Wednesday, July 25th, 2018 Posted by Jim Thacker

Curó generates and tracks budgets for VFX projects


Veteran VFX producer Joyce Cox has launched Curó, a new cloud-based platform for planning and managing budgets for visual effects projects ranging from indie TV shows to Hollywood blockbusters.

The service is currently available to trial, and will be on show at Siggraph 2018.

Formerly demoed by Thinkbox Software, and known as Vero
We first wrote about Curó back in 2016, when it was demoed by Thinkbox Software under the name Vero. The tech has now been spun out into an independent service following Amazon’s acquisition of Thinkbox.

In that interview, Cox – whose own credits include The Jungle Book and Avatar – discusses the need for a standardised system for estimating and tracking costs on VFX projects, and the steps in her own workflow.

A production-proven, semi-automated way to estimate costs for VFX projects
Curó implements that workflow as a semi-automated online service, with users uploading a script in PDF format, and the system breaking it down into scenes, action and dialogue.

From there, users can identify shots and group them into sequences, build a list of assets and VFX elements required, and create ‘assumptions’ about the work required to produce each shot.

Curó’s budget projection tools then estimate overall cost, updating dynamically as shot complexity is revised. The system also automatically flags up changes when a new version of a script is uploaded.

Projections can also be adjusted to take account of local tax incentives or labour costs where a large visual effects project is split across vendors working in different countries.

The system is “completely secure, with the option to build in two-factor authentication”, and can create and export reports in standard spreadsheet formats.

Curó is currently aimed at VFX studios, but future modules will also target VFX vendors.

Pricing and availability
For a single user, Curó costs $150/month for one project, or $250/month for multiple projects. Multi-user accounts cost $250/month/user for one project, or $1,250/month/user for multiple projects.

You can find more pricing details here. The service can be trialled free for 30 days.

Find out more about Curó on the product website