If you’re a filmmaker working with 3D visual effects and finishing, the Flame Family may already be part of your toolkit. It's been used to help create stunning visuals in Kong: Skull Island, Game of Thronesand many other popular films and television shows.

Similar to Adobe and Magic Bullet, Autodesk offers both à la carte and bundled software to get your hands on. Dubbed Flame 2018 Family, the bundle includes Flame, Flare, Flame Assist and Lustre. The software received its third update this week, highlighting pipeline flexibility, speed, and support for VR and HDR formats.

To briefly overview its functionality: Flame is the heart of the software and is the workhorse and creative tool for visual effects finishing and 3D compositing. Flame Assist is a timeline-centric platform for Flame that allows you to create sequences, add sound and more, while Lustre is its real-time color grading tool. Flare is similar to Adobe’s Creative Cloud in the sense that it provides multi-user collaborations and includes a slew of tools for 3D compositing, tracking, text, masking, keying, and relighting.

Flame 360 VR ViewingFlame 360 VR ViewingCredit: Autodesk

With update 2018.3, we now have options for 360° VR viewing mode, HDR waveform monitoring, motion wrap tracking, the ability to load assets and built custom batches via Python API and more.

Update Details:

  • Action Selective: Apply FX color to an image surface or the whole action scene via the camera
  • Motion Warp Tracking: Organically distort objects that are changing shape, angle and form with new 32-bit motion vector-based tracking technology
  • 360° VR Viewing Mode: View LatLong images in a 360° VR viewing mode in the Flame player or any viewport during compositing and manipulate the field of view
  • HDR Waveform Monitoring: Set viewport to show luminance waveform; red, green, blue (RGB) parade; color vectorscope or 3D cube; and monitor a range of HDR and wide color gamut (WCG) color spaces including Rec2100 PQ, Rec2020 and DCI P3
  • Shotgun Software Loader: Load assets for a shot and build custom batches via Flame’s Python API, and browse a Shotgun project for a filtered view of individual shots
  • User-Requested Improvements for Action, Batch, Timeline and Media Hub

The update is free for current 2018 subscribers and can be accessed in your Autodesk Account. You can try Flame for 30 days for free here.

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Editing & Post-Production