We're very excited to announce the availability of Fast Bokeh OpenFX for OpenFX host applications like Black Magic Design Fusion Studio. All the features are identical to the After Effects version except some UI related changes/limitations. Fast Bokeh v2 has the following new features.
If you have any issues/feedback, please do contact us.
]]>We're glad to say that all our products (except Buena Depth Cue) support the new MFR feature in AE. So make sure you download the latest versions and enjoy with with CC 2022! Also huge congrats to the AE team and kudos to them for working with third party plug-in developers from day one.
Feel free to contact us if you have further questions.
]]>We're very excited to announce Fast Bokeh beta for OpenFX host applications like Black Magic Design Fusion Studio. It's an open beta so everyone can download, try it out. If you have any feedback, please do contact us.
Update: The beta is officially over and you can download a full commercial version here
Fast Bokeh for OpenFX →
After unzipping the files, place the plugin files in the OpenFX plugin location in your machine. It's usually the following.
macOS: /Library/OFX/Plugins/
Windows: C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins
May be. It's designed & tested with Fusion Studio 17. If your host application is having issues, please let us know.
They're almost identical. The only difference is not being able to pick the focus depth using a Point picker and no Iris/Zone Preview in the Effect Controls.
Beta versions are fully functional. But it's still subject to our EULA.
Yes. But we recommend caution, since it's a beta program you might experience issues.
The current beta version will expire Nov 30 2021. After that, the plugin renders a watermark.
Currently only macOS and Windows are supported.
GPU acceleration is optional. The plug-in doesn't use the host application's native GPU render pipeline yet.
You can refer to the docs of the AE version for now - Fast Bokeh Documentation.
Feel free to contact us.
]]>Image Credit: Nicola Destefanis
We're very excited to announce a major update to Fast Bokeh with some amazing new functionality. Fast Bokeh v2 has the following new features.
Finally! Now you can use your own images as Iris shapes to create customized Bokeh blur. Custom Iris Shapes combined with GPU acceleration gives amazing results with super fast render times.
Technically known as Segmentation, this feature helps users avoid pixel spillage from foreground and background zones into areas that are focused. You can separate the scene into multiple zones and render them separately to get razor sharp focus zones.
You can also utilize your machine's GPU to accelerate render times even more. Fast Bokeh supports GPU rendering using the latest technologies like Metal 2 and GL Compute.
Fast Bokeh Pro 2 is a free update to all registered users of v1. Just download the latest installer, install it and enjoy the latest cool new features!
Check out the amazing video created by Nicola Destefanis. Also, checkout the Fast Bokeh Overview and Zone Control tutorials.
]]>From the description, "Done in C4D, Redshift, X-Particles and Fast Bokeh Pro for After Effects".
Don't forget to checkout their website & demo reel - Nicola.tv that contains other phenomenal work.
Direct Link: https://vimeo.com/530711800
]]>We're very excited to kick things off in the new year with an important update to Aura for After Effects, which finally lets you export SVG files from Aura. SVG is a resolution independent vector file format and can be opened in Adobe Illustrator. This lets you work in AE using Aura at a much lower resolution and export them in vector format, which are very useful for print projects.
You can export just a single frame as a SVG file or the entire Composition/Work Area as a SVG file sequence. If exporting SVG file sequence you can also set the frame rate.
Important Note: Due to the limitations of SVG file specifications, the surface shading in the vector files will be slightly different from the raster version in AE.
]]>I'm very excited to announce a HUGE update to Fast Bokeh Pro for After Effects, which adds the following new features.
Polygonal Iris Shapes: This is the most requested feature by a long shot. Finally this update adds polygonal aperture shapes. You can set polygon shapes starting from a Triangle, Pentagon, Hexagon to all the way upto a 18-side polygon. Also adjust the curvature of these polygonal shapes to give them a more natural look.
HQ Rendering Option: Render at a much higher quality sampling if needed. Even at the highest quality setting, Fast Bokeh Pro renders really fast.
