The Foundry releases Windows beta of Hiero
The Foundry has released a beta version of Hiero, its new shot-management and review tool, for Windows.
Released in March on Linux and Mac OS X, Hiero is pitched as a “pipeline in a box”, enabling studios to “efficiently conform, review and export shots to visual effects artists and into finishing systems”. The software works out of the box with Nuke, and may be integrated with other compositors.
The official news release repeats much of the same information as the original launch announcement, but there are a couple of additions about future product development:
“As well as Windows support future releases will also include 3:2 Pulldown (a technique used to represent 24p material in NTSC interlaced format), and SDI Monitor Out – allowing users to playback short-form post projects (such as commercials and promos) that match the quality, format and colours that they will be broadcast in.”
“In a forthcoming release, The Foundry will be introducing HIERO Player – a powerful playback tool that will allow VFX artists to view their shots in context of a conformed HIERO timeline.”
The latter is interesting: at the Hiero launch event that CG Channel attended, guest presenter Russell Dodgson of Framestore commented that he would like to see a ‘Lite’ edition of the software cheap enough for facilities to use it as a replacement for dedicated playback tools such as Tweak Software’s RV.
That isn’t necessarily where The Foundry is going with Hiero Player, but it looks as if Hiero may be the start of a product family, not simply a one-off release.
Updated 25 April: The Foundry have got back to us to say that Hiero Player fulfills “a different demand to RV. Think of it as a baby HIERO – it will allow visual effects artists to open the current HIERO project and review their shots in context at their workstation, but without the full shot management capabilities of HIERO itself.”