Red Giant announced the launch of its new Red Giant Universe – an online community with access to a library of new tools and effects for filmmakers and motion graphic artists. Membership in Red Giant Universe is free and allows members to take control of the future of Universe development. Available now are 50 Free and Premium visual effects plugins built on a new platform — Supernova.
“Universe is a completely new platform for Red Giant and the culmination of nearly two years of work building a new architecture,” said Sean Safreed, co-founder of Universe. “The Red Giant team has put together an amazing set of 50 fast and useful effects using Supernova, our new development engine. This really is the future of visual effects development for us and the filmmaking community.”
Free membership includes the use of 31 effects and transitions that never expire, including blurs, glows, distortion, generators and 3D transitions. Tools in the free membership include transitions such as Swish Pan and 3D Shutter as well as Glo-Fi, which creates pulsating, multi-hued glows for titling. Premium membership includes access to 19 additional tools, including an updated Knoll Light Factory EZ, Holomatrix, ToonIt (powered by Toonamation), and Retrograde, from CrumplePop and Red Giant.
“The new Universe toolset is so blazing fast, interactions with the parameters are instantaneous, even on my MacBook Pro,” said Joey Morelli, owner of DigiDojo and a veteran editor and compositor. “It’s actually fun to play around and get instant feedback. The new version of Universe Holomatrix is worth the price of admission alone.”
Built on Supernova, Red Giant Universe is able to deliver tools fast using a scripting system based on Javascript and a GPU framework. All tools in Red Giant Universe exploit the GPU (graphics processing unit) to render most effects in near real-time. The platform is also scalable, working across small and light laptops such as Macbook Air with modern Intel graphics processors (HD4000 and later) up to high-end workstation GPUs from AMD and Nvidia.
