Complete NAB 2011 Coverage
Autodesk will be showcasing newly released 2012 releases of a number of products that are widely used in the production and post-production world at NAB, including Flame Premium, Flame, Flare, Autodesk Smoke for Mac OS X 2012, Autodesk Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2012 and Autodesk 3ds Max Entertainment Creation Suite 2012.
Marc Petit, senior vice president, Autodesk Media & Entertainment noted in an interview that the company had been working in recent years to timing the release of its products to a single date so they could better integrate their offerings as part of an effort to offer software that both streamlined workflows and offered more creative tools.
"Production efficiency remains a key concern for our customs in a period of tight budgets and schedules," he noted. "The demand for tools to create more sophisticated imagery continues to increase but users still have to manage the costs for creating digital imagery."
To address those issues, the current suite of products is designed to allow creators to easily move content from one program to another while providing additional creative tools.
For example the Flame Premium 2012 includes the Autodesk Flame visual effects toolset with a powerful timeline workflow for increased efficiency. But it also has new tools for relighting in post, an enhanced stereoscopic 3D (S3D) finishing workflow, and improved integration with Autodesk 3D animation software.
"The relighting tools in Flame Premium are a great example of how Autodesk continues to innovate with next-generation finishing tools," he noted. "It enables artists to use 3D in more creative way and provide 3D tools that are much easier to use.
With relighting, artists can radically adjust and refine the look of their scenes through a variety of lighting, shading, shadows, 3D lens flares and volumetric light rays tools.
Flame Premium also uses image-based lighting and camera mapping techniques from the CG (computer graphics) software world that offer better control over the final look, Patel noted.
