Autodesk Flare

Autodesk® Flare™ visual effects software is a creative companion to Autodesk® Flame® and Autodesk® Inferno® visual effects software.

Featuring the same creative capabilities and Batch functionality as Flame and Inferno, Autodesk Flare allows you to work with the best 3D compositing and visual effects tools in the business, while allowing you to scale your creative business incrementally.
You can use Flare software for 3D compositing and advanced graphic design without tying up your Flame or Inferno suite.

• Batch procedural compositing environment, Action 3D compositing with support for third-party plug-ins and Autodesk® Burn® background rendering solution
• Creative tools for keying, paint, tracking, 3D text, color correction, warping, and morphing
• Multiple Flare stations can be connected to Flame systems in a facility, allowing several projects to be worked on concurrently with no impact on the Flame artist
• Flare can be used as a stand-alone assistant station
• As a software-only offering, Flare supports floating licenses to provide flexibility within your facility
• Can be used for performing supportive tasks such as rotoscoping, file I/O, retouching, dust removal, project setup, and key extraction

Detailed Features

Action

• Intuitive and interactive 3D visual effects design environment. Ideal for in-context, creative decision-making and brainstorming.
  16 x 9 user interface enhances workflow. Object node bin and Object menu make it easier to add and control elements in the scene.
• Supports media layers at many image resolutions or aspect ratios. Layer effects can be quickly copied from one layer to another.
  3D particle systems for realistic effects ranging from rain and snow to smoke and explosions.
• 3D deformation, meshes, and extended bicubics for control and manipulation of 2D surfaces and 3D models.
  Control of the Displacement Maps tool allows you to manipulate the position, scale, rotation, and animation parameters of a displacement map.
• Apply normal and displacement mapping to 3D geometries such as 3D text and objects created with 3D applications.
  Duplication of animations by applying settings to other objects.
• Multiple cameras with true-to-life, user-definable lens and camera properties such as depth-of-field. Animate and switch between camera views. Each layer offers independent camera placement and animation for sophisticated effects.
• Import 3D geometry, including NURBS objects, lights, and camera data from 3D animation packages using Autodesk® FBX® interchange format. Export camera data, axis positions, and 3D point clouds via FBX.
• Export camera data and import 3D geometry, light, and camera data from 3D animation packages using FBX interchange format.
• Floating-point processing extends the OpenEXR® workflow. Composite high dynamic range image (HDRI) files directly in Action and composite CG elements from applications such as Autodesk® Maya® or Autodesk® Toxik^TM software.
• Multiple animatable light sources.
• Integrated 2D and 3D tracking and stabilization.
• Texture mapping with material property and shading controls. Map or project textures onto objects.
• Normal Map Tool uses 3D-generated render passes to simulate lighting and shadow detail on flat images and relight 3D scenes.
• Integrated 3D character generator for advanced text creation.
• Import Adobe® Photoshop® PSD files directly into Action while maintaining layers, blend modes, and transparency.
• Interoperable with DVE setups from Autodesk® Smoke® editing and finishing systems.
• Multitrack clip support builds an Action setup from the video tracks of the clip.

Keying and Rotoscoping

• Keyer-fast, accurate RGB, YUV, HLS, RGBCMYL, and custom keying: linear and user-definable keying capabilities with luminance remapping, softness, shrink, and erode; advanced spill suppression and edge color replacement capabilities.
• Modular Keyer-customizable pipeline for advanced keying capability and control over the final result. Algorithms such as RGB, YUV, RGBCMYL, HLS, and Channel, are available in the Modular Keyer, which also supports 16-bit floating point processing.
• GMasks quickly remove or extract elements from live footage with advanced three-spline vector technology. Customize softness at each point on the spline. Motion blur may be applied selectively to multiple shapes.
• Import free-form GMask geometries into Action and extrude them to create 3D objects to more effectively create the illusion of depth and design graphical looks.
• GMask geometries imported into Action can be animated.
• Tracer-the accurate edge-keying tool. Based on GMasks, it is ideal for keying hair, fur, and other finely detailed object boundaries that aren't necessarily shot on green or blue screen.

