Red Giant, long-time developers of innovative post-production tools, have unveiled Red Giant Complete, a yearly subscription plan for all of their tools. Is it worth the price of admission? Image Credit: Red Giant The Details on Red Giant Complete The details matter here, especially when the asking price is $599/year for professionals, $299/year for academic settings. That’s the same price as Adobe Creative Cloud, and potentially twice what you’d pay to license Final Cut Pro X. That might seem like a lot to ask for a set of plugins, but to look at it another way, buying that same software outright would run you $3,500. Every tool works with After Effects, and some tools work other apps as well: Adobe Premiere is well supported, and Final Cut Pro X isn’t too far behind. Outside of that, support starts to get a little more limited, although not entirely absent. Sorry, Avid and Davinci editors. However, if you only need one piece of software, or dislike subscriptions, the good news is that buying outright is still absolutely an option for you. Individual software packages are still available on their website. But when the cost of one package can already run up to $999, I personally find it hard to justify purchasing unless you have a very specific need. If you know you need these tools, then the cost is reasonable for what you get. What’s Included Everything. Seriously. Every tool and plugin Red Giant has ever made. By my count, that’s 5 software “Suites”, for a total of 113 tools. Trapcode Suite is a particulate and 3d vfx suite that lets you easily generate fluids, particles, objects, light, and more. Magic Bullet Suite has top-notch color and grading tools that far outpace what you find in Lumetri. Universe Suite contains all of the supplemental tools for finishing your video, from unique text generation and animation to transitions to little stylistic flourishes like camera shake and glitch FX. VFX Suite is there for seamless compositing and tracking, and Shooter Suite will help you dump, process, and back up your footage so you’re ready to rock when you hit the edit suite. Should you Subscribe to Red Giant Complete? Red Giant makes excellent tools for workflows of all sizes and shapes. But the final question is whether to subscribe or purchase. This package is obviously targeted at the power user, the super fan, the person or organization that can use the full suite from top to bottom, and to end. If that sounds like you, then take advantage of this deal by simply going to their website. Existing Red Giant users can even get 50% off their first year through February 1 with code RGC50 at checkout (or RGC50A for academic purchases). If you are looking for one specific set of tools, however, you might want to consider the numbers a little bit more carefully. What do you think? Would Red Giant Complete complement your workflow, or do you do just fine with your native plugins and effects? Let us know in the comments!

Red Giant announced their Summer Sale, which will only last for 24 hours on July 30, 2019. The sale will include all Red Giant products, which will be 40% off. Additionaly, prior to the Summer Sale, Red Giant will be giving away their products on Twitter. Red Giant Summer Sale 2019. Source: Red Giant Red Giant is a a software company that creates tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. They are known for having a flash sales from time to time – they are offering their software heavily discounted, but only for a very limited time. They are usually having such sales for Black friday, but this time Red Giant announced a 24-hour Summer Sale for Tuesday, July 30. Red Giant Summer Sale – 40% Off The sale is active for 24 hours only: from 8am PDT (11am EDT) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 to 8am PDT (11am EDT) on Wednesday, July 31, 2019. The Summer Sale reduces prices of Red Giant products by 40% in the Red Giant online store by using the discount code SUMMER40. The included products are: all product suites individual products full licenses upgrades new Universe subscriptions The sale will also include the all-new Red Giant VFX Suite, a lineup of keying, tracking, cleanup and visual effects compositing tools, all right inside Adobe After Effects. To activate the lower price, use coupon code found on Red Giant website on day of the sale. Example of savings: new VFX Suite – $599 (usually $999). VFX Suite offers a toolkit for realistic visual effects composites in Adobe After Effects. It includes nine tools. For example Supercomp for realistic VFX composites, automatic chroma-keying, lightning-fast and accurate planar tracking, object replacement / removal, photo-realistic glow effects, beautiful prismatic displacement effects and camera-inspired lens flares for visual effects and motion graphics. Trapcode Suite 15, now with Fluid Dynamics – $599 (usually $999). Tool for creating 3D motion graphics and visual effects in Adobe After Effects