Discreet, a division of Autodesk, has launched a new version of Combustion, its visual effects product for the Mac and Windows NT platforms, at this week’s SIGGRAPH 2001 expo.
The product offers a unified paint, animation and 3D-compositing environment for visual effects creation. And it’s been “Carbonized” to run natively on Mac OS X, as well as with Mac OS 9.x (with the proper CarbonLib extensions installed).
Due to begin shipping near the end of the year, Combustion 2 will list for US$3,495. The upgrade price from Combustion 1 will be $795.
The update supports new multi-format project capabilities, including video, HDTV, and 64-bit color. New tool sets in Combustion 2 include a fully-editable, interactive schematic view, an intuitive compositing flowchart designed to make complex visual effects creation faster and simpler, a fully-integrated 2D particle system, an expansive and interactive text and motion graphics module and garbage masking technology compatible with inferno, flame, and flint, Discreet’s online visual effects systems.
According to Howard Gutstadt, Combustion product manager, performance enhancements in Combustion 2 include a new, and highly optimized 2D software renderer, as well as high performance OpenGL support for combustion’s new particle system and unique 3D compositing environment, “providing superior on-screen interactivity.” Combustion 2 also has a network rendering task manager similar to 3ds max, providing users with an easy way to manage all their background rendering requirements across multiple distributed systems, he added.
Expanded film capabilities in combustion 2 include support for up to 16-bits per channel color, 10-bit Cineon files, color look-up table (LUT) and advanced grain management tools based on Discreet’s Academy Award-winning visual effects systems. Combustion 2 is designed to work with most popular applications, from Adobe’s media products to Final Cut Pro, Apple’s high-end video editing application.