1- Since part of our audience might not know this, can you tell us a bit about what you feel are some of the best movie VFX that have been created with DF?

The list is so long and grows everyday. Our user base is very diverse and have, in the last few months alone, completed numerous shots for features such as,

Panic Room & Spy Kids II - Computer Café
Reign of Fire & Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever - Digital Dimension
And of course the entire 560 layer opening sequence for the 2001 hit Swordfish, which was all done in Digital Fusion.

Commercials for,

EA Sports, NASCAR Thunder 2003, Cingular (Spiderman), - Rhythm & Hues
Burger King & Twix - Realm Productions

Music Videos for,

Shakira, Moby, Britney Spears, Missy Elliott . . . the list goes on and on.

The effects are as diverse as the artists and types of work being done. Everything from CG rain and explosions done with the DF Particle Suite, to color correcting, 3D match moving and live action integration. You name it, DF does it.

2- What new features are you the most proud of in version 4?

I am really proud of everything in DF4. The re-designed Tracker is an amazing tool; Grid Warping is a long needed feature, which I am really happy to have. Macro tools have amazing potential that we haven't even begun to explore, and the RAM Caching engine used for real time playback is incredible. If I had to narrow it down to just two though, the first thing has to be DFScript, our internal scripting engine and the second would be the improved interface.

DF Script is insanely flexible. Everyday I discover something new we can do with scripting. We went to a lot of effort to make sure that DFScript was non-threatening. That was important, because some artists want nothing to do with command lines or programming, even when it's as simple as a script. That's fair. Artists shouldn't be expected to become programmers just to use their tools.

If you know nothing about scripting and never want to learn, that's not a problem either - you lose nothing in the power or capabilities of Fusion if you don't use scripting. Yet, you can still use scripts provided by eyeon or other artists to add functionality to Fusion you never knew you had.

Interface wise, we learned a lot over the past seven or eight versions of Fusion. While we were concentrating on making the fastest damn compositing and image-processing tool available, we were neglecting the look and feel of the program. You can't do that with a program that will be used by artists, so we really put some time into the interface for DF4.

The result is a cleaner, less saturated and neutral interface that doesn't distract from the images you are working with. But, the appearance is only half of the equation - we also spent a lot of time looking for actions that took too long to perform, and we seriously optimized the workflow. You shave a second off the time it takes to accomplish something here, another half second there, and so on. Over the course of an eight-hour workday, it really adds up. We did stuff like that for hundreds of controls and menus.

3- Where do you see compositing applications in 5 years? At the same time, how do you see eyeon's role evolving within the same period?

The line between on-line compositing and off-line compositing is going to become a lot thinner. Real-time compositing on commodity hardware is just around the corner with current hardware. I am talking about on-line suite performance and workflow from systems that sell for 5,000 to 10,000 dollars. You don't even need much performance increase from the hardware - today's commodity PC components can easily handle real-time NTSC or PAL compositing, given properly managed RAM and CPU performance.

Five to ten years ago, we had a major migration of compositing and 3D Software from Unix and Irix based workstations to the NT platform - the Hardware was cheaper; you could hire more artists and workstations for the same investment, and still accomplish 90% of what you could do on the more expensive solutions. However, the trend may reverse in the next few years - mainly because network rendering has become ubiquitous. Building 5 computers for render slaves might cost you about 00 for each machine, but adding Windows XP or Windows 2000 to run on those machines adds another 0 per machine to that cost.

Linux and other 'free' operating systems provide an alternative that can bring the cost down dramatically. So many of the major studios are making the switch back, if they haven't already done so. That's not even considering Apple, which has made a pretty clear move to enter the high-end production market over the past year. We are happy to announce we will be supporting Linux in the very near future

4- When can we expect a 64-bit version of Digital Fusion?

I never announce dates for something like that. Current 64-bit processors and operating systems offer many advantages, particularly in the amount of memory they can address. Nevertheless, the first generation of the Itanium was slow, and I mean SLOW. It wasn't worth the effort to release a full 64-bit product that would significantly under perform the 32-bit version.

I am pleased to say that the new hardware we are seeing from Intel and from AMD is far superior. We are working closely with both companies to ensure that Fusion becomes available in 64-bit, as soon as performance and reliability from this hardware matches up to our expectations.