CC, Trapcode Suite 15 introduces the Dynamic Fluids physics engine. Magic Bullet Suite 13 – $539 (usually $899). Magic Bullet Suite 13 gives filmmakers powerful color adjustments, accurate simulations of lens filters and film stocks etc. Shooter Suite 13.0 – $239 (usually $399). Shooter Suite 13.0 is a set of purpose-built applications, including PluralEyes, that can bring footage from set to post. With PluralEyes 4 ($179; usually $299), users can sync audio and video directly in Premiere Pro, without having to leave the host app. Compatible with any NLE, PluralEyes 4.0 features Smart Start capabilities, automatic drift correction, vertical track scaling, integration with Red Giant Offload. Universe 3.0 – $119 (usually $199). Universe 3.0 offers an enhanced user experience thanks to the new Universe Dashboard, a dockable control board for Premiere Pro and After Effects that makes it simple to add effects and presets. There are five new customizable text generation effects, tools for stylizing video, adding glows and blurs, creating motion graphics and more. The discount on Universe subscriptions is for customers who have never purchased an annual subscription of Red Giant Universe. If you have previously had a Universe annual subscription, you will not be able to use the coupon code to buy an annual subscription. If you are currently (or have been) a monthly subscriber, but have never owned a license of Universe annual, you are eligible for this promotion. This 40%-off price is a one-time introductory rate for Universe Annual. After that, the renewal price will be at the standard annual fee. Savings apply to all regular and academic customers (who already receive 50% off – be sure to qualify for it first). The sale excludes all subscription renewals, Universe Monthly subscriptions and the Red Giant Volume Program. Red Giant Additional Give-away In addition to 40% off products in the Red Giant online store, every 24 hours for the next seven days leading up to the sale, Red Giant will be giving away its complete tool set comprised of VFX Suite, Trapcode Suite, Magic Bullet Suite, Shooter Suite and Universe. To enter, follow @redgiantnews on Twitter and retweet the special contest tweets that use the hashtag: #RGSummerSale. Enter once every 24 hours for a chance to win. Contest ends Monday, July 29, 2019, at 6pm PDT (9pm EDT). What do you think of the Red Giant Summer Sale? Are you planning to purchase any of their products? Do you already use Red Giant software? Let us know in the comments underneath the article.

Today, Red Giant Software released the latest addition to their already impressive collection of effects and grading suites. The Red Giant VFX Suite offers 9 freshly coded effects for immediate use in Adobe After Effects. Four of the nine also work in Premiere Pro. And all these effects can be tweaked and tailored to your specific needs, of course. The (very) impressive ‘Supercomp’ FX in action. Most of Red Giant’s software bundles aim for specific user needs. The ‘Trapcode Suite’ is for 3D motion graphics and most of its tools require Adobe After Effects as a host application. The ‘Shooters Suite‘ offers practical tools for working on set (Shooter Offload) and when entering post-production (Shooter PluralEyes for syncing audio or Shooter Instant 4K for example). The popular ‘Magic Bullet Suite‘ bundles cool, yet easy to build effects and color treatments for your post-pro pleasure. All of these tools can be purchased as individual tools of course. So what’s next you might ask. Well, the Red Giant VFX suite offers 9 brand new tools for serious After Effects pros while some of the new FX, namely the impressive ‘Supercomp’, still maintains Red Giant’s own and easy to follow workflow GUI, even for not-so-pros. Like me. In order to get you started right away, watch the intro video below: Red Giant VFX Suite First off, let’s get the probably most asked question out of the way here and the answer is: yes. All 9 plugins of the VFX suite come with a GPU-accelerated engine, so working with them smoothly and –even more importantly– getting results fast is key here. The Red Giant VFX Suite comes with nine tools in total: Supercomp Primatte Keyer 6 King Pin Tracker Spot Clone Tracker Optical Glow Chromatic Displacement Knoll light Factory 3.1 Shadow Reflection For me, the most impressive (and most innovative) plugin of the whole suite is called ‘Supercomp’. It’s a complete compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. 