Product Reviews

Any arguments against producing professional video on Macs should have long been put to rest. With built-in FireWire and 1GHz clock speeds, Macs are now more than capable of running the applications needed to create spectacular effects.

With that in mind, it's no surprise that special effects house The Foundry has released its Tinderbox 3 After Effects plug-in set, which had been previously only available on dedicated workstations, for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

Packed on to the CD are 20 plug-ins covering a range of visual effects, from instant BadTV to Sparks. Some cover the same ground as effects that are included with the Production Bundle release of After Effects 5.5, but the versions here are superior and offer a far wider range of controls.

For example, T_Sparks, a massive and detailed plug-in that could be sold by separately, includes wind and gravity options that produce far more realistic results than the bundled version. It will also work in 3D space, which allows for seamless meshing with prerendered 3D scenes. MatteTool, like all the Tinderbox plug-ins, has earned its pedigree by being developed and used by professionals, and the results and flexibility of use reflect this.

Keen viewers will notice that an 'aged' clip often loops the same dust and scratches again and again. With the OldFilm plug-in, a custom collection of artefacts can be added and manipulated including dust, hair, stains, vignettes, camera flicker, defocusing and burn-through, as

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well as presets to simulate film stock colour effects, such as sepia or a 1940s-style Technicolor shimmer.

For a dash of alien interference, try BadTV, which can make a clip look as if a heavy dose of sunspots is affecting the reception. And Silk is on hand to smooth over ageing actors and give them the freshly made-up look. MeltTime is a clever plug-in that is featured heavily in a series of drink commercials for Reef, where a group of women sneak into a club by spiralling in and around the doorman and punters.

Box of tricks

Tinderbox features a range of more traditional tools, such as Deband, Defield, DiffusionFilter, Edgedetect and GradientBlur, along with more arty filters, like Turner or the RomanMosaic. BumpShade gives a false 3D aspect to footage, especially animation, by extruding an image using a matte. Condensation is a self-evident and functional effect.

However, three of the coolest effects are in the Generator category - Starfield, Plasma and Lightning. The first is a must for anyone wanting to create science fiction, and has presets ranging from automatic tumbling through space to the ability to navigate through a fully realised 3D starscape. Plasma and Lightning are powerful and almost have too many variations and styles. While setting in and out points is easy and the preview helps, a set of After Effects projects with a crib sheet of styles would have been a big help.

Shot in the dark

The collection is also let down by a somewhat basic instruction manual. For example, matte work, a specialist skill that takes a fair amount of time to perfect, starts with proper lighting of the shot - well before the footage even gets to the computer. None of this is covered in the manual and the complexity of controls in Tinderbox can be overwhelming, so some sort of wizard settings or named presets would have been a good starting point before delving too far in tweaking the effects.

Overall, Tinderbox 3 is a great collection of plug-ins for After Effects, and is a must-have for anyone serious about compositing and animation.