5- What should we expect to see in terms of 3D Compositing features in an upcoming version?

3D Compositing is available for Digital Fusion right now. One of the coolest third party plugins ever created for Digital Fusion is Gaia 3DF from the Fusioneers (www.fusioneers.net). Gaia 3DF does all the usual '2D image as 3D plane', 'camera' and 'lighting' tricks that have come to represent 3D Compositing, and then they added a unique little twist. Gaia 3DF allows you to load, render and manipulate 3D objects directly within Fusion. Now if that's not cool, I don't know what is.

Fusion 4 continues the existing support for z-depth compositing using the RLA and RPF file formats, and we still provide tools for depth blurring, re lighting and texturing. However, don't expect to find a 3D camera and environment built right into Digital Fusion. We strongly believe that Fusion is exactly the right tool for two-dimensional compositing, with an interface, toolset, and engine perfectly tuned for that activity.

6- Where do you position yourself in the market? There is the desktop level and then there seems to be a major gap between it and the high end.

We don't so much position ourselves, as we are positioned by various individuals and groups. Instead, we write the tools we wished we had access to when we were a full time production house instead of a software company. Then we add the things our clients demand. The product we end up with comes from those sources. There really is no gap between the desktop and on-line markets. They can't be considered the same at all, it's like apples and oranges. A taxi and a Formula 1 racecar are both functionally identical, but the taxi cab goes back and for the entire day doing multiple tasks, where as the Formula one car has one task that needs to be done really fast. But, I wouldn't race in a taxicab, and I wouldn't take the Formula 1 racecar home from the airport, though I still like to make great time during the trip. There is no middle ground between a taxicab and a racecar for their intended uses, and that is similar to how we view Fusion.

7- Any plans to leave the desktop market and focus on the high end like others are trying to do?

Fusion is no less high-end than systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars - the term is a bit misleading. Perhaps a more accurate description would be front room vs back room. Front room systems are designed to be used while a client is sitting next to you; making tweaks and changes to the composite as you work. That's pretty demanding, and has traditionally required special hardware to achieve the semi real time effects that your clients require as they work with you.

Fusion and its competition are back room systems. Compositing programs that are designed for more time intensive and detailed work. The quality of the results from a back room system are often much higher than those from the so-called high-end systems, because we don't compromise quality for 'real time' behavior. This also makes back room systems more flexible.

The question really is.... are we planning a front room compositor? I wouldn't hold your breath for one. Two other companies recently tried to produce a front room product, 5D and Sony. 5D just went out of business and Sony cancelled Socratto after spending millions developing and marketing it. The market does not appear to be calling out for another high-end solution costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As I mentioned above in your question about the future of compositing, the line between the front room and the back room compositor is going to get softer, until you can barely tell the difference.

8- How successful has the modular approach for DFX+ been, referring of course to only paying for the features you want?

The modular DFX+ approach has been very successful for us, though not Necessarily in the way that we expected. We thought of DFX+ as a service for facilities already using Fusion. DFX+ meant that they could set up a workstation for a junior artist or intern at a quarter of the cost of a full license of Fusion.

That model works, but we never anticipated the number of animators and editors who purchased or obtained DFX+ as their entry into the world of compositing. These artists use the base package of DFX+ as a springboard to develop their skills, and as their comfort level increases and the right jobs appear, they can obtain additional modules to add power to DFX+. It was completely unexpected, and very gratifying to see the product used this way.

9- You recently made a partnership with NewTek that offers LightWave 3D, Toaster 2 and Digital Fusion 4...how do you see this new alliance being beneficial to both eyeon and the artists?

Artists never lose when powerful software packages are bundled together. They spend less money, and they add new and marketable skills to the palette they present to prospective clients. Fusion has long been popular among fans of Lightwave, so this bundle comes about mostly because of the (extremely vocal) requests from Lightwave users themselves.
In the long term, I expect that you will see the integration between Lightwave and Fusion become tighter, allowing artists to flow between the two applications effortlessly.

10- When should I expect the FedEx guy to drop my DF4 package? ;+)

Operators are standing by :->

For more info about Eyeon and DF4 visit: www.eyeonline.com
I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this article in the CG Focus Team as well at Eyeon Software!