Solutions / Compositing


eyeon Software Inc. began in Sydney, Australia, in 1987 as New York Production & Design. Its principal business was 3D computer graphics and digital special effects postproduction for industrials, commercials and feature films. When NYPD needed to create an effect, they built the software and hardware themselves. They adopted previously separate elements into a fully integrated system. As a result, eyeon quietly emerged from NYPD to become a world leader in compositing and digital creation technology, using their core solution, Digital Fusion as a vehicle.

From the beginning, eyeon invested heavily in research and development and, dedicated to the global success of Digital Fusion through the application of leading-edge development techniques, eyeon developed Digital Fusion on the Windows platform from the ground up. Without sacrificing the quality and performance of much more expensive solutions, eyeon provides one of the fastest, most comprehensive postproduction applications available.

The recent release of DF4 is the culmination of over seven years of continuous development, and nine major updates. Digital Fusion offers unparalleled I/O and file format support and a level of performance.

Digital Fusion® 4 is the only full-featured digital media pipeline language that also takes advantage of the most advanced node-based compositing engine.

Digital Fusion’s pipeline management, fully-interconnected native toolset, ultimate speed and flexibility make profitable film effects realistic for even the smallest facility.

Digital Fusion is an industry-leading digital compositing application well known for its prominent role in contemporary film effects. Our clients have tapped into the benefits of eyeon's dedication to digital compositing expressed through an independent corporate environment and belief in the input from Fusion's vast and dynamic community. Not only do our clients profit from the compositing engine that is the core of eyeon’s success, they also tap into the pipeline control and project management capabilities provided by our full-featured pipeline language, DFScript. The versatility offered by Scripting is a necessity for facilities with complicated shot management needs, shifting artists or multiple projects. DFScript applications range from consistent and automated effects treatments to render control, and will greatly change the way in which one views digital compositing.

Accessing the power of Digital Fusion's pipeline management language will change the way you think about compositing. A few of the practical applications of DFScript are briefly outlined below, but the possibilities are truly endless.

Prep dailies on your DDR complete with shot TC burn-in
- Automatic client ftp of completed shots
- Cataloguing content into multimedia versions with element/shot burn in
- Managing footage and elements between local and network drives
- Automated proxy version creation
- Clean up/archive of unused footage and elements
- Managed versioning of timeline data
- Remote artist assistance - Generating web friendly versions of projects for web distribution
- Monitoring shot status by determining which shots have been rendered and completed
- Email or even call your mobile phone when a render completes

Digital Fusion® 4 is eyeon’s flagship product and marks the ninth major release of this powerful compositor, heralding a new image engine and raising the bar on performance levels and memory efficiency. Now, with DF4, process in 8 bit, 16 bit and floating point per pixel. Time-based caching gives realtime playback as compositions are created.

Legendary performance will now be scaled over the network via eyeon’s revolutionary clustering technology. Fusion’s network rendering has always been advanced, more than any other batch-based renderer. With DF4’s new Power Cluster, you can efficiently network multiple machines into a superior working environment. By clustering the network render farm, the network continuously renders the sequence up to date. Time to take a fresh look at why feature films, motion graphics, broadcast design, and television and video post-production get landmark finishing with Digital Fusion.



Digital Fusion Interface

Traditionally, Fusion has been used by a variety of production houses worldwide because of its diverse work flow. Depending on how compositors like to work, Fusion offers compatible methodologies.

The new engine has greatly enhanced each working environment, with specific development for real world application. Fusion artists have worked together with eyeon developers to bring each favored methodology comprehensive functionality.

Flow
· Intuitive node-based flow representation.
· Easy branching of image processing.
· Open and work with multiple flows at once.
· Copy and paste tools within a flow.
· Copy and paste tools into other flows.
· Thumbnail tile images progress through flow.
· Group and collapse tools into sub-flow for better organization.
· Drag and drop footage into flow directly from file explorer.
· Add notes to any tool as reminders or to assist with collaboration.
· View and edit your project in frames, timecode or feet+frames modes.

Timeline
· Non-linear timeline display for precise timing adjustments.
· Trim and position multiple clips simultaneously.
· Scrub audio and view waveform within timeline.
· Apply timeline filters to show elements of flow.
· Set guides, markers and snap to points.
· View and edit animation splines within timeline.
· Enable spreadsheet-like display of animation parameters.

Spline Editor
· Display and edit multiple animation splines.
· Scale, shape and time stretch animation splines.
· Advanced looping options for ping-pong, relative and ‘x’ times.
· Set guides, markers and snap-to points.
· Enable display of keyframe markers as guides.
· Step-in and step-out keyframe stepping modes.
· Import and export to flexible array of text formats.
· Choose from Bezier or cubic splines for animation curves.
· Manually enter time value offsets and scaling for multiple selected keyframes.

Digital Fusion Architecture

Performance
· Completely multi-threaded to take full advantage of multiprocessor systems, with 100% performance boost per each CPU.
· Enhanced file streaming I/O greatly improves time to load images and sequences from disk, both over network and local drives.
· Render and interactive performance scalable with remote nodes.
· Automatic memory tuning to ensure most efficient use of memory.
· Designed to work efficiently with extremely large files, including 6K and larger.

Disk & RAM Caching Engine
· Enables playback speeds of well over 30fps.
· Makes most efficient possible use of RAM.
· Cache manager work invisibly in background - no user intervention required.
· Multiple tools can simultaneously maintain their own cache.
· Images already in cache do not re-render.
· Cache the results of any node to disk as well as/instead of RAM.

Floating Point Processing
· Out of range color values are preserved through color adjustments.
· All tools support floating point mode natively, never worry about clipping highlights.

Macro Tools
· Create your own custom re-usable and distributable ‘macro’ tools by combining several standard tools together.
· Select which controls and inputs are visible from each tool.
· Rename controls to suit the macro tool’s purpose.
· Set new defaults and control ranges for each control.
· Produce powerful macros to simplify common tasks.

Display
· Switch between a single large image display layout or side by side displays.
· Open unlimited floating display views.
· Neutral color scheme won’t interfere with color correction operations.
· Independent color LUT’s for each view compensate for color variations in monitors, or between VGA, video and film displays.

Concatenated Transformations
· Wherever possible, Fusion will combine multiple transformations together before applying to the layer, collecting transformations from adjacent tools and applying the entire transformation in a single pass.
· Significantly reduces processing time.
· Improve sharpness of resulting image.
· Allows elements moved offscreen to avoid clipping.

Color Depth Independent
· Footage of different color depths can be loaded and processed in their native color depth within a single flow, making the most efficient use of memory and processor resources.
· Seamlessly blend floating point, 64 bit and 32 bit images without concern.

Resolution Independent
· Mix and match footage of different resolutions, field orders, aspect ratios and formats within a single project.
· Render to multiple formats and resolutions in a single pass, with multiple saver nodes at any position in the flow process.