Motion Media

Silhouette v4.5 adds OpenColorIO color management capabilities; optimizing visual effects and animation color pipelines for motion picture post-production!

Originally developed by Sony® Pictures Imageworks, OCIO manages color transformations and image display in a consistent manner across multiple graphics applications. Unlike other color management solutions, OCIO is geared towards motion-picture postproduction, with an emphasis on visual effects and animation color pipelines. "Color management is one of the trickiest and most challenging aspects of digital motionpicture production. This is particularly true of visual effects and animation, where images often flow through multiple software applications and production houses, each often using their unique color processes. Virtually every facility must re-invent a color workflow, for every application - which is hard to get right. OpenColorIO addresses this critical issue," says Marco Paolini, partner at SilhouetteFX and a veteran visual effects artist.

Facilities deal with color space issues on just about every show. By providing a unified color environment, OCIO greatly simplifies the task of creating and validating multiapplication color workflows. For smaller facilities, OpenColorIO allows artists to work in a properly color-managed process with minimal effort. For larger facilities, off-theshelf OCIO-compatible tools can be extensively customized, matching existing facility color practice.

All capabilities of Silhouette including its award winning roto and paint as well as its keying, Power Matte, effects and compositing features are stereo enabled. EXR integrated stereo footage can be used as well as media in any of Silhouette´s newly expanded range of file formats. Clips can be previewed as anaglyphs, side-by-side or stacked.

Roto
Silhouette allows you to quickly create sophisticated animated mattes using BSpline, Bézier or X-Spline shapes. Intelligent design and easy-to-use tools, such as variable edge softness on a point by point basis and realistic motion blur, assist you in creating complicated shape animations. Integrated motion tracking makes the normally tedious task of rotoscoping a breeze.

Paint
Paint is a high dynamic range 2D raster based paint system designed from the ground up to handle the demands of feature film and television production. Whether it´s image restoration, dustbusting, wire and rig removal or just plain paint, Silhouette provides simple and sensible tools to get the job done.

Effects
The Effects node allows you to apply the brushes available in the Paint node as filter effects to shapes or layers. Paint and shape features are tightly integrated to form an extremely powerful shape based effects tool. Not only can filters be animated, but they can be combined with animated shapes to take the drudgery out of everyday jobs.

Keying
Using proprietary matte extraction techniques, Silhouette's Keyer and Power Matte modules are capable of extracting almost any object in an image quickly and simply even if you are dealing with fine hair detail, smoke, or reflections. They are easy to use, yet provide the needed tools when faced with good, bad, or ugly shots.

Architecture

• Node based workflow
• Stereoscopic viewing and editing
• Command-Line Rendering
• Scripting and Actions
• OpenGL® accelerated animation engine
• Multi-processor support
• Proxy management for large image sizes

Compatibilty

• File Formats: Cineon, DPX, IFF, JPEG, OpenEXR, PNG, SGI/RGB, QuickTime, TIFF and TARGA
• Export Autodesk®/Discreet® gMask, Elastic Reality®, Eyeon Fusion®, Nuke® and Shake® 4.x SSF shapes
• exportImport Commotion, Elastic Reality, Nuke and Shake 4.x SSF shapes  
• Export Apple® Shake 4.x SSF, Autodesk® gMask, Elastic Reality, Eyeon Fusion® and The Foundry´s Nuke® shapes
• Mask interchange with After Effects® using the Silhouette Shape Import/Export Plug-in
• Export After Effects, Autodesk/Discreet, Nuke and Shake 4.x trackers
• Import After Effects Corner-Pin, Nuke and Shake 4.x trackers
• Macintosh®, Windows®, Linux®

Silhouette 4.5 System Requirements

Because of the variety of different computer components available, we recommend that you download, install and evaluate Silhouette on the machine that you would like to run it on prior to purchasing.

Macintosh
• 64 bit Intel processor only
• Mac OSX 10.5 and above
• 2GB of RAM (4GB or more recommended)
• 1GB of available disk space for caching and temporary files
• Display with 1024-by-768 resolution or higher (1280-by-1024 resolution recommended)
• Three-button mouse or Wacom tablet

Windows
• Dual Core Intel or AMD processor
• Windows 7 64 bit, Windows Vista 64 bit
• 2GB of RAM (4GB or more recommended)
• 1GB of available disk space for caching and temporary files
• Display with 1024-by-768 resolution or higher (1280-by-1024 resolution recommended)
• Three-button mouse or Wacom tablet

Linux
• Dual Core Intel or AMD processor
• Tested on 32 and 64 bit Ubuntu 6.06 or better
• 2GB of RAM (4GB or more recommended)
• 1GB of available disk space for caching and temporary files
• Display with 1024-by-768 resolution or higher (1280-by-1024 resolution recommended)
• Three-button mouse or Wacom tablet

Plug-ins
• Adobe After Effects CS3 and above

Supported Graphics Cards

Required
• NVIDIA Quadro
• NVIDIA GeForce 8000 series or better
• ATI Radeon 9000 series or better
• OpenGL2.0 capable graphics card
• 512mb of graphics memory for film resolution

Notice
• We do not support the use of our software in host applications running under Apple's Rosetta emulation mode.