Noise Industries has upgraded the FxFactory to 4.0 and added Premiere Pro CS 6 Support. I have a ton of their compatible and free plug ins, but don’t actually own this suite (always thought it was a tad expensive), but this gives me one more reason, as I have moved from any version of Final Cut and now prefer Premiere Pro (though I of course still have Media Composer which works with very few plug ins).
AEScripts has a new one, Layer Library which lets you create prestes of groups of layers and properties to be used between different projects in After Effects. It is listed at $29.99, but is name your own price.
Very cool, especially for those we often do repeated tasks between projects.
FCP.Co has an article on installing a PC GTX570 in a MacPro to get better OpenCL performance in FCP X, but it will also increase your CUDA power for Premiere Pro and After Effects CS6.
Still you can score over 1000 on Luxmark if you go for a GTX670 instead (which has a huge amount more of CUDA cores, and can still draw it’s power from the internal power supply instead of say a 680, which would require an external power source to run), but they are not as well supported on the Mac. Either way you will need to go to Netkas to get some instruction and some help (though some of the help can be rather surly, but it is worth it if can really beef up using your MacPro). Someone at Netkas has also figure out how to Firmware update recent MacPro’s to the latest firmware for the newest itineration, allowing beefier XEON’s into your old MacPro.
The instructions are pretty easy, but I have found that they don’t always work, so think about re-installing your NVIDIA drivers once you are done, as that did it for me.
You will also need to do some hacking to Premiere Pro and After Effects to get them working with the CUDA cores on a new video card.
VideoCopilot has announced a free Halloween Pack for Element 3D is coming soon. NICE! Free is always good.
I really do need to spend some time playing with Element 3D in the near future.
Todd Kopriva has the announcement at his blog. Looks like Ray Tracing fixes, and Kepler updates. Wonder if those would translate to a Mac with a Kepler card in it? Anything with CUDA updates is good in my opinion.
Actually reminds me that I need to replace my Quadro 4800 with my GeForce GTX 285, which the recent NVIDIA update should have helped with the crashing issue I was having.
StudioDaily has an awesome article on how they are using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 on SNL. They were in Final Cut Pro and decided to move to Premiere Pro, especially because of the workflow with After Effects.
Still I am surprised it is all Mac, but they obviously had Macs for Final Cut. So far I am impressed with CS6, but there have been some stability issues for me, especially with CUDA, though hopefully that last NVIDIA update fixed that. I would think PC’s would be faster and more stable, though I do still love my Mac. They had just better make a really kick ass MacPro really damn soon!
CoreMelt has released the free ActiveText plug in for creating text with pre-animated templates, no keyframes.
I am not too much of a fan of templated effects, but you really can’t argue with free.
Some more really cool looking scripts from AEScripts and the Pro Video Coalition.
Layer Repeater to easily offset layers in space and time suggested $19.99 but name your own price.
Masks and Shapes gives you more control over creating shapes and masks and can save them out as a text file, suggested $9.99 but name your own price.
Projection, makes it easy to camera map onto 3D planes in After Effects with 3D Camera Tracker, Syntheyes, Boujou or PF Track. $24.99 down from $49.99.
Illumination adds a new dimension of lighting control, and adds the softbox. $19.99 down from $39.99
Pixel Cloud, a compositing tool to relight a 3D generated image or displace the pixels in 3D space, $89.99 down from $129.99.
Paste Multiple Keyframes, lets you copy and paste keyframes from multiple layers at the same time, suggest $9.99, but name your own price.
Auto Lip-Sync, create a mouth that automatically animates according to your voice recording. $39.99
Null Swapper swaps null layers for light layers for Trapcode Particular and Plexus, and this one is free.
Trapcode Suite 12 from Red Giant on Vimeo.
Check it out at Red Giant, where it is $899 or between $99-$499 for an upgrade.
The new upgrade includes Trapcode Mir a brand new motion design tool.
Trapcode Mir from Red Giant on Vimeo.
It now includes 105 Particular/Shine Guru Presets from MoGraph artist David Vinson.
And maintenance updates for Lux, Echospace, Particular and Form.
The Guru presets help, but this doesn’t seem like much of an overall suite upgrade for the price, especially if you already have the guru presets! I mean a new app, that you may or may not use, and no update to the rest of the suite, and the upgrade costs the same as buying the app. Red Giant obviously included the Guru presets to make this seem more worthwhile, but at $99, it seems a bit much when all you get is a maintenance release for all the apps you know and love.