SynthEyes 1605 Goes 360°

360° Virtual Reality features headline about 200 in all

* May 9th, 2016. For immediate release.

Andersson Technologies LLC (Phoenixville, PA) has released SynthEyes 1605, the latest version of its 3-D tracking and match-moving application for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

SynthEyes 1605 introduces a set of workflows for handling 360° Virtual Reality shots: stabilizing, tracking, and solving 360VR shots, then inserting 3D objects rendered in standard 3D software (360 not required there). Includes simple 360VR stabilization (when no insertion needed), linearize + solve, stabilize from 3D solve, solving additional points directly in 360VR, Add Many and Tracker Cleanup in 360VR, generate a linear perspective view precisely following each inserted mesh, convert linear imagery back to 360VR, quick 360VR insert previews from the camera view, create a stabilizing sphere for viewing in external 3D packages, etc. A twelve-part two-hour tutorial introduces and demonstrates handling 360° VR footage (using example footage from 360 Heros Inc).

The 1605 release features many new features for general tracking as well, including for SynthEyes's Geometric Hierarchy Tracking (GeoH) feature set:

• Separate pan/tilt/roll channels and keying for camera and moving object's seed and solve tracks. Permits rotations to be more easily hand-animated more than 360 degrees as needed. Paths can now be filtered (or not) on pan/tilt/roll individually. Corresponding enhancements in SynthEyes's nodal Phases system.
• SynthEyes supports workflows requiring meshes to be passed through SynthEyes without vertex renumbering (for example aiding interchange of GeoH vertex caches with other applications). The OBJ importer supports preserving the original incoming vertex/normal/texture indices and is faster too.
• A matching algorithm allows meshes to be replaced new versions with different numbering and added or removed geometry, while preserving the existing (GeoH) vertex weight painting.
• New noise reduction algorithm added to the image preprocessor.
• New "fancy bones" deformation method available to GeoH tracking. It is a more traditional bones blending algorithm that permits overlapping sibling bones, for example for dense facial GeoH tracking.
• New "Isolate object layer" mode shows just the painting attributed to the selected GeoH object, rather than the composite of all objects.
• New "Relax" mesh-editing mode for smoothing meshes, typically for use after a Smudge procedure to match an approximate mesh to a shot.
• Metadata support for various image formats, or read from or written to a tandem file.
• Around 200 new features, fixes, and tweaks in all.

The free demonstration version of SynthEyes on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux can be downloaded starting at https://www.ssontech.com/regis.html SynthEyes runs on operating systems including Windows 10 and OS X 10.11 (El Capitan); see the website for a complete list.

* Pricing and Availability

The new version is available immediately. For in-support SynthEyes customers, the new version comes at no extra cost. Upgrade or renewal pricing for earlier SynthEyes customers varies depending on the details. Customers should use the online store to determine specific upgrade and non-USD pricing for all versions.

New licenses of SynthEyes Pro cost 499 USD. The cross-platform Pro license runs 599 USD. Floating Pro licenses are 699 USD each; there is a one-time per-site license manager/setup charge of 250 USD for floating licenses. For students and hobbyists, an entry-level Intro version (https://www.ssontech.com/introlim.html) is 299 USD. Purchasing is online or via listed resellers.

A one-year site license for qualifying educational institutions is 495 USD (https://www.ssontech.com/educate.html). Contact the company with particulars for information on volume licenses for student computers.