4/2/2023 0 Comments Trapcode suite 10![]() ![]() In many ways, the key feature of many of the Trapcode plugins, beyond the actual visuals they produce, are that they're fast and remain fast when traditionally time-intensive features like motion blur are turned on and configured for the best results. These tools remain important simply because many of the most common particle systems, including those built into After Effects, lack flexibility, have no 3D awareness and can be terribly slow by comparison. If Universe includes utility tools for working on pre-existing material, Trapcode probably exists to create that material in the first place. Trapcode Particular and Knoll Light Factory Many of Red Giant's best-known products are part of the Trapcode Suite, including the Particular particle system and Form, a system for wrangling particles into the shapes of other objects. There's a system by which users can vote up proposed future features, which is a very nice idea in a world where almost anything is now possible and it isn't always obvious what's most urgently needed next. It's easy to be cynical about this sort of effort, given that there are already many online fora dedicated to the discussion of motion graphics and visual effects, but Red Giant has made moves to make this genuinely useful. The company has also taken measures to begin building a community of users around the Universe suite, as befits a subscription service. In many cases, particularly with mathematically repetitive operations, such as blurs, the speed boost is significant and the resulting convenience a breath of fresh air. This is something that the core applications have sometimes been a little slow to do. ![]() This comes from both the convenience of a single plugin to achieve an effect which would otherwise require a combination of techniques, but also because Red Giant's code makes extensive use of the GPU. Thus, the principal benefit of Universe, particularly in its free incarnation, is in saved time. It includes a lot of utility tools which do things that could, in theory, be done with built-in features, but can be both set-up and rendered much more quickly in a specialised plugin. It's pointless to mention every plugin included in Universe by name (there are dozens). What's particularly nice about Universe is that it's available either as a cut-down free install or via premium subscription (US$10 a month, $99 a year), or outright for $399, an approach that suits people working in various different circumstances where monthly fees might not make sense. Recently, Red Giant has made a vast compendium of its catalogue available via the Universe subscription service, including a simplified version of the well-known Knoll Light Factory plug-in.įor those unfamiliar with Knoll Light, it's been more-or-less the last word in lens flares for some time. In-house tools include the immensely popular Magic Bullet Suite, which, if you were born some distance outside the solar system, you may need to be reminded is an expansive software tool-set designed to help electronically-acquired footage look more like film. Red Giant is arguably best known today for the Trapcode plugins which it publishes, but which are still developed by Peder Norrby's company in Sweden. Although industry adoption of OpenFX (and thus de-facto standardisation of moving image plugins) has perhaps not been as widespread or as quick as we all have hoped, none of this is Red Giant's fault and OpenFX adoption will undoubtedly progress over time. Resolve compatibility with many plugins is ensured via OpenFX, which implies that there should be ways to get things working in other OpenFX hosts, too. While After Effects still reigns supreme in motion graphics (and it's widely used in visual effects as well), much of Red Giant's output is now available as a series of plug-ins compatible with popular applications, including Final Cut, Premiere and Avid. You might think Red Giant has been a fixture of motion graphics for as long as After Effects itself, but in fact, the company was founded in 2002, almost ten years after Adobe's finest. Phil Rhodes gives us his take on Red Giant's TrapCode Suite, Effects Suite and Universe software tools, and why it makes sense to have all three. ![]() REd Giant Trapcode Suite, Effects Suite and Universe ![]()
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