1/ Supercomp If you’re familiar with Magic Bullet you’ll feel right at home here. You don’t need to pre-comp everything over and over.. a pretty common task in After Effects after all. With Supercomp you get everything you need within a nice effects UI but still within After Effects, no need to leave the app or roundtrip to a standalone FX app. It’a seamlessly integrated within After Effects, just like the other 8 plugins. You can drag’n’drop single effects to certain layers, rearrange everything, try different values, reorder layers, you name it. But the cool thing is that the resulting composition will update in real time, so you see exactly what you get. Effects like a 3-way color correction are built right in, same goes for chromatic and optical glows, fire effects, light wraps, volumetric fog, edge blends for merging foreground layers into background plates and many more. In order to conveniently control the vast amount of possible effects and tools within Supercomp, Red Giant build a context-aware rotary picker tool which is really handy to use instead of drop-down menus. 2/ Primatte Keyer 6 Primatte Keyer is already part of the Keying Suite but included in the Red Giant VFX Suite is the new version 6 of the plugin. Primatte Keyer is a tool for fast and pretty much automatic chroma-keying and both, green and blue screens can be used for it to work. Red Giant have updated the UI for cleaner looks and improved usability. On first click, Primatte tries to pull an automatic key in order to separate your subject from the background. While this first pass might be ok already you can tweak and refine the matte to your liking of course. Several tools assist you on the way, a brand new one is called Core Matte: It keeps the inside of your key solid while preserving fine semi-transparent details on the edges. in the above image you can see Core Matte in action controlling the fine details hair while preserving the inside of the key. Since the whole Red Giant VFX Suite is GPU optimized, users can expect a speedy Primatte 6, with previews and renders up to 3x faster than in previous versions, according to Red Giant. Primatte Keyer can also be used in Adobe Premiere Pro. 3/ King Pin Tracker King Pin Tracker gives you fast, accurate planar tracking, right inside Adobe After Effects. It’s a bit like Red Giant’s Warp plugin (part of the ‘Effects Suite’) but much more sophisticated. With King Pin you can integrate 2D objects into your shot and it’s pretty simple, indeed. The object you want to integrate doesn’t even have to be rectangular and with the supplied “to” and “from” pins and the ability to rotate and/or offset your object in planar space it’s easy to pin whatever you want. King Pin won’t stop tracking at the edge of frame but will continue beyond the frame and it also will track surfaces in changing lighting accurately. Even a white wall will give King Pin something to hold on to, I’ve seen it in a demo Red Giant hosted prior to the release. Pretty impressive, indeed. 4/ Spot Clone Tracker This tool of the Red Giant VFX Suite does exactly what you think it does: It tracks moving objects within your footage and replaces them with a defined target. Think clone stamp tool in Adobe Photoshop. Easily fix blemishes or remove small, unwanted items. Spot Clone Tracker tries to match your lighting automatically, with options for how it clones light, color and texture. You also can add transparency to blend your target in smoothly. 5/ Optical Glow Optical Glow adds realistic (and therefore beautiful) glows to your composition. With built-in gamma management, glows look realistic in all kinds of footage: log or linear. Optical Glow offers lots of control for making lightsabers, starship engines, police lights, neon signs and more with beautiful, photo-realistic results. Again, if you ever have used a Red Giant tool before, you will find yourself right at home. Adding a glow to things make them blend more naturally with their environment. That’s actually the main core feature of the whole Red Giant VFX Suite: Blend things into other things with tons of options and realistic results (even if ‘realistic’ means a giant Transformers-style robot standing in a lake next to some mountains and holding a ridiculously large glowing saber-like weapon, shown in the aforementioned demo hosted by Red Giant). Optical Glow can also be used in Adobe Premiere Pro. 6/ Chromatic Displacement Chromatic Displacement uses one layer to displace the pixels of another, while smoothly separating out the colors. The displacement image is being used as a height map here, which gives you nice looking, organic results. Chromatic Displacement was designed for creating professional visual effects, such as force fields, heat ripples, light refractions, cloaking effects, and much more – but it’s also good for motion graphics. The above effect looks really cool and I think without this plugin is pretty hard to build from scratch. The tools of the Red Giant VFX Suite makes things a bit easier as they try to achieve realistic results with a few clicks while still maintaining a vast list of options for variation. Furthermore, since the whole suite is fully integrated with Adobe After Effects you can deploy any tool/command/effect you want on top of the Red Giant VFX, of course. Chromatic Displacement can also be used in Adobe Premiere Pro. 7/ Knoll Light Factory 3.1 Knoll Light