Shake and Mac/VPC Compatibility for SynthEyes Camera Tracker

* Malvern, PA. October 26, 2004

Andersson Technologies LLC is pleased to announce the availability of three Shake export scripts for its SynthEyes 3-D camera tracking application, plus Virtual PC (VPC7) compatibility. The scripts can be run on SynthEyes on a PC or Mac to produce scripts for Apple's Shake compositing application, running on a Mac or Linux.

The Shake MatchMove exporter translates planes, created in SynthEyes, to Shake as MatchMove nodes, allowing image layers to be inserted at arbitrary 3-D locations within the source shot. Any number of image planes can be exported at once, allowing complex 3-D scenes to be generated that maintain the correct 3-D interrelationships. Since an image plane can be positioned anywhere within the SynthEyes 3-D environment, there do not have to be trackable features to locate the image planes, as long as there are enough other features to reconstruct the overall 3-D environment.

A second Shake export script outputs one or more SynthEyes trackers to Shake as a Tracker Node, and a third script outputs a single tracker in Shake's tracker file data format. Both Shake 3.0 and 3.5 are supported.

SynthEyes has now been tested and adjusted slightly to run with Microsoft's recently-released Virtual PC 7 application on Macintosh OS X machines, including Mac G5s. Due to SynthEyes's high native performance, Virtual PC offers a reasonable experience on the Mac under VPC, especially for new and occasional users attracted by SynthEyes' excellent feature set and affordable price.

Readers can download the free demo version, available at https://www.ssontech.com. Sample Shake exports are available on the downloads page, https://www.ssontech.com/download.html.

* MacOSX Recommended Systems

G5 Mac, 1.6 GHz or better. 1GB RAM, VPC configured for 512 MB. 3 button mouse. MacOS 10.3.x. Microsoft Virtual PC 7. Windows XP Pro or Home installed into VPC7. Tested on 1.8 GHz G5 iMac. G4's with VPC 5/6 have also been reported functional.

Shake exporters run on SynthEyes's native PC configuration as well: Windows XP/2000 with 512MB recommended.

* Pricing and Availability

SynthEyes may be purchased at https://www.ssontech.com for $349 US for download, with a CD $10 extra shipped to the US, $15 international. Quantity discounts are available. 

A free SynthEyes demo may be downloaded from the web site.

* Background

With customers in over 25 countries, SynthEyes has been used in productions including the Oscar-winning Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, The Terminal, The Day After Tomorrow, Van Helsing, Cellular, and Miracle, with many more in production. It offers export scripts for most major animation and compositing applications, including 3ds max, Maya, XSI, Lightwave, C4D, Houdini, Blender, Hash A:M, After Effects, Combustion, Flame, Inferno, Nuke, Shake, and more.