Sneak peek: Video Copilot’s new Nebula 3D plugin
Video Copilot has unveiled Nebula 3D, its new volumetric lighting plugin for After Effects.
Sequences created using the software were screened during a presentation by Video Copilot founder Andrew Kramer on Adobe’s stage at NAB 2019.
Advanced volumetric lighting effects, directly inside After Effects
According to the demo, Nebula 3D is a GPU-accelerated volumetric lighting and rendering tool, for creating effects like clouds, fog and smoke, with support for “advanced light scattering”.
It can import VDB sequences, and is optimised for Element 3D, Video Copilot’s 3D render engine for After Effects, and Cinema 4D, the Lite edition of which is included with After Effects.
Other than that, we don’t have a lot of information, although this Reddit thread includes posts from people who saw demos earlier this year, and say good things about performance.
Updated: Nebula 3D is also featured in Maxon’s recording of the sessions at its NAB booth.
The footage, which starts at 02:26:35 in the video above, shows workflow in Nebula 3D, both for creating volumetric lights from scratch, and adjusting the lighting on imported VDBs.
During the demo, Kramer adjusts properties like density and falloff, with the viewport updating in real time.
The plugin also features a node-based light editor.
Pricing and system requirements
Video Copilot hasn’t announced a release date, pricing or system requirements for Nebula 3D yet.