Flame, Flare, Flame Assist and Lustre have new tricks now, thanks to update 3 released by Autodesk.

The new update to  the Flame 2018 family empowers creative professionals to explore new, more efficient ways of working in post, with feature enhancements that offer greater pipeline flexibility, speed and support for emerging formats and technology. The update introduces new techniques to isolate creative FX, organic tracking technology, enhanced HDR and WCG signal monitoring, VR viewing and more.

Here are the highlights included in Flame 2018.3 release:

• Action Selective: Apply FX color to an image surface or the whole action scene via the camera
• Motion Warp Tracking: Organically distort objects that are changing shape, angle and form with new 32-bit motion vector-based tracking technology
• 360° VR Viewing Mode: View LatLong images in a 360° VR viewing mode in the Flame player or any viewport during compositing and manipulate the field of view
• HDR Waveform Monitoring: Set viewport to show luminance waveform; red, green, blue (RGB) parade; color vectorscope or 3D cube; and monitor a range of HDR and wide color gamut (WCG) color spaces including Rec2100 PQ, Rec2020 and DCI P3
• Shotgun Software Loader: Load assets for a shot and build custom batches via Flame’s Python API, and browse a Shotgun project for a filtered view of individual shots
• User-Requested Improvements for Action, Batch, Timeline and Media Hub

Beta customers who where given advance access to Flame 2018.3  have shared their experiences with the latest release in production. Out of the House VFX artist David Stern said: “Flame continues to be the top editorial and VFX solution out there, and 2018.3 is one of the best releases yet. Vector-based tracking will be transformative and has the potential to save hours, even days of work. The new release also includes more advanced selective tools that increase options from lightbox effects and keys through lightbox; it’s amazing.”

“The new standalone Python console in Flame 2018.3 is great; together with pybox and Python hooks, it gives us everything we could possibly ask for in a piece of software while allowing us to get better organized and keep our workflow moving,” says Treehouse edit finishing artist John Fegan. “We’re also excited about the enhanced FBX export with physically based renderer (PBR) for Maya, and motion analysis updates, which are huge. Using motion vector maps, we can now achieve things we couldn’t with a planar tracker or 3D track.”

“One of the great things about Flame is that Autodesk is continuously delivering features through extension releases like 2018.3 that introduce new problem-solving tools and ways of working, like the Python API integration, which is a huge step forward for Flame,” says freelance compositing artist Marcel Lemme. “It brings another toolbox inside to an already great toolbox that I can use to build new solutions and automate processes, rather than do everything by hand, saving days of prep.”

Flame Family 2018.3 is available now at no additional cost to customers with a current Flame Family 2018 subscription. For details and pricing, visit the Autodesk website.