Maxon releases Spring 2023 Red Giant updates
Maxon’s promo video for its Spring 2023 release. The section on the Red Giant plugins starts at 03:20.
Maxon has released its Spring 2023 updates to its Red Giant collection of effects plugins, with new versions of four of the individual products: Universe 2023.1, Magic Bullet 2023.2, Trapcode 2023.3 and VFX 2023.3.
Key changes include Symbol Mapper, a new animated ASCII art effect, in Universe 2023.1, and support for anamorphic lenses inside VFX 2023.3’s Real Lens Flares tool.
Universe 2023.1
Universe, Maxon’s online library of plugins for motion graphics artists and editors, gets its first update this year.
Universe 2023.1 introduces a new effect, Symbol Mapper, for generating animated ASCII art, converting video footage to a matrix of typographic symbols, based on source brightness values.
The update also adds 42 new presets for the existing Electrify, Line, Long Shadow, Prism Displacement and RGB Separation effects, plus the option to search for presets by name in the dashboard and presets browser.
Read a full list of changes in Universe 2023.1 in the online release notes
Magic Bullet 2023.2
Magic Bullet, Maxon’s set of colour correction and looks plugins, gets a strength slider for the Looks plugin, intended to make it easier to dial in looks, by setting strength globally, then adjusting on a tool-by-tool basis.
Read a full list of changes in Magic Bullet 2023.2 in the online release notes
Trapcode 2023.3
Trapcode, Maxon’s motion graphics and VFX plugins for After Effects, gets a set of 68 ‘Atomic Age’ sprites.
The 2D sprites, inspired by the graphic design style of 1960s TV series like The Jetsons, can be assigned to particle systems generated by Trapcode tools Form and Particular.
Read a full list of changes in Trapcode 2023.3 in the online release notes
VFX 2023.3
VFX, Maxon’s After Effects plugins for common visual effects tasks like chroma keying, camera tracking, blemish removal and precomposing gets support for anamorphic lenses its Real Lens Flares plugin.
Supercomp, for creating VFX composites, gets support for adjustment layers.
Pricing and availability
The Red Giant plugins are available for Windows and macOS, and are compatible with After Effects 2022+. Individual products are compatible with other host applications, including DaVinci Resolve.
All of the products are rental-only, and are available via Maxon’s Red Giant subscriptions, which cost $79/month or $599/year, or Maxon One subscriptions, which cost $149/month or $1,199/year.