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I reviewed the first edition of Tinderbox filters for After Effects late last year and found them to be a solid batch of production tools. This second offering is no disappointment either. As the company behind Tinderbox, The Foundry is composed of real-world production artists who've had years of experience with a variety of post tools at the boutique level down to the desktop. The Foundry's original wares were fashioned for Discreet inferno and flame lines as well as for Alias |Wavefront's Composer, Softimage|DS, and Avid Media illusion (and still are). As I mentioned in my first story, The Foundry has intimate ties to renowned Academy Award winning VFX house Computer Film Company of London.
Both production experience and the relationships The Foundry has earned over time are evident in its Tinderbox 2 tools. However, what is really unusual about this line is the speed at which they work. For the most part, these filters are far faster than other products I'm aware of on the desktop. How fast is that? In many cases, exponentially faster. As an example, the often-used effect within Tinderbox 1 T_Rays (from the first collection) updates with near interactive speed as opposed to its competitors. Both Tinderbox 1 and Tinderbox 2 now support full 16-bit color space in conjunction with the advent of Adobe's new powerhouse After Effects 5.0 composite editing application. Expanded color support is another high-end production feature only shared by a handful of other plug-in makers.
The Tinderbox Interface
The interfaces of both Tinderbox 1 and 2 are identical, so I'll do a revised recap for this segment from my first review. A welcome attribute of Tinderbox 2 (as in Tinderbox 1) is the common interface look shared by its tools. In general a CONTROLS menu contains all parameters for applying effects and a VIEWER menu contains a clear graphic preview with output and source images included as well as a preview for a matte channel in many cases. All with on-screen interactive control.
Eleven major parameters common to many of the 20 plug-ins make the entire line faster to learn and implement into any After Effects pipeline. The eleven controls are: ASPECT for precise adjustment of an effect over the X and Y of any image...