Autodesk Media and Entertainment

Discreet, Inc.

File:Logo company discreet.gif
Company type	Division
Industry	Computer software
Founded	Montreal, Quebec (1999)
Headquarters	Montreal, Quebec
Key people	Martin Vann, VP Marketing Marc Petit, VP Product Development Stig Gruman, VP Finance
Products	3ds max gmax flame inferno smoke See complete products listing.
Number of employees	N/A
Website	www.discreet.com

Autodesk Media and Entertainment, formerly Discreet, is based in Montreal, Quebec as the entertainment division of Autodesk Inc., and produces software used in the development of high-value design-intensive content for effects-rich feature films, premier programming, television commercials and interactive gaming. Discreet also provides integrated workflow solutions which focus on storage, management and distribution to complement its primary product line.

History

Discreet was established in 1999 after Autodesk acquired Discreet Logic, Inc., and merged its operations with Kinetix.

Portfolio

Discreet provides award-winning solutions for the development, management and delivery of digital media for film and television visual effects, color grading and editing, animation, game development, and Web and design visualization.

Software

Software produced by this company include 3ds Max, Gmax, Flame, Inferno, Smoke, Lustre, Combustion, Cleaner and Toxik.

3ds Max

3ds Max is a professional 3D modeling, animation and rendering software suite which provides advanced tools for character animation, game development, design visualization and visual effects production. 3ds Max supports animators, designers and game developers with a unified object-oriented platform, customizable real-time interface, multiple-processor support and 3D graphics acceleration capabilities, including extension via a wide range of plug-ins and specialized products such as Ball’s character studio.

Gmax

Gmax is a free scaled down version of 3ds Max. Its usage is basically the same as 3ds max but with fewer options and tools. Gmax can be expanded with special packs usually for designing in video games. It is avaliable for download free of charge. As of 2006, Gmax is a discontinued product.

Flint

Flint is Discreet's entry level compositing platform for systems product line. Discreet's compositing product line is mostly called as FFI, which stands for Flint/Flame/Inferno. Flint currently works on a dual Xeon PC with an Nvidia FX3000G gfx card, running Red Hat Linux WS3.0. And this makes Flint a very fast box, in terms of processing speed, and interactivity. When it was running on the sgi O2, it had a bad reputation in terms of processing speed. The latest version running on the O2 is 7.1, and current version is 9.5 and it still supports the octane2 V10 graphics. SGI octane1 SI/SE support was dropped after 8.3.2.

Major missing features from Flint are: modular keyer (one of the best tools in FFI for keying work), 10 bits per component images (which is a must for cineon log workflow for film work), 3D tracker.

Flame

Flame is Discreet's flagship online visual effects system. Flame is a creative solution that enables artists to craft visual effects for feature films, television commercials, music videos and broadcast promos at the highest resolutions from film to high definition television (HDTV). It offers the ability to interactively create, composite and edit highly challenging sequences that merge live action with computer-generated imagery, including new support in version 8 for editing, 3D graphics and mixed resolutions. Post-production facilities and broadcasters integrate Flame within dedicated suites and networked environments.

Flame v9.x runs on these platforms: sgi tezro V12(SD/HD resolutions), sgi octane2 V12(SD/HD resolutions), sgi octane1 MXI/MXE(SD resolution)

Inferno

Inferno, an online visual effects system, is a creative solution that builds on the feature set of Flame with film tools, and increased image resolution and color control for digital film work, including film-specific tools for grain management, wire and scratch removal and color calibration. It is tuned to provide high levels of feedback on large format imagery and is designed specifically for film and high definition content.

Currently, Inferno runs on sgi onyx series, except onyx1. Onyx1 support has been dropped by version 5, Inferno v4.7.4 was the latest version that runs on onyx1_IR. Current (2005) Inferno hardware is an sgi onyx350, mostly with IR4 gfx with 1024MB texture memory. But the software still supports the onyx2 series.

When Flame and Inferno is compared, they don't have many feature differences. They differ mostly in their processing speeds. Inferno is much faster when compared to Flame configurations. But a newer Flame config can be sometimes faster than an older Inferno configuration. Although many people think that Inferno should be chosen for film work, Flame has the same abilities for film work with slower processing. One important feature difference between Flame and Inferno is the motion module. The motion module was bought from Realviz, and it is actually the Retimer software integrated into inferno GUI.

Smoke

Smoke is an online non-linear creative editing and finishing solution that enables editors to edit, conform and finish television commercials, broadcast programming and other content. Editors benefit from support for high definition and standard definition resolutions, which offers a secure investment for high definition mastering, including the ability to work in a 3D environment, and compatibility with Discreet's visual effects systems, Flame and Fnferno.

Lustre

Lustre is a high performance digital intermediate system for 2K and 4K color grading and look creation. Its unique and powerful software design delivers real-time primary color correction and grading capabilities while providing a rich and sophisticated feature set for working with high-resolution imagery and digital intermediates.

Currently, it works on a PC, running Windows XP. It uses Nvidia FX4000SDI as the graphics and video monitoring card. It was originally developed by Colorfront [1] in Hungary.

Its first major use was the Lord of the Rings Trilogy operated by Peter Doyle.

Combustion

Autodesk Combustion (formerly known as Discreet Combustion) is a node based, desktop video, compositing and visual effects program produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. Combustion has a variety of tools, from Particles, to Paint, a very advanced tracker/stabiliser, colour correction, chroma keying among others. Combustion is a small version of the Inferno and Flame compositing systems.

As of 2005, Combustion version 4 is the current version.

Cleaner

Cleaner is an encoder sold by discreet. Cleaner can encode in Realplayer, Windows Media, QuickTime and MPEG2 formats.

Toxik

Toxik is a collaborative software for interactive film compositing. Node based.

External links

• Official home page.