Paint

• High-quality, integrated paint system for advanced motion graphics, digital matte painting, rotoscoping, wire removal, and image retouching.
• Customizable, user-definable brushes.
• Record and animate brush strokes.
• Create and animate color gradients, vector shapes, and cutouts.
• Load mattes to protect areas of the clip during painting.
• Paint node integrated in Batch for easy painting or touch-up of any element in a complex scene. Paint, blur, reveal, or clone layers or mattes, and feed the result to downstream nodes while viewing in context. Change source clips without having to repaint strokes.

Tracking and Stabilization

• Motion analysis for 2D tracking of position, scale, and rotation-track up to 1,000 points in a single pass.
  Advanced tracking features include editable tracking data, reverse tracking, keyframe locking, field-based analysis, and curve smoothing functions.
• Tracked data can be applied to image layers, GMask shapes, Warper meshes, Distort splines, and Paint brush strokes.
• 3D tracking extracts original, real-world camera information from a 2D clip. Recalibration options and reference plane display for refining accuracy.
• Object tracking in the 3D tracker helps you isolate moving objects in a complex scene.
• View results of a 3D track inside of Action for easier identification of correct anchor positions when inserting objects into a 3D space.
• Auto-stabilization node to counteract shakes or bumps in a camera's motion while retaining the overall camera move.
  Track an object based on the region of interest.

Color Correction

• Interactive adjustment of gamma, gain, offset, hue, saturation, and contrast. Apply animatable settings to channels or independently to R, G, and B.
• Intuitive hue shift and tint color wheel for fast, accurate color balancing. Visual color sampling palette for color matching.
• Interactive Histogram and Curves editing modes for subtle, precision tweaking of color components.
• Independent controls for color correcting the image's shadow, midtone, and highlight regions-features user-definable luminance ranges.
• Match feature for fast scene-to-scene color correction.
• Selective feature for sampling up to three different color regions for isolated correction.
• 16-bit floating-point processing in the Color Warper and Color Corrector.
• UI features include three pressure-sensitive trackballs, a high-quality RGB vector scope, and a 3D histogram for color monitoring.

2D and 3D Text

• Support for Adobe® Type 1 PostScript®, Microsoft® OpenType®, Apple® TrueType® fonts, Asian (CID) fonts, ASCII text file import, and extended Unicode font sets.
• Formatting and layout capabilities, spell checking, custom dictionaries.
• Easy generation of matte layers. 3D text creation and animation in Action module.
• 3D Path is a spline object in the Action module to animate the shape and length of a 3D text path.
• Character-focused animations allow you to animate letters individually and cascade an animation across letters.
• Refined Extrusion Controls allow you to dynamically move 3D text with complex animated shapes or 3D animated text that twirl and twist while being extruded.

Warping and Morphing

• Choice of mesh- or spline-based tools for intuitive, interactive warping and morphing.
• Distort workflow enhanced for improved control of desired result. Multiple splines can be animated independently.
• Warp and morph stationary or moving elements. Animate splines, mesh points, and axes with tracking data to fit motion, scale, and rotation.
• Lens distortion tool applies or removes distortion artifact to a clip for integration with other footage.
• Open splines in distort transform image distortions quickly and more efficiently.

Image Processing: Plug-ins, Filters, and Optics

• Filters including sharpen, soften, emboss, and glow, as well as user-customizable convolution filter matrices.
  Lanczos filtering provides high-quality resizing when down-scaling images, preserving edge detail during image resizing.
• Pixel math operators and blend modes for limitless compositing effects.
• Motion analysis tool produces forward and reverse motion vectors. Motion Blur provides motion-estimated timewarps and motion blurs. Selectively set object blur based on relative motion.
• Support for many third-party ADN Sparks® plug-ins.

