the work flow.
These tools allow for the full pre-visualization of the CGI being created in an S3D flow. This creates a flow that has the planning done before the shoot, and simplifies both pre-production and reduces tasks in post-production. The tools also support the FBX asset/data management for 3D flows for TV/film/gaming. There currently is no AAF for 2D data creation.
The current tools are designed for productivity and maximization of creativity without the tools getting in the way. This requires the tool support the largest flexibility in development, so 32 and 64 bit versions are supported as well as GPU acceleration and GPGPU technology. To support these tools there are programs such as project Skyline which is designed for the gaming community and is a new database architecture. The broadcast environment can use the new environment also to manage big data for the design creation supply chain.
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