combustion 3 update for windows available now combustion 3 for Mac began shipping last week. With the cleaner booth at MacWorld as big as ever and cleaner XL for Windows as popular as ever…what’s up with the desktop? Mark Twain couldn’t have said it any better — the reports of cleaner’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
With all the rumors on the web, we’ve been noticably quiet during the past month, even with an assault of email questions. It’s only because we wanted to take the time to get the story right.. And it’s clear that discreet is committed to maintaining an encoding product. As far as selling the product to Apple? — uhhh…yeah….riiiiight….not at this point…..
First, a recap of the last couple of months. On November 18th of last year, Autodesk, Inc. announced that it would remove 18 percent of its work force and close several offices as cost cutting measures. The company has pretty much had the same number of employees since early 2001 — they plan to cut up to 650 jobs from the payroll within the next year. How does this impact discreet? On December 3rd, the company announced changes in the organization as part of Autodesk’s overall restructuring plan. The 3 discreet business units (Animation, DTV, and Advanced Systems) all now report to Marc Petit, VP of product development, and Martin Vann, VP of Systems Sales and Marketing.
The Cupertino Autodesk office where Cleaner development was being done will be closed and certain operations of that office will be relocated to offices in San Francisco and Montreal. According to Bob Stockwell, Product Marketing Manager, combustion and cleaner, “cleaner has not been killed. We have relocated development to Montreal under Marc Petit. Encoding is considered a critical component of our product strategy and we are always evaluating our technologies and how to continue to improve and adapt them to meet and anticipate the needs of our clients and the market.” The move will also allow for tighter integration between all of the products of discreet’s product line.
At this point, it looks as though Cleaner and the technology behind the product are squarely in the hands of discreet. Discreet has “no plans to divest the cleaner product line or technology,” according to Stockwell. “Rather, we will continue to explore the opportunities these products and technology provide our entire product line and technology base.”
Discreet plans to release maintainance release updates for cleaner 6 for Macintosh and cleaner XL for Windows. These updates will have codec updates and other fixes and the cleaner 6 version will support QuickTime 6.5.
As noted here, Combustion 3 for Macintosh began shipping last week. As an fxguide.com aside, Macintosh users clammored for a version of Combustion to be released, and now need to put actions behind their words. Upgrade. Upgrade. Upgrade. Buying copies of combustion and cleaner is really the only way to keep it coming for the mac….without sales, it simply isn’t going to happen. The RE:Flex warper and morpher is worth the cost alone. Combustion can be purchased directly from discreet or other retailers. Hey…as a bonus you geta a free combustion t-shirt from discreet if you buy it before the end of January.
The new version includes:
- Editing Operator – combustion 3 for Mac is the first visual effects application with integrated editing, enabling users to be more productive by performing the types of creative editing tasks most frequently needed by effects artists directly within the application.
- Expressions � The JavaScript-based expressions allows combustion artists to easily create complex animations�eliminating tedious repetitive work.
- Flash Output � Artists can utilize the vector paint and animation interface tools in combustion 3 software to create and output Macromedia Flash animations, extending the range of services they can offer to their clients.
- RE:Flex� warper and morpher � With RE:Vision Effects’ RE:Flex plug-in, warping and morphing are directed through the combustion 3 rotoscoping tools rather than with a grid of tedious mesh points. The result is a seamless and intuitive workflow integrated into combustion 3 at no additional cost, adding a US $600 value for customers.
The Windows version of combustion has been shipping for months, with the Macintosh version lagging behind. As many know, the Combustion development team has been based in Montreal for over a year now (remember the killing Combustion rumors of last year?). Stockwell noted that discreet is “committed to future development of combustion.” Research has already begun on what will make its way into the next version of combustion.
In other happenings, Fire/Smoke 6.0 are now shipping as is the new inferno/flame version 5.5/8.8. Both products include the new Master Keyer – a great addition to the compositing and effects toolset. The editing products also get support for multi-res as well — a huge feature. Development continues in Montreal on Inferno 6.0/Flame 9.0 — see the NAB report from last year for the technology preview (it’ll be interesting to see what makes it in). The next generation product referred to as toxik and DMA (Discreet Media Architecture) — while not seen publicly since NAB 2001 — is still on target to be shown again at next years event in Las Vegas. And, of course, you won’t want to miss the inferno/flame fxguide live 2004 — to be held on Sunday April 18th before the discreet users group meeting. Details to come soon.