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Article Search Advanced Search Autodesk Smoke and Flame 2008: Previewing the Premium Production Tools By Oliver Peters Jan 16, 2008, 17:32 Autodesk's Media and Entertainment Division has managed to hold up the banner for high-end, brand-name systems in the face of the post industry's trend toward lower-cost, software-based desktop systems. Despite of the appeal of Apple and Adobe software, post facilities, ad agencies and individual editors and designers continue to find value in Autodesk's premium postproduction tools, like Smoke and Flame. For its part, Autodesk has pumped ongoing R&D into its flagship products, including a complete migration from the SGI to the PC platform. This advanced systems family also includes Flint, Inferno and Fire, but in the past there was a differentiation based on the specific SGI workstation used for each product. Smoke or Flame had been sold with an SGI Tezro, while Inferno and Fire used an Onyx computer. Today that line has disappeared, because all of these products are configured to run on top-of-the-line HP workstations. As a result, Inferno and Fire are generally sold only in regions of the world where that name holds a greater brand recognition than Smoke or Flame, which are the dominant products in the U.S. and European markets. For those who remember the days when a Smoke or Flame would make a serious dent in the checkbook, it's a pleasant surprise to find that you can now purchase a Smoke system for as low as $100,000, putting it into the same budget range as an Avid DS or Symphony Nitris and under that of competing Quantel products. Instead of software version numbers, Autodesk now numbers its updates by the year, like automobile models. Autodesk targets a major release once each year, followed by an "extension" to be released midway through the year. An "extension" would be the equivalent of a point-release by another manufacturer. This new affordability of Autodesk products comes at the time when high-definition video is hitting the mainstream. Even medium-market television stations are converting some local programming, like newscasts, to HD. Many broadcasters have dabbled with desktop tools and find that there is still room for true "heavy lifting" if you intend to crank out layered HD station promos, which opens new doors for Smoke and Flame. Aside from the issue of cost, Autodesk's code was based on SGI's IRIX OS and has been ported over to Linux for the HP workstations. This gives Smoke and Flame an edge over the competition--and certainly over low-cost desktop tools--because the code is already optimized for a 64-bit OS, multi-processing, multi-threading, OpenGL and efficient memory allocation. This translates into better system response for the operator and faster render times when working with HD content. New for 2008 Autodesk has made a lot of changes for 2008. Along with the total changeover to HP workstations, Smoke and Flame are now configured with video I/O cards that are OEM components supplied by AJA Video. These cards provide uncompressed 4:4:4 RGB throughput at up to 1920x1080. Internally, the systems can operate in real time at up to 2K film resolution and offer the ability to process even 4K content for final film output. The HP stations are augmented by the latest Nvidia graphics display cards. A key new feature is improved openness of these systems. In the past, Smoke and Flame were dependent on using Autodesk's proprietary Stone storage running the Stone File System for optimum performance. Smoke and Flame 2008 now permit direct writing to other standard file formats, such as CXFS (a clustered file system developed by SGI for shared storage) and NTFS (the standard Windows file system). Although having some local Stone storage is recommended by Autodesk for performance and interactivity reasons, it is possible to configure a workstation without it and suffer only a minor performance hit with most standard- and high-definition footage. In Flame and Smoke, this support means that they can optionally work off of storage configured with a standard file system (as well as Stone) and work natively with certain standard file format sequences such as DPX and TIF. In addition, there's finally support for industry standards like QuickTime. Up until now, this support had been lagging on Linux-based systems. QuickTime files can be imported and exported but aren't native files for Smoke and Flame. Across the board, Autodesk is adopting the InfiniBand networking topology for use with the Systems products (Smoke, Flame, Inferno, Flint, Lustre). InfiniBand, a technology similar to Fibre Channel, permits Autodesk products to share media from a central storage location using Wire, Autodesk's proprietary networking architecture. Through a combination of Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand, several Smoke editors and Flame artists, as well as Lustre colorists, can work concurrently on the same project, accessing the same media. In fact, even without centralized storage, networked workstations can access local media and project information in each other's media libraries with very little performance impact. There is now 100 percent clip and metadata compatibility between Flame and Smoke, thus enabling improved round-tripping between visual effects artists and editors. Flame gained editorial features, such as new audio tools. Other improvements include a new multi-layered, Smoke-style timeline--handy when importing edit lists from offline edit systems. Flame and Smoke support AAF, OMF, EDL and XML list formats. Multi-layered