Monday, September 26th, 2016 Posted by Jim Thacker

RandomControl ships ArionFX for After Effects, Nuke


RandomControl has released new versions of ArionFX, its formerly Photoshop-only add-on for editing HDR images, for After Effects and Nuke.

The new tools make it possible to add a range of physically based optical effects to composites, including bloom, glare, chromatic aberration and lens dirt.

Add real-world lens effects to composites
The feature sets of the two new editions are very similar to that of the original Photoshop edition of ArionFX, version 3.5 of which was released last month.

Both make it possible to add effects to comps based on the physical properties of real-world lenses, including bloom, glare, chromatic aberration and vignetting.

The software also supports custom dirt maps to mimic the look of dirty lenses, and aperture and obstacle maps to mimic “old, cheap and very wide angle lenses”.

Tools for manipulating HDR footage
Effects are simulated in full high dynamic range, with ArionFX also providing a range of other tools for manipulating HDR images, including five separate tone-mapping operators.

There are also options for creating artistically desirable but physically implausible results, including an HDR Upcast effect for brightening the brightest pixels in an image to heighten glare in product renders.

Despeckle or grade footage
Other interesting features of ArionFX include a proprietary despeckler algorithm, geared towards removing noise or firefly artefacts from renders generated by path tracing renderers.

The software also includes a range of colour grading tools, supporting full 32-bit floating point precision colour depth throughout the grading workflow.

Pricing and availability
ArionFX 3.5 is available now for After Effects CS 6.x and above and Nuke 9.x and above, running on 64-bit Windows XP and above only. Both versions cost €95 (around $107).


Read more about ArionFX for Nuke and ArionFX for After Effects on RandomControl’s website