New Tools for Relighting, Enhanced Stereoscopic 3D Workflow and CG Interoperability

LAS VEGAS — (BUSINESS WIRE) — April 11, 2011 — Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) is now shipping Autodesk Flame Premium 2012, the company’s production-proven creative 3D visual effects and finishing software. Introduced in late 2010, Flame Premium combines the award-winning Autodesk Flame visual effects toolset with a powerful timeline workflow for conform and editing, as well as real-time color grading. Flame Premium 2012 features groundbreaking tools for relighting in post, an enhanced stereoscopic 3D (S3D) finishing workflow, and improved integration with Autodesk 3D animation software.

“While budgets and production schedules shrink, creative expectations are growing,” said Marc Petit, senior vice president, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “Our 2012 lineup prioritizes artistic control and efficient workflows from production through post-production. The relighting tools in Flame Premium are a great example of how Autodesk continues to innovate with next-generation finishing tools that empower artists to tell the immersive 3D stories of today, and tomorrow.”

Relighting in Autodesk Flame Premium

With the introduction of relighting capabilities in Flame Premium 2012, artists can now take advantage of the real-world 3D information inherent to their images or composites and dramatically change the look of their final scenes. With relighting, artists can radically adjust and refine the look of their scenes through a variety of lighting, shading, shadows, 3D lens flares and volumetric light rays tools – all of which can have their effects isolated by GMasks directly in the Flame Premium Action 3D compositing environment. Flame Premium also uses image-based lighting and camera mapping techniques from the CG (computer graphics) software world that, when combined with certain other relighting tools, enable artists to have total control over the final look of their imagery.

“The introduction of new light types, true shadow casting, rays and lens flares in Flame will give us an immense creative and artistic edge. Flame is redefining the term ‘3D compositing,’ proving it has always been and always will be the leader in post-production and visual effects.” — Ara Khanikian, Senior Flame Artist, Rodeo FX

Stereoscopic 3D Finishing Enhancements

Flame Premium includes a comprehensive toolset for S3D visual effects and finishing: powerful technical and creative S3D compositing and graphic design tools, multilayer S3D timeline editing, and real-time S3D color grading. In addition, the advanced S3D creative tools can benefit from the creative relighting tools that are now available in Flame Premium.

Major Improvements to Workflow with Autodesk Animation Products

Post-production facilities rely on efficient workflows between CG and finishing. With Flame Premium, artists can more quickly and easily use Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max CG content in their projects — from render passes, Autodesk FBX software models or animated geometries. Furthermore, the new Gateway Clip gives facilities an open and flexible way to build a finishing workflow using XML that is customized to their CG finishing pipeline needs.

Autodesk Flare 2012

Autodesk Flare takes advantage of the complete set of Flame creative tools and provides facilities with more access to the tools they rely on to get their work done. Streamlining workflows between Flame Premium and Maya or 3ds Max, Flare is procedural compositing software that can be used in a broad range of workflows to deliver finished content for commercials, feature films or television – even in stereoscopic 3D. With the Flare 2012 release, facilities have more reasons than ever to adopt multiple Flare licenses as part of their creative 3D finishing workflows.

“MPC recently purchased 20 Flare floating licenses to split between our London and Los Angeles facilities. We found Flare to be an ideal complement to our in-house Flame systems. It uniquely allowed us to improve our commercials compositing workflow through simultaneous collaboration between artists and sites as well as on-set for precomp work on a laptop.” — David Spilsbury, Head of Commercials Technology, MPC

“We have acquired 20 Flare licenses for use across The Mill’s three VFX studios. The benefit of this means that we can float them around our studios in London, New York and Los Angeles, to whichever team needs them. They are also the ideal support and training machine for budding Flame operators.” — Roy Trosh, Group Technical Director, The Mill

During the NAB Show (April 11-14, 2011), Autodesk will showcase its Digital Entertainment Creation solutions with the 2012 releases of Flame Premium, Flame, Flare, Autodesk Smoke for Mac OS X 2012, Autodesk Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2012 and Autodesk 3ds Max Entertainment Creation Suite 2012 at booth SL2120. Customer presentations and product demonstrations will be streamed live on AREA — Autodesk’s digital entertainment community.

Product Availability

Flame Premium, Flame and Flare are now shipping. For features, benefits and video tutorials, visit the Flame Premium product center and read the creative finishing blogs on AREA.

About Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc., is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries -- including the last 16 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects -- use Autodesk software to design, visualize and simulate their ideas. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art software for global markets. For additional information about Autodesk, visit www.autodesk.com .