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Clearly the standout filter in the collection is Matte Generator, which can take much of the pain out of procedural matte creation. While producing mattes using blue and green screen keyers has been widely explored already, no product has before tried to make it easy to pull mattes in other ways. These methods are especially important in the era of DV compression, where chroma keyers often produce jagged, unusable mattes.
The common procedural technique used by most After Effects users employs multiple applications of Levels, Channels, Blur, and other filters to isolate different parts of an image. These parts are then composited together into a complete matte.
But where the traditional method involves getting lost in a sea of parameters scattered throughout layers and pre-comps, Matte Generator packs the same functionality into a single filter. Multiple mattes can be created, fine-tuned, and composited in one place to make procedural matte creation easy, even fun. Matte Generator is intuitive and renders very quickly. I quickly found myself attached to it.
Many of the other filters in Composite Suite steal functionality from Matte Generator to fix already existing mattes, selectively alter a layer, or add additional mathematical transfer modes for compositing. One particularly interesting instance composites pre-drawn light patterns into matted areas of an image.
Finally, Composite Suite also comes with a fast, high-quality Grain filter that looks just as good as Cinelook, although lacking the fine controls and presets found in that package.
Learn more about Digital Film Tools Composite SuiteVisit our Plug-in Finder and see images, samples and more.
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