Shake 4 Product Overview May 2005
Product Overview Shake 4 Contents Page 3 Introduction Page 4 New in Shake 4 Page 6 Unified 2D/3D Compositing Node View Interface 2D/3D Compositing Rotoscoping and Paint 32-Bit Keylight and Primatte Truelight Monitor Calibration Page 11 Advanced Image Processing Optical Flow–Based Retiming Smoothcam and Tracking Shape-Based Morphing and Warping AutoAlign Page 13 Editing and E∂ects Pipeline Integration Integration with Final Cut Pro 5 Free Distributed Rendering on Mac OS X Page 15 Open and Custom
Product Overview Shake 4 3 Introduction Used to create the world’s most celebrated visual e∂ects for film and television, Shake 4 is the only compositing software that delivers a complete and proven toolset for creating visually stunning content. Shake 4 is an a∂ordable, high-quality postproduction solution for studios of all sizes, ranging from individual artists to boutique operations to large visual e∂ects facilities. It includes the following powerful features: • Unified 2D/3D compositing.
Product Overview Shake 4 4 New in Shake 4 If you’re already familiar with Shake, you can look forward to breakthrough new features in Shake 4, including: Unified 2D/3D Compositing The powerful compositing tools in Shake have been expanded in Shake 4 to make it easy to work with both 2D and 3D elements within the same intuitive user interface. Shake 4 also includes additional levels of quality and control for key aspects of compositing, including tracking, keying, and matte operations.
Product Overview Shake 4 5 New Image Processing Technology Shake 4 uses the power and elegance of optical flow image processing to create stunning quality for retiming and resizing, shot stabilization, and panorama compositing. • Optical flow–based retiming. Shake 4 makes it possible to create impressive, smooth slow motion through advanced optical flow technology.
Product Overview Shake 4 6 Unified 2D/3D Compositing Shake 4 delivers the most e∑cient compositing operations for handling large images with pristine quality. Looking “under the hood” of Shake 4 provides a view of what makes it unique among visual e∂ects compositing applications. Node View Interface Node-based compositing is more than just a view in Shake 4—it is the logic behind all the compositing operations. The Node View displays the network of linked functions that make up the node tree.
Product Overview Shake 4 7 2D/3D Compositing Shake has long been an industry favorite, in part because of its powerful, intuitive compositing engine. Shake 4 extends the speed and flexibility of the compositing engine to include the ability to composite both 2D and 3D elements within the same user interface. Resolution independence Most compositing applications can use various frame sizes in a single project and refer to that as “resolution independence.
Product Overview Shake 4 Domain of Definition Visual e∂ects are becoming more and more complex. More layers are being composited and frames are getting larger. Shake 4 uses a Domain of Definition (DOD) to identify the significant pixels in an image in order to optimize the speed of rendering e∂ects and layering calculations. Everything outside of the DOD is considered as background (black by default) and is therefore ignored in most computations.
Product Overview Shake 4 9 Rotoscoping and Paint Rotoscoping In Shake 4, you can mask a layer or an e∂ect to control which areas of an image are modified (like a bright color correction on a portion of the image). For sophisticated animations, each mask in Shake 4 can be keyframed, or each point on the rotoshape can be tracked, and a photorealistic motion blur can be applied.
Product Overview Shake 4 10 Truelight Monitor Calibration Truelight is a complete HD-to-film or film-to-film color management system from FilmLight, integrated directly into Shake 4 for previsualizing the look of projected film images on Apple LCD displays and CRT display devices. It allows compositors to use Truelight 3D Cube technology to accurately predict the look of their HD or film imagery when printed to film, without unnecessary film outs—thereby saving time-consuming matching and rework.
Product Overview Shake 4 11 Advanced Image Processing Shake 4 uses the power of optical flow image processing to create extraordinary image quality for retiming, shot stabilization, tracking, and more. Intuitive splinebased controls o∂er an unusual combination of flexibility and precision for warping and morphing. Optical Flow–Based Retiming Timing controls are important to speed up, slow down, or sync a clip in time. Shake 4 uses an advanced optical flow–based system for retiming shots.
