Maxon Red Giant 2024 January Update Unleashes Powerful Tools for VFX Artists

Fast and Beautiful: Maxon Red Giant Update Brings Fast Bokeh and Lifelike Lens Flares for VFX Artists

With this major January 2024 update, Maxon Red Giant receives a wide range of new features and enhancements. This January release introduces exciting additions, including fast-rendering bokeh tools, Real Lens Flares with advanced features, improved Magic Bullet Looks integration with Unreal Engine, and enhancements to Trapcode.

Some of the highlights of the release are:

– Bokeh Brilliance with Universe: One of the standout features in the Maxon Red Giant 2024.1 update is the addition of two new Universe bokeh tools. These tools empower artists to effortlessly incorporate dreamy bokeh effects into their shots without the need for intricate camera setups. The Bokeh plugin enables the creation of stunning blurs, depth of field, and transitions, offering customization options such as shapes, focus length, and custom blur maps. Its variant, the Bokeh Transition, facilitates seamless transitions between clips with a mesmerizing de-focus effect.

The underlying framework of Universe has also received upgrades, providing non-linear editors and compositors with a real-time experience. The new performance framework, the foundation for the Bokeh plugins and uni.Blur, promises expanded support for other Universe products in future releases.

– Magic Bullet Looks Revamped: Magic Bullet Looks, a staple in the toolbox of content creators, sees a significant overhaul in color management for a more user-friendly experience. Artists can now achieve their creative goals more efficiently with simplified color management. Furthermore, Magic Bullet Looks now boasts enhanced integration with Unreal Engine, unlocking new possibilities for users working with the latest version of UE.

– Realism Redefined with VFX Real Lens Flares: The VFX Real Lens Flares feature has been enhanced with groundbreaking obscuration and a Light Ball core projection option. Obscuration allows flares and reflections to dynamically change shape and morph beautifully as light interacts with complex shapes, replicating real-world lens behavior. The Light Ball core projection option adds a physical presence to flares, allowing artists to art direct the sun and bring streetlights to life within a scene.

– Turbocharged Tracking with VFX Spot Clone Tracker: Maxon introduces a new Tracker-Only mode for the VFX Spot Clone Tracker, catering particularly to After Effects users. This feature streamlines the tracking process by hiding non-tracking-related parameters, providing a cleaner interface for artists to work with. Artists can handle multiple tracks on a single clip and generate nulls with ease using the new Create Null and Clear Track buttons. The addition of Shape Roundness as a single slider enhances tracking versatility, enabling artists to clone shapes that seamlessly fit into challenging spaces.

– Trapcode’s Multithreaded Rendering and Cloud Integration: Trapcode, an integral part of Maxon Red Giant, receives optimizations in multi-frame rendering across multiple threads. Particular, a key component of Trapcode, is now finely tuned for multithreaded, multi-frame rendering, boosting performance for VFX artists.

The update also introduces cloud service support for Trapcode, with Maxon Cloud Capsule providing a repository of assets accessible through the asset browser. Two new sprite categories, emojis and pixel art, enhance the creative arsenal available to artists using Trapcode.