Highlights Adjustment w/ Brightness and Saturation: Tweak the highlights of the image to exaggerate Bokeh effects and get more cinematic results.
Anamorphic Bokeh: Set the aspect ratio of the Iris shapes to simulate an expensive Anamorphic Lens aperture.
Linear Color Working Space: If you are not already working in linear color space, this feature allows the plug-in to create the bokeh in a linear color space internally irrespective of project settings. Very useful in photorealistic compositing.
Performance Improvements: Major performance improvements for Spherical aperture rendering.
Even with the addition of these new features Fast Bokeh still satisfies the following requirements.
Important Note: Non-Pro features continue to be free. 'Pro' features and require the plug-in to be registered with a license key. If the plug-in isn't registered and you're using the 'Pro' features, a watermark is rendered. If you're not using 'Pro' features a watermark is NOT rendered.
]]>A few months ago, we released Fast Bokeh for After Effects, which became very popular. With that popularity came a lot of feedback, feature requests and most importantly support emails. Quite a lot of users found it very useful and requested more convenience features like easier focus point selection and higher quality aperture blur. In order to develop those new features and also provide support to users we decided to make Fast Bokeh a fully featured paid plug-in. So we're excited to announce Fast Bokeh Pro! Please note that the existing features will continue to be free and only the new features require a license key registration.
Spherical Bokeh Blur: While the Gaussian Bokeh Blur is pretty good and super fast, Spherical Bokeh Blur is far more realistic and visually appealing. Also, the new Spherical Bokeh Blur is almost as performant as the Gaussian one while providing beautiful results.
Focus Point Param: Instead of manually entering focus depth values, users can now use a point parameter to click the region directly.
Even with the addition of these new features Fast Bokeh still satisfies the following requirements.
The new Spherical Aperture Bokeh Blur is also radius independent and only dependent on the image size, NOT the amount of blur being applied.
Next, all the edges are handled as expected within reasonable limits i.e. pixels are spread out of the object boundaries like a real DoF filter should and no hard edges and halos.
The UI is very simple and only has a few params and they're straightforward.
Important Note: Non-Pro features continue to be free. 'Pro' features and require the plug-in to be registered with a license key. If the plug-in isn't registered and you're using the 'Pro' features, a watermark is rendered. If you're not using 'Pro' features a watermark is NOT rendered.
]]>Aura v1.1 is available for download now and this update mainly adds two new features. Dots Render Mode and support for Color Maps. Even though one of the main goals of Aura was to avoid drawing points all over the place, after the release the most popular feature request by far had been to add support for rendering the waves as 'Dots'.
The Color Maps feature enables you to use a custom layer to drive the colors of the waves instead of using a Color Gradient. This also enables the user to animate the Color layer maps over time and create interesting visuals.
There is also a new Gradient Position setting that allows you to set the position of the gradient based on the absolute age of each wave or relative to the ages of all waves currently being rendered.
This is a free update to all existing users, so head on to the product page download the new version and try it out yourself!
]]>Ever since I rendered out the first depth map in a 3D modeling program, I always wanted to have a quick DoF blur filter that can be added later in a compositing program like AE that looks decent. There are many lens blurring plug-ins out there for After Effects, some of them produce custom aperture shapes along with many bells and whistles. Even AE comes out of the box with a few. But none of them really satisfy all the three following requirements.
The ones that produce high quality bokeh are really slow and get bogged down once the blur radius gets more than a few pixels. Other plug-ins while reasonably fast, fail to handle edges properly and produce nasty hard edge artifacts.
Fast Bokeh satisfies all the three above requirements. First off, the performance of the plug-in is only dependent on the image size, NOT the amount of blur being applied.
Next, all the edges are handled as expected within reasonable limits i.e. pixels are spread out of the object boundaries like a real DoF filter should and no hard edges and halos.
Lastly, the quality is equivalent to a nice Gaussian-like fast blur without any complicated aperture shapes and bokeh settings. The UI is very simple and only has a few params and they're straightforward.
Best feature of all, it's free!
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