I’ve decided that there will be no Cinegobs keyer v. 3. The direction the next version is taking, is more of a compositor than simply a keyer, so I’ve decided to call it CineGobs FX v.1 instead. Progress is going ahead slowly. I haven’t been able to work on it as much as I would have liked, but at least it isn’t standing still.
I’m still tinkering with the underlying design and developing an easy to use plugin SDK.
Stay tuned.
In the forums I’ve started a development blog for the next version of CineGobs keyer.
Feel free to add your comments (must be a registered user to post in the forum!)
The main changes in this version:
All keyer modules now has an expansion slider instead of the erode slider. With this control you can expand or reduce the matte by an arbitrary amount. This is really usefull for fine tuning the edges of your mattes.
I’ve also added mask expansion to the rotoscoping masks, which works in a similar way.
Lot’s of improvements, especially to rotoscoping, and several important bug fixes.
I’ve heard from several people that they’re unable to open video using AviSynth in CineGobs keyer. One thing they all have in common is that they’re using Windows 7. I’m using the 64 bit version of Windows 7 myself and I have no problems opening video using Avisynth, so there’s very little I can do about it at the moment.
If anyone has suggestions how to solve this problem please let me know.
Recently Carrara 8 was released and it’s half price until 15′th of June. It’s among the cheapest 3D software, but I’ve been really impressed with what you get.
The only 3D software I’ve been using regularly before is Blender which is open-source. Here are some of my personal observations:
The GoodThe user interface suits me much better than Blender. It’s more polished and I feel using it with a Wacom tablet works much better. Placing objects, rigging and animating them is very simple in Carrara. The material editor is awesome and fast to work with. Also having a material library is something I’ve really missed in Blender. The renderer is fast and supports GI, SSS and Caustics. Carrara also has tons of neat things like a terrain generator, plant generator, great hair/fur support, very good 3D paint, easy to use Bullet physics, volumetric fog/fire and much more.
Modelling works well but felt awkward in the beginning. Also the UV mapping took some getting used to. Particles are pretty easy to work with but more limited than Blenders. Carrara also doesn’t have a compositor, and is missing some of the more special stuff like Blenders fantastic fluid simulator.
There’s no doubt that I’m going to be using Carrara 8 as my primary 3D software in the future. It just feels faster and more intuitive to me. I’m not going to stop using Blender though, since it still does a lot of great things that Carrara doesn’t.
If you’re a Blender user you have probably already seen it.
The teaser for Blender foundations open movie project Durian, called Sintel was released a few days ago. It looks amazing and I’m really looking forward to seeing the full movie.
Originally I created CineGobs keyer as an alternative to the keyer in Sony Vegas. Since I released CineGobs keyer in 2007, I’ve received lots of emails with feature requests. Most of these are about adding compositing and video-editor functions to the keyer. Suggestions include pretty much everything you can do in After Effects, Premiere, Vegas etc. So I think it’s time to clarify:
To create anything useful, you need to have some kind of video software besides Cinegobs keyer. CineGobs keyer will not get multi-tracks, animation, sound or compositing functions. It’s meant as a utility to create a good transparency matte.
I understand that there’s a great need for a freeware video editing/compositing application, and hopefully someone will create something in the future, but please don’t expect CineGobs keyer to grow into a complete video editing suite. There’s no way for me to put that kind of work into it. Also health problems severely limit my time available for programming.
All this doesn’t mean I’ve given up on CineGobs keyer. I’m still looking for ways to improve the keyer algorithms etc., and I’ll of-course try to fix any bugs found.
I just added a forum to the web site. Since the forum software is different than the one at my old site, you’ll have to register again to be able to post.
Please let me know if something doesn’t work.
I’ve changed my web-site from a forum/portal to this WordPress blog. Hopefully it will be much easier to navigate. I’m still not sure if I will add a forum to the site.