Red Giant Unveils Powerful VFX Toolkit for After Effects

Red Giant has a lot of tools. Between Colorista, Magic Bullet, Trapcode, and Pluraleyes, there's a lot there to keep track of, and that's not even mentioning its onset media tools. 

Oh, and Universe!   

The company make a lot of things. 

But Red Giant is taking a step towards simplifying the lineup, announcing today its new VFX Suite—a collection of 9 powerful GPU accelerated tools for use directly within Adobe After Effects. The toolset includes:

• VFX Supercomp
• VFX Optical Glow
• VFX King Pin Tracker
• VFX Spot Clone Tracker
• VFX Chromatic Displacement
• VFX Knoll Light Factory
• VFX Primatte Keyer
• VFX Shadow
• VFX Reflection

Let's go over a few tools that are particularly exciting.

Knoll Light Factory

First up is a revision of one of our favorite tools, Knoll Light Factory, with version 3.1 included in the new Suite. 

If you haven't used it, Knoll is one of the most customizable and sophisticated tools out there for creating realistic, dynamic lens flare effects when you need them. 

While lens flares can definitely be overused, Knoll can be used to create very subtle effects that can help an edit hide an effect, or to go all out for an over the top self-conscious lens flare, all with tremendous ease. With more than 200 presets inspired by iconic films and lens types, this is a popular plugin for a reason.

Supercomp

Supercomp takes the toolset available natively in After Effects a step further, adding 15 separate GPU accelerated tools to help your composites feel more realistic. With tools like LightWrap, which helps create the sensation that the lighting of a scene is naturally "wrapping" around the composited element, Supercomp should help you get to a realistic looking composite faster and with less time spent waiting.

Primatte Keyer 6

Now up to 3x faster than earlier versions, Primatte Keyer 6 should make chroma key shots faster and easier than ever before. The algorithmically driven tool should allow users to get to a useable key faster and have to spend less time on noodly cleanup, roto, and garbage mattes and more time on creative work.

King Pin Tracker

Planar tracking, the ability to identify a "plane" in space and then sit a compositing object on top of it, is one of the most powerful tools in a motion graphic or VFX artist's toolset. A planar tracker is key if you want your titles attaching to parts of the scene, or you want to have comped elements moving along with a moving camera. The King Pin track provides that functionality in Red Giant with features like start and end pins, transform pins, and more all within the After Effects interface.

Spot Clone Tracker

The "clone" tool is one of the addictions we all have with photoshop, to remove an errant hair, grain of sand, or blemish quickly and easily. Spot Clone Track brings that tool to motion and combines it with a tracker, so you can do spot clone replace actions on a moving shot.

All that, along with tools for sophisticated optical glows, reflections, shadows, and more sophisticated Chromatic displacement are all tied together in the VFX Suite.

This suite will replace the previous separate Keying Suite and Effects Suite, though Red Giant will continue to support the two; you can keep on using them into the future if they are the tool you like, and they aren't going to magically stop opening.

Red Giant has also announced that there will be an upgrade path for Keying and Effects customers, which is appreciated.

Each of the 9 VFX tools can be purchased separately for $99 to $399, or you can buy the entire VFX Suite for $999 and save yourself almost $500. Available now.

Check out the site to learn more.

Source: Red Giant