eyeon Generation World Tour

The All-New Post Workflow System Meets the Industry

Toronto: November 25, 2008 ... eyeon Software Inc., maker of the award-winning Fusion™ compositing application, has sent the all-new Generation® workflow management system on tour, visiting facilities around the world. The response in the industry has been extremely positive. Generation fills a gap in post and VFX workflows by offering a collaboration platform for artist teams and a visual canvas for managing postproduction pipelines. The result is a vastly simplified and more efficient shot management system for post houses of any size.

The Generation interface combines a comprehensive shot-tracking system with an editing panel for working with EDLs and playlists. Because the entire application is scriptable, facilities can integrate their in-house tools, such as asset management, rather than having to modify their existing pipeline to fit with Generation. The system includes grease pencil annotation, and live chat tools for discussing shots or sequences, and saves a complete record of all decisions and client requests.

Version histories for each shot are displayed as thumbnail stacks with the most recent version at the bottom. Playback of clips or playlists is available with a single click and dual viewing windows allow for comparison of shots or shot versions. Generation provides disk-based playback of content at resolutions up to 4K and supports all standard file formats and floating-point colour depth.

"We have linked our database and tracking system to Generation to automatically track all versions of every shot in our film," said Rony Soussan, Technical Director at LLP Digital. "With this system, every single artist at our facility has access to contextual playback of their effects within a timeline with shared notes, version tracking, drawing tools, and more." LLP Digital recently used Generation on a 400-shot project.

"Generation has already been adopted by facilities around the world," said eyeon CEO Steve Roberts. "We are working closely with these teams as they integrate the system into their pipelines. Generation gives them the ideal front-end for their workflow."

This past week, the Generation World Tour made stops in London, Toronto, and New York, bringing the system in-house to facilities in these cities for a first look. "We really like the clean interface and the versioning tools," said Terry Dale, Vice President of Operations at Starz Animation in Toronto. "But the real key for us is the totally open architecture of this application. Having seen what it can do, we look forward to putting Generation through its paces with our pipeline here at Starz."

Origami Digital, in Los Angeles, implemented Generation for their work on Bunraku, scheduled for theatrical release in the summer of 2009. "Each time we get a new cut of the movie, we load the QuickTime together with the EDL," said VFX supervisor and CEO Oliver Hotz. "A script in Generation automatically splits the long sequence into individual cuts and we can quickly establish which shots we need to work on." For a smaller facility like Origami, the time this saves is invaluable. "Without Generation, this process would have taken a week. Now we have it done within an hour."

"We love the way Generation works hand-in-hand with Fusion," said Theo Groeneboom, head of the Fusion Department at Prime Focus in London. "It allows us to collaborate with all of our artists on one platform. Playback, review, versioning, and editing are all so fast and it's great to have a timeline where all our artists are visible. You get a real overview of the whole process."

The full Generation Suite includes Generation together with Fusion for compositing and colour adjustments. Facilities which already own Fusion can choose Generation Studio which includes the complete workflow management toolset. Individual artists will use the Generation Player for playback, annotation, and collaborative review. For more information on Generation, including technical specifications and pricing details, please contact eyeon Software at +1 (416) 686-8411 ext. 130.