timeline support lets the Flame artist open these lists and maintain the vertical clip hierarchy started by the offline editor. High-end systems like Flame and Smoke might seem the antithesis of low-cost competition from Apple's Final Cut Pro. In fact, this sort of list and timeline compatibility becomes very attractive for editorial shops that might install several Final Cut bays for creative offline editing and then augment those suites with several advanced Smoke and/or Flame rooms for an equally creative but superior finishing option. Finally, there is OpenEXR and enhanced Autodesk FBX support for better interoperability between Flame and Autodesk Maya software. Artists can now match their compositions with the 3D department through the exchange of camera data, axis positions and 3D point clouds. A Unified Approach In the past, the lines were clearly drawn between the compositors (Flint, Flame, Inferno) and the editors (Smoke, Fire). Although you could assemble sequences in Flame or Inferno, Smoke and Fire were geared for timeline-oriented editing. Nevertheless, some of the first uncompressed nonlinear online sessions for national commercials cut on NLEs like Avid Media Composer were done using Autodesk Flames. This earned Flame artists the accolades of agency execs, since they didn't merely conform the spots but were able to add their own artistic and visual effects flair. These product lines evolved from different heritages, in spite of the overlap in some functions. This year Autodesk has decided to unify the features of the two product groups where it was appropriate. Smoke and Flame now share most of the same compositing modules, thus improving Smoke's already-rich visual effects environment. Flame still retains a few advanced effects modules, like a particle creation tool, not present in the Smoke interface. Even though the tools look the same, Autodesk has chosen to maintain the terminology familiar to the two different types of operators. For example, image manipulation tasks are still found in the Action 3D compositing environment of Flame, while in Smoke it's called the DVE. Although the generation of certain functions might be restricted to Flame, the metadata can still be opened in Smoke. You can now interchange projects completely between Smoke and Flame, so if the Flame operator created a scene using particle effects, he or she doesn't need to "bake" these into a flattened media file before sending the project to an editor using Smoke. The editor can still access the particles and even modify parameters of the effect, such as speed, size or birth rate. This level of control is ideal for the broadcast promo world, where the design department can create templates on Flame but the promo editors use Smoke to post the various customized versions. A Modern User Interface The Smoke and Flame user interfaces have been overhauled and streamlined. Most workstations today come equipped with 16:10 flat-panel LCD screens, so Autodesk redesigned the interface to be better organized on the wider screens, as well as to accommodate 16:9 HD images. The user tools and buttons are now grouped in a tabbed layout. The normal way to build an effect in Flame has been to use the procedural view called Batch--a flowchart-style schematic in which each intersection is an effects node. In the new tabbed layout, each process added to the composite adds more contextual tabs to the screen layout. Now the artist is less dependant on pinpointing the one node that needs tweaking and can simply make the adjustment to the parameters in the appropriate tab while viewing the final composite. With the implementation of the 2008 release, Inferno, Fire, Flame, Flint and Smoke all share in the industry-leading Autodesk effects, including the Master Keyer and Colour Warper. These products can be used for any deliverable, from standard-definition television up to film content. To date, there are approximately 4,000 advanced Autodesk systems installed in post houses worldwide. Although others have pronounced previous years as the "Year of High Definition," the mainstream HD push in 2008 might well make it a blockbuster year for Autodesk. Smoke and Flame have proven themselves in a market where time is money. Take any complex HD composite and compare the experience of working with it on a Smoke or Flame with any desktop software package and you'll quickly see why even individual artist/editor/entrepreneurs are making money with these systems. I'm sure Autodesk is banking on the fact that many folks are ready to end the frustration and get back to work! Boris Continuum Complete Sparks version 3.0 In a separate development, Boris FX announced that it's shipping Boris Continuum Complete Sparks version 3.0 for Autodesk's Sparks plug-in architecture. This release supports the current lineup of Flint, Flame, Inferno and Smoke with added support for Burn network rendering. BCC allows users to swap filter presets with other host applications regardless of manufacture or model. This workflow allows editors to copy effects from offline to finishing. "The BCC Sparks 3.0 release literally doubles the number of filters Autodesk users receive without increasing the price. This is a phenomenal value proposition for any Autodesk system owner. In a day where budgets are squeezed tighter than ever and client expectation for unique looks increases, the addition of BCC Sparks 3.0 will more than help these facilities meet the demand without breaking the bank," comments Boris Yamnitsky, founder and president, Boris FX. 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