Autodesk announces FLARE!

Posted By John J. Budion on April 20, 2009 12:00 am | Permalink
Autodesk finally released their new product FLARE at NAB today.  I have to say it's pretty interesting.  The program is designed to be a separate workstation primarily for junior artist's to facilitate senior artist's who are running the full version of Flame/Inferno.  However, this does not mean it will only be restricted to junior artist tasks.

What you get in FLARE is basically all of batch, minus any editing/IO/or desktop functions.  So that means, action, mod keyer, and even third party plug-ins, and unlike Combustion, the UI is exactly the same as on a Flame!  You can use FLARE to cut mattes or you can start an entirely new composition if you wanted to.  You can load setups that have been saved out by a Flame, and load them directly into Flare.  Do your work and re-save the setup back over.  You don't even have to render!  And the best part is, Autodesk was demoing Flare today on a laptop!  A full batch schematic with all of the nodes accessible, running on a laptop.

The price tag I've been hearing around is that Flare will cost roughly $40K.  However, there is a caveat to all of this.  The program will only be purchasable to those who already are running one of the big guns, meaning, Flame or Inferno.

Overall, I think this is a great move by Autodesk.  Being a Flame/Inferno user for over ten years now, I must say that I am yet to find a program that can trulely compete with its power.  If you have ever been in the trenches at zero hour with a client behind your back, making changes on the fly, on a flame, you know what I am talking about.  Putting the best structured pipeline and features of Flame onto a laptop and making it more accessible, instead of unattainable, will hastily grow the community of users, while also facilitating senior artists.  It's a win-win for all.  (Additionally, if the pricetag is $40K, my gut feeling is this number will come down over a little time.)