- [Ben] Hi, this is Ben Brownlee with Boris FX.
And I'm gonna take you through a quick look
at what's new in Silhouette 2021.
(bright electronic chime)
Silhouette 2021 is now available as a plugin
for Adobe and OFX.
This means the fully featured interface
for roto, paint and compositing can now be directly launched
from industry standard VFX applications.
This opens up the entire Silhouette
node-based workflow for you.
And you can even share projects
between the standalone and plugin versions.
The new Lens Correction node builds on shared technology
from Mocha Pro, to calibrate and correct
for lens distortion in your images.
This makes tasks like painting on wide angle footage
much simpler.
Instead of having to think about curved lines for cloning,
you can just paint straight,
then invert the distortion to fit perfectly
onto your original image.
The DOD auto-updates,
so you don't have to worry about losing pixels.
Silhouette's leading roto tools have been honed even further
in this latest release,
including new tools such as Brush Reshape
and the new editing features like Point Groups,
Point Collapse and Distribute.
Brush Reshape builds on one of my favorite
recent roto additions, the Magnetic Reshape tool.
It uses a circular brush
to simultaneously select and move points,
by default using the Magnetic Reshape behavior.
The brush size is controlled
just as you would any other brush in Silhouette
and it means fewer clicks
and a more instinctive way of moving control points,
whilst keeping the animation smooth and natural.
You can now assign control points to groups.
Here, I'll add the top of this shape into group one.
And the bottom points into group two.
I can use the context menu or the same keyboard shortcut
I use to save my brushes in the paint node.
I'll move between selections of points
with simple keyboard shortcuts, Alt and the number.
Again, just like switching through saved paint brushes.
This means I don't have to manually drag
select points anymore.
Again, fewer clicks to do the job.
There are of course, many other enhancements
based on artist feedback,
not least, Point Collapse and Distribute
for when your shape suddenly needs to get a lot simpler
or more complex again.
There's Split Shape that works similarly
to spitting a clip in two when doing video editing.
This is useful to limit the amount of effort
when the nature of your shape changes midway through.
For example, the shape gets more complex at this point,
so I split it
and I'll just leave the simple part already finished.
No need to go back and change already roto'ed keyframes.
Also, look at the UI improvements that help you keep track
of where your shapes are and what they're doing
visually on the timeline.
Colors and shade on the timeline
allow me to easily see particular shapes
and when they're active.
Weighted Multiframe enhances the current multiframe ability
to correct multiple keyframes simultaneously.
Traditionally, this would make corrections ripple
across the entire keyframe range.
See here, as all the keyframes move in unison.
Weighted Multiframe allows me to set fade in
and fade out areas which will weight adjustments
to selected areas on the timeline.
Very useful for directly adjusting tracking data
that begins to slip.
Or for adding natural looking corrections
to roto splines that are already densely keyframed.
Roto artists and supervisors are going to appreciate
the new roto review and approval improvements.
Notes assigned to objects like shapes, layers and trackers
can be displayed in the viewer.
And this makes it much easier for artists to see
and act on the notes given by their supervisors.
I enjoy order in my work
and there have been a large number of interface improvements
around the node tree and general UI.
The highlights for me, start with the Dot and Note nodes.
These are a couple of great utility nodes.
Dot allows me to add compact null nodes into my tree,
helping me to add structure.
I can Alt + Click on a line to add a Dot
and Alt + Click from the Dot to add another output.
Much less spaghetti in my tree.
Notes allow me to add a reminder as my tree
to help me keep track of tasks I still need to do
or I can use them to create a color background
to easily identify nodes in a more complex composite.
Combine this with the regular node grouping
and the new node coloring and node alignment features,
and my tree looks a lot more uncluttered.
This is great for me when I revisit a project
or especially when sharing projects
between different people.
Paint improvements include Clone Source Masking
to use the alpha when cloning.
This works whatever your paint source.
And a more artist friendly color picker.
This makes hunting for the right color faster
with fewer clicks.
As you can tell, I am very excited about this new release.
The Silhouette plugin and new flexible pricing options
lets Silhouette fit firmly in many more workflows.
As for functionality,
this is very much an artist focused update.
Giving you new tools and interface improvements
to make your Silhouette work less about clicking
and more about creating.
Learn more about Silhouette 2021,
upgrade pricing and watch our Silhouette video tutorials,
all at borisfx.com.