Cambridge, MA. September 3, 2008 — GenArts, Inc., a leading provider of visual effects plug-ins for the film, broadcast and video industries, today announced the immediate availability of Sapphire Plug-ins for OFX products. A collaborative effort by visual effects developers, OFX is an open standard for plug-ins, enabling developers to support a broad range of platforms with a common interface. Sapphire Plug-ins for OFX makes its full range of features and functionality, including more than 200 Sapphire effects, available to users of a growing list of popular post-production platforms from industry leaders including Autodesk, The Foundry, Eyeon, FilmLight, Digital Vision and Assimilate. Demonstrations of the new release will be given at IBC 2008 on GenArts stand 7.K41.
As the industry standard for high-end, professional 2D visual effects, Sapphire Plug-ins provides sophisticated, organic visual effects which integrate natively with leading editing, compositing and finishing systems. The entire collection of more than 200 Sapphire effects includes everyday tools such as Glows, LensFlares, Glint, FilmDamage, and ZDefocus, to more exotic effects such as Lightning, FlysEye, and JpegDamage. With Sapphire Plug-ins for OFX, these effects can be applied easily by users of The Foundry’s Nuke, Autodesk Toxik, Eyeon Fusion, FilmLight Baselight, Digital Vision Film Master and Assimilate Scratch. Future support is expected for other OFX host platforms.
“Sapphire Plug-ins have already become an essential part of our work, providing the kind of truly stunning results that our clients love,” said Chris Wirth from Universal Images. “With the new OFX version, we’ll gain even greater power and convenience for putting the full range of Sapphire effects to work in everything we do.”
Sapphire Plug-ins v1 for OFX products includes the full range of effects, features and functionality already standard for other supported hosts including v2 for After Effects and Compatible products, v2 for Apple FxPlug and v4 for Autodesk systems. Support for floating licenses and background render nodes is also included.
“GenArts is committed to enabling digital content creators and post production artists. This release significantly broadens Sapphire’s support to a range of new platforms in order to reach not only new users, but to better meet the needs of our existing clients as they evolve the way they work. Through supporting open standards such as OFX, GenArts has taken another step in creating new tools that will further support current and future artists as the visual effects industry progresses,” comments Katherine Hays, CEO of GenArts.
Key features of Sapphire Plug-ins for OFX Products
* Over 200 effects.
* Support for Windows 32 & 64, Linux 32 & 64 and Mac OS X Intel & PPC.
* All plug-ins have multiple options and parameters that can be adjusted and animated for creating an unlimited range of effects.
* Resolution independent, antialiased, high quality images.
* Online hyper-linked documentation for all plug-ins.
* Dual-core, quad-core and 8-core support for faster rendering.
* On-screen user interface for visual control of many parameters.
* Floating license option available.
Availability and Pricing
Sapphire Plug-ins for OFX Products can be purchased directly from GenArts or through their worldwide channel of authorized resellers. Prices for Nuke, Toxik, and Fusion are $1995, $2495, or $295 for node-locked, floating, or render licenses respectively, and prices for Baselight, Film Master, and Scratch are $3995, $4995, or $595 for the same license options. A free trial of the software is available online at www.genarts.com.