The NAB Tradeshow (National Association of Broadcasters) starts tomorrow, which means that for the past week or so, we've been getting hints of what is to come in After Effects CS7. Here are some of the most exciting features to look forward to.
After Effects + Cinema 4D
One of the biggest surprises has been a new level of integration between AE and Cinema 4D. Cinema 4D is a fully featured 3d modeling and rendering system, like Maya or 3DS Max, that has been used in conjunction with After Effects for many years now. However, for the next release, the After Effects team has joined with Maxon to integrate the to programs even more fully. Users will now be able to import projects from Cinema 4D directly to After Effects, without rendering the scene beforehand. This will allow for editing right inside After Effects, and full integration with the built in After Effects cameras. Furthermore, a Lite version of Cinema 4D will be shipped with After Effects.
Refine Edge Tool
This is another welcome addition, that continues to push frame by frame rotoscoping into the past. The roto-brush tool, already a tremendous time saver, will now have tools to automatically deal with highly detailed and fuzzy edges, such as hair or leaves. This will be a huge advantage over traditional rotoscoping techniques, as these kinds of edges are where rotoscoping started to break down. In fact, this might be the tool I'm most impatient for. It would have been extremely useful for our last project!
Other Improvements
There is a whole list of smaller things that have been improved, such as the Warp Stabilizer, the addition of snapping in the viewport, a new search feature for missing footage and other media, and optimizations to both the 2d and 3d tracker. Needless to say, After Effects CS7 is looking to be an exciting release, and I'm sure we'll hear of more new features as the release date approaches. You can watch a video demonstrating some of these developments, as well as sneak peeks of other CS products here
No comments :
Post a Comment