Product Overview Shake 4 12 Shape-Based Morphing and Warping The shape-based morphing and warping in Shake 4 can be used for fantastic shape shifting or seamless corrective e∂ects. Integrated directly into Shake 4, morphing and warping shapes use standard spline tools. These tools make it more intuitive to create and modify an e∂ect than mesh-based warping tools. Unlike hardware-based warping tools, Shake 4 uses high-quality software-based rendering for fine precision.
Product Overview Shake 4 13 Editing and E∂ects Pipeline Integration Visual e∂ects are a key component of film and television production workflows. One of the challenges comes from creating a seamless, e∑cient workflow with editing and other post-production operations. Shake 4 o∂ers new levels of pipeline integration, as well as the ability to expedite rendering in order to avoid post-production bottlenecks.
Product Overview Shake 4 14 Distributed QuickTime rendering Using Apple Qmaster, Shake 4 projects can distribute the rendering of a single QuickTime File Out Node. Apple Qmaster splits the file up for rendering and stitches it back together automatically, just as if the render had been executed on a single machine. Job dependencies Some rendering jobs depend on the results of previously rendered jobs being available.
Product Overview Shake 4 15 Open and Customizable Architecture Shake 4 supports the most complex workflows and sophisticated projects. Using the power of scripting, Shake 4 artists can control every parameter of the program to accomplish anything from creating custom e∂ects to automating repetitive tasks. Scripting Shake 4 projects are called scripts because they are essentially text files saved out in ASCII format. Scripts are extremely flexible and easy to modify, even without launching Shake 4.
Product Overview Shake 4 16 Open Architecture For customers wanting to move beyond the rich toolset of Shake 4, an infinite level of customization is available through an open architecture. This customization often is a way for facilities to di∂erentiate their capabilities and develop new visual e∂ect techniques within a stable, high-performance environment.
Product Overview Shake 4 17 Visual E∂ects Workflows Shake 4 meets the needs of the most demanding workflows for film, television, and commercial post-production.
Product Overview Shake 4 18 Feature Film Production Large facilities like Weta Digital, Tippett Studio, and Industrial Light & Magic invest millions of dollars in hardware and software to achieve the most productive work environment. These companies are involved in all aspects of a movie—from shooting to 3D animation to compositing to printing out on film.
Product Overview Shake 4 19 Animation Houses Animation houses like Blue Sky or Luminetik invest considerable amounts of e∂ort in developing an e∑cient 3D workflow. More and more, they are implementing e∑cient 2D compositing workflows that provide greater flexibility and speed. These companies are involved in all segments of the film and television industry, including feature films, television programming, and commercial work.
Product Overview Shake 4 20 Technical Specifications • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Compositing Process tree–based compositing Control over bit depth at a local node level Mix image resolutions within a composition 3D MultiPlane node with camera controls Import Maya-compatible camera tracking data Customizable quad split viewer Multi-input Layer node with blend modes Boolean and Image Math layer operations Import Photoshop layers with blend modes Fully editable node grouping/ungrouping Channel swapping a
Product Overview Shake 4 Transformations • Infinite Workspace keeps elements and filters from being cropped when moved out of frame • Pan, Rotate, Scale, Shear, and Corner Pin • Tracker, Stabilizer, and Matchmove nodes • New Smoothcam optical flow–based stabilization • Tracker preprocessing to reduce inaccuracies • New AutoAlign • Optical flow–based resizing • Concatenation of adjacent transformations into a single move, for speed and quality • Per-transformation or global motion blur control • Motion blur
Product Overview Shake 4 22 Product Details Price and Availability The U.S. retail price of Shake 4 is $2999. An upgrade version is available for $999. Contact your authorized Apple representative for education prices. Shake 4 is available worldwide in English. It can be purchased from the Apple Store online (www.apple.com/store), Apple Authorized Resellers, and Apple retail stores. Shake 4 for Mac OS X is available as a single-workstation license or a floating network license.
Product Overview Shake 4 23 Support Apple o∂ers the following support options for purchasers of Shake 4: • 90 days of complimentary telephone support. Shake 4 comes with 90 days of complimentary telephone support for basic troubleshooting, installation, and launch issues. • Annual support. The purchase of an annual support contract gives you access to email support from Shake experts during business hours. • Per-incident support.
