Autodesk Media and Entertainment

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''"Discreet" redirects here. For the similar word, see discrete.

Autodesk Media and Entertainment, formerly discreet, is based in Montreal, Quebec as the entertainment division of Autodesk Inc., and produces software used in the development of high-value design-intensive content for effects-rich feature films, premier programming, television commercials and interactive gaming. Autodesk Media and Entertainment also provides integrated workflow solutions which focus on storage, management and distribution to complement its primary product line.

Contents

1 History
2 Portfolio
3 Software

3.1 Maya
3.2 3ds Max
3.3 Gmax
3.4 Viz
3.5 Edit
3.6 Flint
3.7 Flame
3.8 Inferno
3.9 Smoke
3.10 Fire
3.11 Lustre
3.12 Combustion
3.13 Cleaner
3.14 Toxik

4 External links

History

Autodesk Media and Entertainment was established in 1999 after Autodesk acquired Discreet Logic, Inc., and merged its operations with Kinetix.

Portfolio

Autodesk Media and Entertainment provides award-winning solutions for the development, management and delivery of digital media for film and television visual effects, color grading and editing, animation, game development, and Web and design visualization.

Software

Software produced by this company include Maya, 3ds Max, Viz, Inferno, Flame, Flint, Fire, Smoke, Lustre, Combustion, Cleaner and Toxik. Autodesk Media and Entertainment's advanced compositing and editing product line, or "systems" line, is mostly called as IFFFS, which stands for Inferno/Flint/Fire/Flame/Smoke.

Maya

Academy Award® winning Autodesk® Maya® software is the world's most powerfully integrated 3D modeling, animation, effects and rendering solution. Autodesk Maya also adds to the quality and realism of 2D graphics. Film and video artists, game developers, visualization professionals, Web and print designers turn to Autodesk Maya to realize their highend creative visions.

Explore the latest version of Autodesk Maya Complete software with the free Personal Learning Edition for non-commercial use. Students of 3D graphics and animation, industry professionals and those interested in breaking into the world of computer graphics have an opportunity to use, and learn, Autodesk Maya Complete to develop much in demand skills.

3ds Max

3ds Max is a professional 3D modeling, animation and rendering software suite which provides advanced tools for character animation, game development, design visualization and visual effects production. 3ds Max supports animators, designers and game developers with a unified object-oriented platform, customizable real-time interface, multiple-processor support and 3D graphics acceleration capabilities, including extension via a wide range of plug-ins and specialized products such as Ball’s character studio.

Gmax

Gmax was a free scaled down version of 3ds Max. Its modeling function is basically the same as 3ds max R4 but with fewer options and tools. There is no capability for photorealistic rendering. Gmax's file format is not compatible with 3DS Max. Gmax can be expanded with special packs usually for designing in video games. It was available for download free of charge. As of 2006, Gmax is a discontinued product, but support information is still available through a free [support website]from Turbo Squid

Viz

Edit

Edit was a real-time, non-linear editing system originally designed to compete with Avid. At the time it was popular due to its low cost (relative to similar Avid products). Edit was discontinued in August of 2002 and support contracts expired one year later. The last version released was version 6.0. (but there was a latest version 6.5 that was released only with Targa 3000 video board)

Flint

Flint is Autodesk Media and Entertainment's entry level compositing platform for systems product line. Flint currently works on a dual Xeon PC with an Nvidia FX3000G gfx card, running Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3. And this makes Flint perform very well in terms of processing speed and interactivity. When it was running on the SGI O2, it had a bad reputation in terms of processing speed. The latest version running on the O2 is 7.1, and current version is 9.5 and it still supports the Octane2 V10 graphics. SGI Octane SI/SE support was dropped after 8.3.2.

Major missing features from Flint are: modular keyer (one of the best tools in FFI for keying work), 10 bits per component images (which is a must for cineon log workflow for film work), 3D tracker.

