Kindling theFlame

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Tallen Chow lauds Flame’s support for OpenEXR, the open source alternative to DPX and Cineon, as this provides more flexibility with compositing.

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Frames from a Pepsi commercial done by Blackstone Studios on Flame 2009.

Tallen Chow, Flame artist at Dubai-based post production facility Blackstone Studios takes the new Flame 2009 through its paces.

I've been an Inferno/Flame artist since 2002 at The Video Lab in Johannesburg where I worked on numerous films and commercial projects. In September last year, I joined Blackstone Studios, which was a new boutique post facility.

Being a new start-up company, Flame wasn't an option because of the price, but it definitely became a consideration as the projects grew bigger. Since last year, I got to composite on some of the node-based compositing systems, notably Eyeon's Fusion and Shake. I also took on some editing in Final Cut Pro and some broadcast design work.

At Blackstone Studios, we offer a creative shop catering to the boom in digital imaging in the region. We've produced advanced animation and VFX for commercials including campaigns for Coke, Absolut Vodka, Porsche and American Express, but also sophisticated CAD animations and 3D architectural fly-throughs fuelled by demand in the region's real estate sector. We run Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max software with editing on Final Cut Pro Studio from a Mac G5.

By investing in Flame 2009, the idea was to create a more robust 3D compositing environment for the facility and enable us to produce advanced graphics at a faster throughput than previously possible. So Flame 2009 isn't just a leap for Blackstone but also for me personally as my last experience of Flame was version 8.5. Everything has changed since 8.5, and yet every function is familiar and intuitive.

The first thing you notice are the widescreen menus which have been entirely redesigned to make use of the 16x9 graphical interface. The Object node bin and Object menu make it easier to add and control elements in the scene. Whereas previously you had to click a few tabs to get into different menus, now it's a lot easier to switch between functions with the single click of a button.

One thing that Flame has never had and I've always desired, were Custom Batch Nodes, which enable an operator to create their own tools. I noticed that this function was included almost as a basic in other packages like Shake and Fusion but now Flame has it too.

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