Batch

• Advanced flowchart representation of the compositing workflow and clip history to display operations performed on a clip, allowing for easy editing of complex visual effects.
• Monitor downstream results with in-context viewers. Show the result at selected nodes while modifying others.
• Batch nodes support 16-bit floating point processing.
• Custom node bins save effects that you create so you can reapply them.
• Node grouping with user-definable group display settings. Cleanly organizes the schematic display while permitting rapid switching between node menus.
• RGB Blur to create Box, Gaussian, Radial, and Directional blurs.
• 3D Blur tool creates optical blurs using vector passes and z-depth maps.
• Glow node used for creating stylized animations, lighting simulations, and glows.
• Motif tool, a symmetrical pattern (Kaleidoscope) generation tool, can be used to make textures with ease.
• Render soft effects in a clip from Autodesk Smoke. Create Timewarp, Resize, Blend, and audio soft effects in the Batch timeline.
• Improved source and record timeline editing workflow.
• Segment FX permits uncommitted visual effects to be dropped into edited timeline segments.
• Proxy processing allows for fast interaction even when working at high resolutions.
• Intelligent caching and bypassing functions allow automatic or user-defined pre-rendering of parts of the composite, increasing interactivity.
• Scripting with the power of Unix®. Scripts can be used to automate tasks ranging from email notification of render completion to generating Apple® QuickTime® previews.
• Batch Log and Queue Management handle workflow by setting up and prioritizing multiple-render jobs and monitoring progress on a web browser.
• Unified channel editor allows animation curves for different effects to be displayed and modified simultaneously in Batch.
• Digital notepads can be used to annotate nodes and provide reminders and instructions for further work.
  Batch navigation view mode provides a visual representation of the Batch effects tree, resulting in a given Batch effects segment.
• Batch paint is designed for a procedural compositing environment and includes settings to define how paint strokes are applied to the image sequence, the ability to slip the reveal frame offset, as well as the ability to adjust the scale of paint strokes.

Infrastructure

• Supports standard file systems. Multiple Autodesk systems can connect to and share the same storage, such as a SAN or NAS, resulting in significantly faster media access and reduced media duplication (Linux® only).
• Autodesk® Wire® networking for visual browsing and high-speed transfer of clips. Support for InfiniBand® networking protocol delivers faster-than-real-time transfer of clips up to 2K 10-bit resolution.
• Autodesk® Wiretap^TM technology-API provides convenient access to the managed file system by third-party applications.

Motion Estimation Timewarp

• High-quality timewarp for speeding up or slowing down frame rate of a clip.
• Minimizes the telltale ghosting, softening, and stepping artifacts typical of traditional frame-averaging timewarps.
  Powerful optical flow algorithms track changes in image pixels from frame to frame and interpolate movement for crisp, clean rendering of extreme slow motion.
• Enables interaction with onscreen motion vectors to improve accuracy. Speed curves facilitate setup and animation of speed changes.

Animation: Channel Editor

• Easily create and manipulate animations in the ubiquitous Channel Editor.
• 16 x 9 user interface is standardized across Autodesk editing/finishing and visual effects systems applications.
  Animation capabilities include auto-keyframing, motion paths, expressions, and editable spline curves with choice of interpolation and extrapolation modes.
• Convert expression and extrapolated curves into keyframed curves for additional manual control.
• Track Editor lets you view and slide individual keyframes on a track with multiple tracks or keyframes selected.
• Automatic and user-defined filters organize channel display for improved usability in large, complex setups.

Expressions

• Create accurate animations based on user-programmed parameters.
• Library of functions, including mathematical, logical operators, conditional operators, vectors, and constants.
• Parameters can be linked so that an object's rotation varies as a function of its distance from a light source-as you animate the object's position, its rotation is calculated automatically.

Advanced Media Player

• Player maximizes image display and minimizes interface clutter for ideal viewing conditions when playing clips.
• Provides letterbox masking and safe title overlays for viewing of intended result.
• Playback of 8- and 10-bit 4:4:4 PAL, NTSC, HDTV, and 2K (2,048 x 1,556) resolutions at standard frame rates.
• HDR viewer provides a more accurate and flexible view of logarithmic, linear, and video images in modules supporting multiple viewers.

Monitor Calibration and Film Tools

• 3D color lookup tables work with your calibrated display to accurately display a clip as it will appear on its final medium.
• Maintains consistency and precision with Autodesk® Lustre® color grading software.
• Choose to temporarily view a clip with a 3D LUT or apply the 3D LUT process, enabling real-time clip playback.
• Provides tools to match images displayed digitally on a computer monitor to the look of projected film.
• Supports X-Rite and Barco CaliTalk calibration devices for accurate color measurement.
• Import standard color LUTs or create your own using the intuitive tools provided.
• Grain management tools accurately match the grain of different film stocks and enable homogenous grain across disparate elements used in the composite (CGI, scans from different film types.

