Maxon releases Red Giant 2024.1
Maxon has released Red Giant 2024.1, the latest version of its collection of effects plugins.
The update includes new versions of four of Red Giant’s individual products: Magic Bullet 2024.1, Trapcode 2024.1, Universe 2024.1 and VFX 2024.1.
The VFX suite gets updates to the Spot Clone Tracker tool and to Real Lens Flares, including new options for distorting lens flares accurately as they pass behind foreground objects, and a new Light Ball core projection type for generating a physical representation of light sources.
Universe gets a new Bokeh plugin and Bokeh transition. Magic Bullet and Trapcode get workflow and performance updates.
Magic Bullet 2024.1
Magic Bullet, Maxon’s colour correction tools for compositing and editing software, gets a quality-of-life update, simplifying color management worklow.
The update also adds support for Unreal Engine 5.3, the latest version of the real-time renderer, with the Movie Render Queue now supported natively rather than via a plugin.
Read a full list of changes in Magic Bullet 2024.1 in the online release notes
Trapcode 2024.1
With the exception of Form, all of the tools in Trapcode, Maxon’s motion graphics and VFX plugins for After Effects, get updates to their Asset Browsers.
Users can now search for assets by keyword, and search for cloud-based assets provided through Maxon’s regular Capsules releases, as well as assets on their local machine.
Particle tool Particular gets new sets of pixel art and emoji sprites, and optimizations for After Effects’ Multi-Frame Rendering system, improving playback and rendering speed.
Read a full list of changes in Trapcode 2024.1 in the online release notes
Universe 2024.1
Universe, Maxon’s online library of effects and transitions for editing and compositing software, gets a new Bokeh plugin and Bokeh transition.
Both mimic bokeh lens defocus effects, and provide controls for bokeh shape, focal area and focal length, and support custom blur and depth maps.
Maxon is also rolling out a new higher-performance framework for the Universe plugins, currently used by the new Bokeh plugin and the existing uni.Blur plugin.
Neither the Bokeh tools or the underlying framework are yet available for Apple or Avid software, only Universe’s other host applications.
Read a full list of changes in Universe 2024.1 in the online release notes
VFX 2024.1
VFX, Maxon’s After Effects plugins for common visual effects tasks like chroma keying, camera tracking, blemish removal and precomposing gets another update to Real Lens Flares.
A new Obscuration system accurately mimics the deformation of flares as a light source passes behind foreground objects, with users able to reference the luminance, alpha or RGB values of a layer to create obscuring elements.
There is also a new core projection type, Light Ball, which renders a physical representation of a light source. Suggested use cases include the sun, street lights, and car headlights.
In addition, position falloff graphs, previously only available for the Ring core projection, have been added to most other core projections.
Blemish removal tool Spot Clone Tracker gets a Shape Roundness slider for tracking shapes, and a new Tracker Only mode, which hides all non-tracking-related parameters in the interface.
Read a full list of changes in VFX 2024.1 in the online release notes
Price and system requirements
The Red Giant 2024.1 plugins are available for Windows 10+ and macOS 11.0+, and are compatible with After Effects 2023+.
Some products are compatible with other host applications, including DaVinci Resolve.
All of the products are rental-only, and are available via Red Giant subscriptions, which cost $79/month or $599/year, or Maxon One subscriptions, which cost $149/month or $1,199/year. Individual Universe subscriptions cost $30/month or $199/year.
Read more about Red Giant 2024.1 on Maxon’s website
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