[Official product page]

Flame

Flame is Autodesk Media and Entertainment's flagship online visual effects system. Flame is a creative solution that enables artists to craft visual effects for feature films, television commercials, music videos and broadcast promos at the highest resolutions from film to high definition television (HDTV). It offers the ability to interactively create, composite and edit highly challenging sequences that merge live action with computer-generated imagery, including new support in version 8 for editing, 3D graphics and mixed resolutions. Post-production facilities and broadcasters integrate Flame within dedicated suites and networked environments.

Flame v9.x runs on these platforms: SGI Tezro V12(SD/HD resolutions), SGI Octane2 V12(SD/HD resolutions), SGI Octane1 MXI/MXE(SD resolution). Since Flame v9.5.5, it also runs on IBM 6217 workstation under Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3 Update 5.(Dual processors dual cores AMD Opteron 252 with Nvidia FX4500G)

[Official product page]

Inferno

Inferno, an online visual effects system, is a creative solution that builds on the feature set of Flame with film tools, and increased image resolution and color control for digital film work, including film-specific tools for grain management, wire and scratch removal and color calibration. It is tuned to provide high levels of feedback on large format imagery and is designed specifically for film and high definition content.

Currently, Inferno runs on Silicon Graphics Onyx2 or higher. Support for the original Onyx has been dropped by version 5, Inferno v4.7.4 was the latest version that runs on Onyx InfiniteReality (IR). Current (2005) Inferno hardware is an SGI Onyx350, mostly with IR4 graphics with 1024MB texture memory, though Onyx2 is still supported.

When Flame and Inferno are compared, they don't have many feature differences. They differ mostly in their processing speeds. Inferno is much faster when compared to Flame configurations. But a newer Flame config can be sometimes faster than an older Inferno configuration. Although many people think that Inferno should be chosen for film work, Flame has the same abilities for film work with slower processing. One important feature difference between Flame and Inferno is the motion module. The motion module was bought from Realviz, and it is actually the Retimer software integrated into inferno GUI.

[Official product page]

Smoke

Smoke is an online non-linear creative editing and finishing solution that enables editors to edit, conform and finish television commercials, broadcast programming and other content. Editors benefit from support for high definition and standard definition resolutions, which offers a secure investment for high definition mastering, including the ability to work in a 3D environment, and compatibility with Autodesk Media and Entertainment's visual effects systems, Flame and Inferno.

[Official product page]

Fire

Fire is very similar to Smoke as far as features go. Fire differs on the level of performance. Fire runs on the SGI Onyx, a very scalable system. It can go up to eight processors and features a very high I/O bandwidth. This enables a Fire system, for example, to load thirty-two 2K layers, and interact with thirty-two 2K layers.

[Official product page]

Lustre

Lustre is a high performance digital intermediate system for 2K and 4K color grading and look creation. Its unique and powerful software design delivers real-time primary color correction and grading capabilities while providing a rich and sophisticated feature set for working with high-resolution imagery and digital intermediates.

Currently, it works on a PC, running Windows XP and Linux. It uses Nvidia FX4000SDI as the graphics and video monitoring card. It was originally developed by Colorfront [link] in Hungary.

Its first major use was the Lord of the Rings Trilogy operated by Peter Doyle.

Combustion

Autodesk Combustion (formerly known as Autodesk Media and Entertainment Combustion) is a node based, desktop video, compositing and visual effects program produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. Combustion has a variety of tools, from Particles, to Paint, a very advanced tracker/stabiliser, colour correction, chroma keying among others. Combustion is a small version of the Inferno and Flame compositing systems.

As of May 2006, Combustion version 4.0.3 is the current version.

Cleaner

Cleaner is an encoder sold by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. Cleaner can encode in Realplayer, Windows Media, QuickTime and MPEG2 formats and is offered on the PC (XL version 1.5) and Macintosh (version 6.5) platforms.

[Official product page]

Toxik

Toxik is a collaborative software for interactive film compositing. Node based.

[Official product page]

External links

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