Audio Tools

• Audio Gain Rubberbanding allows the artist to quickly and easily set audio levels in the timeline.
• Support for AudioDesk® audio workstation software in player and Batch timeline, including audio tools for mixing and mastering audio.
• Import, record, and play back stereo audio.
• Audio editing functions, including cut, slip, and timestretch with pitch correction control.
• Audio mixing capabilities with control of audio levels, pans, and EQ.
• Vari-speed audio scrubbing allows for precise work.
• Display audio waveform for syncing effects to sound.
• VST Audio plug-in support (reverb, modulation, dynamic compression, full parametric EQ).
• Dolby® E audio coding support.
• Soft effects can be applied to audio segments in the timeline.
• Import and export Broadcast Wave and MP3 files.

Input/Output (I/O)

• Import RED ONE R3D^TM format files directly into storage using high-quality debayering settings as isolated files.
• File-based I/O for most popular graphics formats:, including TIFF, PICT, TARGA®, JPEG, Cineon, DPX, SGI®, and Autodesk® Softimage®, Autodesk® 3ds Max®, and Autodesk Maya software formats.
• Import Adobe Photoshop PSD files with options to maintain layer structure or flatten image.
• Import/export QuickTime files: QuickTime animation with alpha and QuickTime motion-JPEG. QuickTime metadata of the time code and reel name information is included when importing or soft-importing.
• Direct ingest of Panasonic® P2 MXF files.
• Support for AVC-Intra media at bit rates of 50 and 100 Mbps.
• Soft import workflow and background proxy generation of soft-imported streaming media files.
• Use existing high-resolution images such as film scans as proxies.
• Support for DV, DV25, DV50, and DVCPRO HD compressed codecs.
• Support for XDCAM and XDCAM HD codecs.
• Import/export Avid DNxHD codec in an Apple QuickTime wrapper.
• Quickly and easily browse and recursively scan clips in P2 and XDCAM media directories.
• Create, save, and load codec encoding profiles to quickly set up and launch encoding jobs.
• Import 16- bit floating-point OpenEXR image files. Framestore storage, export, and editing support for 16-bit floating-point clips.

Interoperability

• Interoperates with Autodesk® Flint®, Autodesk® Inferno®, Autodesk Smoke, Autodesk® Combustion®, Autodesk Toxik, and Autodesk Lustre software and effects systems, and provides support for Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, and other 3D applications.
• Clip compatibility between Autodesk editing and effects applications. Supports multitrack, multilayer clips with containers and gaps.
• Soft-import image and audio files on shared storage without making a local copy, and then publish results back to the open file system.

Workflow and Productivity

• Support for Autodesk® Burn® background rendering solution in Batch and desktop modules, and in the Batch timeline.
• Integrated Autodesk® Backburner^TM monitoring of Burn background renders.
• With the addition of NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 3700, remote render 16-bit floating-point Action setups using the latest GPU-accelerated version of Autodesk® Burn® software.
• Project-based dual-view clip library provides media organization and sharing between separate Autodesk systems.
  Clip history automatically saves setups of rendered clips, providing a nondestructive way to access intermediate results and to make changes at any time.
• Extended search filters (search range of timecode, name, and comment.
• Extensive hotkeys enable instant operation of commands and menu selections. Comprehensive hotkey editor enables flexible user customization.
• Online help and button tooltips provide quick access to documentation and button descriptions.
  Autodesk® WiretapCentral^TM software browses Autodesk systems clip libraries using a network-connected web browser for quicker reviews and approvals

Master Keyer-advanced keying technology.

• Intuitively refine the key by gesturally modifying the matte. Color spill removal and edge blending. Advanced grain removal, specifically tuned to blue and green screens.Create title rolls, crawls, slates, text animations, text along a path, and text effects.
• Colour Warper functionality performs primary and selective color correction, enabling precise fine-tuning with multiple levels of adjustment in a single pass.
• Unlimited audio tracks with 32 tracks of real-time playback. Autodesk® Lustre® Color Management technology includes library of display and conversion lookup tables (LUTs) and monitor calibration software.