Geeky Mac

(London, UK. January 25, 2007) Leading visual effects developer The Foundry will take up residence on booth SL14413 in the South Hall at NAB 2007. Visitors looking for stunning 2D visual effects and hardcore image-processing tools will find a host of advanced, yet cost-effective, solutions to enhance workflow and boost productivity from The Foundry.

Furnace is a hugely popular suite of more than 30 image-processing tools, many of which automate time-consuming processes in the creation of digital visual effects. The development team responsible for Furnace is to be honoured with a Scientific and Engineering Award® from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® on 10th February 2007 in Los Angeles. Furnace 4 will build on this considerable platform.

Combustion artists will be able to put The Foundry’s Tinderbox suite through its paces. This widely adopted suite of over 70 creative visual effects for After Effects is set to be available for artists running Combustion on Windows. Plus there will be comprehensive demonstrations of Tinder, Furnace and Keylight on a range of host platforms including Autodesk™ Media and Entertainment Systems, After Effects and Shake.

“Our artists are employed across a wide variety of high-profile projects. To guarantee we continue to meet clients’ demands we require sophisticated digital tools to help us get the job done. The Foundry’s Furnace is an impressive digital toolset that delivers time and time again, a first-class collection of tools, which should be on any Shake artist’s wish list.” Nick Cannon, Head of Technology, Film, MPC.

The Foundry’s products are widely acclaimed across the industry, having recently been used by digital artists on a host of high-profile feature films including Casino Royale, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Da Vinci Code and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

About The Foundry:
The Foundry is a London based software developer specialising in visual effects technology for the film and video markets. From an initial start-up in 1996 by Bruno Nicoletti, The Foundry has grown considerably in size and scope over the last ten years. Initially Bruno and his business partner Simon Robinson used their extensive experience in post production to produce Tinder plug-ins for Discreet’s® Flame® systems – the first set of such plug-ins to be commercially available. Today the company employs more than a dozen people and develops and markets plug-ins on a range of host applications, including After Effects, Autodesk™ Media Entertainment Systems, Apple’s Shake and Avid|DS.

The company now also successfully licenses its sophisticated image processing technology to third parties, expanding its scope beyond plug-ins. The Foundry has used its considerable influence to drive the development of an open standard for visual effects plug-ins known as OpenFX, which is gaining wide acceptance by host and plug-in developers, such as Grass Valley, FilmLight, Autodesk™, D2 Software and others.