See the SynthEyes match-moving application on the web or in person, as Andersson Technologies LLC releases over a dozen new tutorials on its website, and travels to Booth 2607 of the SIGGRAPH Exposition, running August 4-6 in New Orleans.
SynthEyes 2008+1 headlined in April with support for stereoscopic production, and post-production of stereoscopic features has ramped up behind the scenes world-wide. Accordingly, stereo was a prime focus of the tutorials:
+ Six tutorials on stereoscopic tracking production
+ Three tutorials on lens distortion workflows
+ A three-part tutorial on shots from sports stadiums
+ Handling actors with roto-masking
+ Export to Luxology’s Modo
+ Use of the script-bar feature
The tutorials can be found at http://www.ssontech.com/learning.htm
Recent and soon-to-drop projects using SynthEyes include The Final Destination, G-Force, Infestation, The Proposal, Shutter Island, Surrogates, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Terminator Salvation, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
* Background
SynthEyes offers a complete high-end feature set, including tracking, stabilization, stereoscopic shots, motion capture, and mesh building. It handles camera tracking, object tracking, object tracking from reference meshes, camera+object tracking, multiple-shot tracking, tripod (nodal, 2.5-D) tracking, mixed tripod and translating shots, zooms, lens distortion, and light solving. It can handle shots of any resolution—DV, HD, film, IMAX—and can solve shots with thousands of frames. A special feature simplifies and speeds tracking for green-screen shots. The image preprocessor can help remove grain, compression artifacts, off-centering, or varying lighting.
SynthEyes offers complete control over the tracking process for challenging shots, including an efficient workflow for supervised trackers, combined automated/supervised tracking, incremental solving, and a hard and soft path locking system. You can set up a coordinate system with tracker constraints, camera constraints, a line-based single-frame alignment system, or manually. SynthEyes exports to about 25 common animation and compositing packages, standard, with a script-based approach.
* System Requirements
SynthEyes is offered for four platforms: 32-bit Windows, 64-bit Windows, 32-bit OS X, and 64-bit OS X. Windows versions support XP or Vista. The 32-bit OS X version supports OS X 10.4 or 10.5 (Intel/PowerPC); the 64-bit OS X version requires OS X 10.5 Leopard (Intel). It is also in production use on Linux systems. We recommend 2-4 GB for 32-bit versions, 4 GB or more for 64-bit versions. See the web site for more information.
* Pricing and Availability
SynthEyes 2008+1 is available now. Licenses are $399 for 32-bit versions, $499 for 64-bit Windows, and $599 for 64-bit OS X. SynthEyes 2008+1 is a (major) “dot” release of SynthEyes 2008; it is free to SynthEyes 2008 customers. See the website for upgrade pricing for prior versions.
The company website offers free demonstration versions of SynthEyes at http://www.ssontech.com
* The Company
Andersson Technologies LLC is a boutique software firm located near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and headed by computer vision and robotics expert Dr. Russell Andersson. SynthEyes is in its sixth year assisting VFX professionals, with customers in over 60 countries.