LONDON — Visual effects software developer The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk) is shipping Hiero, a new software tool designed to address the challenges of collaborative workflows.
Hiero 1.0 is a lightweight shot manager for VFX. The software is not designed for compositing, finishing, grading or editing. Instead, it allows production facilities to efficiently conform, review and export shots to visual effects artists and into finishing systems.
Hiero has been designed to work seamlessly with The Foundry’s Nuke and NukeX compositing applications, but also enables collaborative working with other editorial, VFX and finishing tools.
Matt Plec, head of product design at The Foundry, says, "Nuke is already a powerful compositing tool, but it’s missing a component many artists need. Hiero provides this missing link functionality currently dealt with either by expensive tools, in-house scripting or a cumbersome manual process. Hiero’s the bridge tool our customers have been asking us for.”
Hiero removes human error by automatically creating a file structure based on rules that can be created by users as they conform and parcel out VFX shots to multiple Nuke artists. Because Hiero knows exactly where to look for updates, VFX supervisors can easily review shot progress in the context of the edit with the added confidence of knowing that the latest versions are always at their fingertips.
The Foundry has created a 3 minute introduction
VIDEO to Hiero as well as a 5 minute industry expert
VIDEO.