Visual effects software developer, The Foundry announced a new Beta version of HIERO, which allows users to download and try the software on the Windows operating system.
HIERO 1.0 was launched in March 2012, and is currently available on Mac OSX and Linux. Since its release HIERO has received praise from a variety of studios that have adopted The Foundry’s new pipeline in a box.
HIERO allows production facilities to efficiently conform, review and export shots to visual effects artists and into finishing systems. HIERO 1.0 is NOT a compositor or a system for finishing, grading or editing. Specifically designed to work seamlessly with The Foundry’s NUKE and NUKEX compositing applications, HIERO also enables collaborative working with other editorial, VFX and finishing tools.
“In the NUKE department at The Mill HIERO seemed a natural choice to fill the pipeline gap that we were bridging using in-house scripting and third party software”, said Hugo Guerra, joint head of Nuke compositing at The Mill. “Using HIERO and NUKEX together is the perfect solution for us. With these tools we save time and money on our pipeline, leaving the artists more time to be creative and not be delayed by the technical part of the process. This means our productions get better, faster and more collaborative”.
“HIERO has removed all the tedious, manual labour from conforming,” said Andres Kirejew, partner and VFX Supervisor at Township. “I pointed it towards my EDL and 1.5tb of RED Epic footage magically relinked! HIERO breaks out shots with ease and automatically names, symlinks and prepares them for NUKE roundtripping. HIERO is brilliant. Seriously, at the price point, it’s a no-brainer!”
“HIERO has the potential to make NUKE a true stand-alone product, and move it up to a level where you can complete projects completely independently in a commercials environment” said Ludo Fealy, VFX supervisor at MPC. “Everyone wants to see this happen.”
The HIERO development team has also been working hard on a range of other features and additions that will be available in upcoming versions of HIERO. As well as Windows support future releases will also include 3:2 Pulldown (a technique used to represent 24p material in NTSC interlaced format), and SDI Monitor Out — allowing users to playback short-form post projects (such as commercials and promos) that match the quality, format and colors that they will be broadcast in.
Also in a forthcoming release, The Foundry will be introducing HIERO Player – a powerful playback tool that will allow VFX artists to view their shots in context of a conformed HIERO timeline.