SilhouetteFX Silhouette v7.0.4 (macOS / Linux)

Invaluable in post-production, Silhouette continues to bring best-of-class tools to the visual effects industry. Using an entirely stereoscopic workflow, all capabilities of Silhouette, including its award winning rotoscoping, non-destructive paint, keying, matting, warping, morphing, and 2D-3D conversion tools are stereo enabled.

Battle Tested
With hundreds of feature films, commercials and television shows under our belts in combination with input from artists working in the trenches, we have jointly created powerful visual effect software.

Best of Breed Tools
We pride ourselves in creating best of breed rotoscoping, paint, morph, keying and compositing tools—in some cases without equal in competing products.

Affordable Products
Other software companies are better than us at marketing, but we prefer to spend our time and money designing and building better software and then pass the savings on to you.

TREES
The power of Silhouette lies in the Trees window where your effects are built. A tree is a series of clips and nodes, such as color correction, image processing and composite nodes, plugged together to create the desired effect. The tree is grown by adding clips and nodes in any order. The ability to view any node while editing another allows for very complex composites that can be set up and rendered in one pass.

NODES
Silhouette is a node based system and different nodes are used for various functions. Located in the Nodes tab at the bottom of the screen, nodes are grouped into various categories.

TREES AND NODES FEATURES

• 142 different nodes organized into Color, Composite, Diffusion, Filter, Film Lab, Image, Key, Light, Silhouette, Special Effects, Time, Tints, Transform, Warp and OFX groups
• Horizontal and vertical node layouts
• Gestural node workflow
• Node grouping
• Visual presets for most nodes
• OFX third party plug-in compatible. At the current time, Boris Sapphire, Boris mocha, and RE:Vision Effects plug-ins have been qualified to run in Silhouette.
• OFX third party plug-in compatible. At the current time, Boris Sapphire, Boris mocha, and RE:Vision Effects plug-ins have been qualified to run in Silhouette.

COMPOSITE
A well rounded collection of compositing nodes that provide all that is needed to combine multiple images. Utilize compositing tricks and techniques, color correction, blur, grain, matte manipulation, lens distortion, lighting effects and edge blending. Eradicate the most common effects problems or employ specialized tools for combining imagery such as fire, smoke and explosions.

COMPOSITE FEATURES:

• Compositing tricks and techniques
• Effectively composite fire, explosions and smoke
• Edge tools to color correct or blur the composite's edge
• Proprietary matte generation
• Matte manipulation using shrink, grow, blur and wrap functions

ROTO
Silhouette allows you to quickly create sophisticated animated mattes using B-Spline, Bézier or X-Spline shapes. Intelligent design and easy-to-use tools, such as variable edge softness on a point by point basis and realistic motion blur, assist you in creating complicated shape animations. Integrated motion tracking makes the normally tedious task of rotoscoping a breeze.

ROTO FEATURES

• Unlimited number of animated B-spline, X-Spline or Bézier shapes
• Stereoscopic rotoscoping workflow and tools
• Integrated Motion Tracker that can apply motion data to points or shapes
• Planar tracker provides automatic, markerless motion analysis and tracking
• IK (Inverse Kinematics) for animating humans, animals and all manner of jointed creatures
• Support for open or closed shapes
• Move, scale, rotate, shear, and corner pin shapes and groups of shapes
• Point-by-Point variable edge softness
• Realistic motion blur
• Animation changes for one point or selected points across all keyframes
• Independent shape viewing and hiding
• User-definable names, colors, blurs and blend modes for each shape
• Render shape animation over image as an outline or filled color
• Shape import and export
• Support for video fields and 3:2 Pulldown

IK (INVERSE KINEMATICS)
Silhouette’s feature set has been augmented with the addition of an innovative approach to Inverse Kinematics. 3D modeling systems have long enjoyed the benefit of IK for animating articulated objects such as people, animals and creatures in general. The layer system already familiar to Silhouette users is used to dynamically generate bone structures for articulated shape transformation. When the IK feature is enabled, dragging a shape such as a fingertip has the potential to transform an entire arm. Since so much of roto work is on articulated objects, Silhouette’s IK feature can be a big time saver.

FEATHER
Utilize motion blur to generate realistic roto shapes and/or use variable edged feathering on a point by point basis.

PAINT
Paint is a high dynamic range, non-destructive, 2D paint system designed from the ground up to handle the demands of feature film and television production. Whether it’s image restoration, dustbusting, wire and rig removal or just plain paint, Silhouette provides simple and sensible tools to get the job done.

PAINT FEATURES

• Black and White, Blemish, Blur, Clone, Color, Color Correct, Cutout, Drag, Eraser, Grain, Mosaic, Repair and Scatter brushes
• Non-destructive raster paint system allows playback of paint strokes on a range of frames or the entire sequence
• Automatic recording of paint events with selective stroke playback
• Track paint strokes and Clone sources
• Sophisticated cloning interface
• Motion track, position, scale, rotate and corner pin clone sources
• Color Correct, Blur, Sharpen or Warp the Clone source
• Paint on left and right stereo images simultaneously using an adjustable, keyframeable interocular offset
• Onion-Skin and Align tools to match up elements
• Presets to store brushes and their settings

AUTO PAINT
Auto Paint is a highly unique automated paint feature that records all paint activity with tight integration of both point and planar trackers. Paint strokes can be match moved or stabilized giving Silhouette the speed of raster paint with the repeatability of vector paint. The beauty of the system lies in the automatic recording of the paint strokes and brush settings. Individual paint strokes can be selected and repeated over many frames, as well as deleted. If the original footage changes, the entire paint history can be used to rebuild the painted shot, automatically.

MORPH
Silhouette includes a fully-featured shape based image warping and morphing system as well as a pin warper which provide the highest level of control and quality available. Image warping and morphing can take place on stills as well as image sequences. Warping can be used to enhance or exaggerate facial features, adjust sizing of image elements, create talking animals or any other type of image deformation. Morphing has been traditionally used to transform one object or person into another and more recently to seamlessly transform a live action element into a CG (computer generated) object and vice versa.

PIN WARP
Pin Warp allows you to warp specific image areas using pins, while leaving other areas untouched. Adjustments can range from subtle nip and tucks to something more obvious like repositioning an arm or leg.

PIN WARP FEATURES

• Distort specific image areas using pins
• Protect image areas using tacks
• Track pins and tacks

MORPH
Morphing has been traditionally used to transform one object or person into another and more recently to seamlessly transform a live action element into a CG (computer generated) object and vice versa.

MORPH FEATURES

• Distort and morph images and sequences
• Shape based morphing
• Transformations on a layer by layer basis
• Depth and folding control
• Integrated motion tracking
• Interactive preview