Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

The Foundry releases HieroPlayer

The Foundry has released HieroPlayer, its streamlined VFX review and playback tool intended to work seamlessly with Nuke and Hiero, the developer’s compositing package and shot-management app.

First announced last year, HieroPlayer (actually, it’s officially written entirely in capitals, but that’s just shouting) is a “baby Hiero” that enables artists to open a Hiero project and review shots in context without the full shot-management capabilities – or cost – of Hiero itself.

HieroPlayer is available now for 64-bit Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems, price $300.

PRESS RELEASE (Excerpts)
Leading computer graphics and visual effects software developer, The Foundry has launched HIEROPLAYER, a brand new review tool for VFX. HIEROPLAYER is a VFX review and playback tool built for artists. It gives NUKE
users the power to playback every shot on the VFX timeline in context on their own workstation. This cost-effective tool is priced at £200 including one year’s maintenance.

A NUKE user with a HIEROPLAYER can export the shot or sequence that they are working on in NUKE, then play it back and review it in context with full audio on HIEROPLAYER’s VFX timeline. They will also have easy access to multiple versions of their shots.

Features and benefits

  • Stay organised and save time with media management capabilities that let artists create their own elements library to organise, sort and tag their VFX elements.
  • View shots in context and get the right results faster with soft import of all media that NUKE can read plus audio and playback for individual artists
  • Work seamlessly with NUKE out of the box with playback of all NUKE image formats, including multi-channel EXRs as well as audio, letting artists easily send clips back and forth between HIERO and NUKE
  • Python scripting means HIEROPLAYER can be deeply integrated into any VFX pipeline

Working collaboratively with HIERO and NUKE
HIEROPLAYER also compliments HIERO, The Foundry’s shot management, conform and review toolset. With HIEROPLAYER NUKE users get access to a full HIERO project on their VFX workstation, allowing them to view and work on shots in the context of a conformed HIERO timeline so they can quickly review versions as soon as they have been rendered.

Read a full list of features in HieroPlayer on The Foundry’s website