FXHOME has announced that many of its VFX, compositing, motion graphics and grading effects will soon be available for the first time for Aft
er Effects, Vegas Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro and Motion. The versatile plugins collection from the software developer’s popular HitFilm video editing programme
The plugins package takes the many effects present in HitFilm 2 Ultimate into multiple platforms, and ranges from visual effects and professional green screen compositing to procedural motion graphics and cinematic colour grading.
Filmmakers, visual effects artists and motion graphics designers will be able to utilise this diverse pack of plugins to create organic particle arrays, design light flares, generate procedural fire and lightening, and add 3D muzzle flashes to action sequences. The colourist’s toolkit enables pro skin retouching, cine style looks, bleach bypass and day-for-night processing and film damage effects. It also offers distortion and warp effects, rolling shutter correction and temporal manipulation.
With something for every project, users only need to buy the plugins once and they get two licences to install them in all their post-production software, including After Effects, Vegas Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro and Motion.
Joshua Davies, FXHOME founder and CEO, explained: “We have taken the advanced technology in HitFilm 2 Ultimate to create a plugins package that has been designed to work seamlessly across all the industry-leading host platforms. GPU-accelerated and optimised for high performance and professional rendering quality, this collection brings HitFilm’s great range of visual effects to a broader audience.”
The plugins have been designed to fit seamlessly into a user’s workflow wherever they are needed. Engineered to provide maximum power and versatility, when combined with a video editing platform they form an unrivalled post-production toolkit. Each plugin is highly customisable and useful in a practical workflow. With GPU hardware acceleration, the plugins also utilise the power of a computer’s graphics card for fast performance, even when working in full 3D with complex effects, to enable 3D visual effects and compositing to be rendered quickly. Professional hardware will also be able to display many complex effects in near real time.
FXHOME has a close relationship with many YouTube stars who began using its video editing software early on. Freddie Wong, co-creator of VGHS and RocketJump Studios, describes HitFilm 2 Ultimate as “…in our opinion, the single best software package for aspiring visual effects artists and filmmakers.”
Ryan Connolly, creator and host of Film Riot, commented, “HitFilm is a love letter to the indie and no budget filmmaking community and its effects and presets show that FXHOME is a company that really understands filmmakers’ needs. With HitFilm effects now available to AE, Premiere, Vegas and FCPX users, it’s an even bigger win for visual effects artists and motion graphics designers everywhere.”
Key plugins features include:
- Professional compositing, with everything a VFX artist needs for professional keying and matte creation, including a fully featured chroma key for green screen removal and a wide range of tools for perfecting and enhancing composites
- Cinematic colour grading for colour correction and video grading, with advanced skin retouching, bleach bypass and 3-strip colour processing, day-for-night, grade matching and cine style for replicating classic Hollywood looks, enabling filmmakers to make the biggest visual impact with their videos
- Organic particle arrays to create complex systems of thousands of particles with extensive fractal shape and dispersion controls
- Pyro effects for explosive visual effects, including customisable, procedural fire simulation and fully animated lightning and electricity, enable realistic fire and lightning simulations. Because they are fully customisable and versatile, the plugins suit both extravagant fantasy effects and subtle, realistic atmospheric enhancements
- Light flares and lens effects for designing beautiful lens flares and adding procedural lens dirt, anamorphic streaks, volumetric light rays and high detail glows, which can be combined to create unique, beautiful and convincing visuals
- 3D particle-based muzzle flashes, which can be rotated and positioned in true 3D and are infinitely variable and customisable to suit any weapon type to create exciting action sequences
- Grunge and film damage repair to create vintage and archival looks, with additional plugins to add film damage to video, simulate a poor TV broadcast, generate procedural film grain and much more
- Video clean up to get the best results even from problematic footage, using the clone stamp to duplicate or hide parts of the frame, remove unwanted grain and correct rolling shutter distortion.
HitFilm Plugins will be available to purchase from 16th April 2014 and costs USD499/GBP409/EUR469.
The HitFilm YouTube channel features tutorials, filmmaking techniques and occasional short films: http://www.youtube.com/fxhomehitfilm