Factory is a tool for creating photo-realistic lens flares. Thanks to the aforementioned GPU acceleration you get these flares and light effects in less time and since these effects try to mimic real-life lens designs  it all blends together nicely. With the build-in lens editor, you can create your very own flares from scratch, or customize one of the (many) included presets which are clearly inspired by quite a few blockbusters of past years. Knoll Light Factory 3.1 can also be used in Adobe Premiere Pro. 8/ Shadow Shadow is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a perspective shadow in front of or behind a layer, based on its alpha channel, brightness, and more. With options for softness, bend, length, color and many other properties, the Shadow effect extends the various shadow tools available inside After Effects. 9/ Reflection Last but not least, Reflection is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a reflection to your layers. Bundled with it, controls for softness, distance fade, length and more are available. Again, this tool might not be the do-it-all super-tool but it solves a common task for motion graphic artists and the vast but dedicated options make it easy to work with this plugin. Pricing and Availability The Red Giant VFX Suite is available now and you can download it over at redgiant.com. The full version is $999 but there’s also an academic version available which will set you back $449. All tools are available for purchase individually, too: Supercomp $399 Primatte Keyer &199 King Pin Tracker $199 Spot Clone Tracker $99 Optical Glow $99 Chromatic Displacement $99 Knoll Light Factory $199 Shadow $99 Reflection $99 All nine tools of the Red Giant VFX Suite run on both Windows and MacOS machines and require Adobe After Effects CC 2018 and later as a host application. Knoll Light Factory, Primatte Keyer, Optical Glow and Chromatic Displacement also work in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 and later. If you want to take a deep dive into these new tools, I highly recommend a visit to Stu Maschwitz’ Prolost.com. Stu is a veteran in the VFX industry and currently serves as the Chief Creative Officer of Red Giant. Basically, he’s one of the creative minds behind the new Red Giant VFX Suite. A 52-min tutorial on Supercomp can be found on his site. Link: redgiant.com | Prolost.com What do you think? Do you use any of Red Giant’s products already? Would you use any of these new tools for your workflow? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Red Giant Universe 3.0 was released recently. It boasts a new dockable Dashboard that makes it simple to explore and apply effects and presets in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. It also brings five new text generation effects, presets for every tool, and the option to save customized presets. Red Giant is a software company that creates tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists and motion designers. Over the last decade, their products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. It is almost five years since they launched the first (public beta) version of Universe. Now, the Universe 3.0 was announced. Red Giant defines it simply as “video transition and effects plugins for editors and motion graphics artists”. What is new in version 3.0? Red Giant Universe 3.0 The new dockable Universe Dashboard (in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects) keeps all the tools easily accessible and makes it simple to explore and apply Universe’s entire library of effects and presets. Users can now save effects as favorites and easily find recently used effects and transitions. A modified version of the Dashboard is also available for other applications outside of Adobe Creative Cloud. Red Giant Universe 3.0 newly features five new customizable text generation effects, including a multitude of presets to help users get started: Type Cast enables users to easily animate text properties like color, opacity, size, position and rotation – by the word or character. Type On allows users to quickly create computer terminal-style type reveals. It includes many options for customization and randomization. Screen Text enables filling the screen with scrolling code to create the look of an old-school or modern computer terminal. Hacker Text lets users easily create computer “hacker-style” scrambled text animations. It can simulate encrypting or decrypting text with many options for randomization and look. Text Tile can generate multiple columns full of random data for use in motion graphics and computer terminal effects. Displayed information can be static or animated. At this point, it is worth mentioning that Red Giant offers a lot of tutorials for many different Universe tools in form of YouTube videos. You can check them here: Another new feature of Red Giant Universe 3.0 is presets. In the new version, every tool comes with presets that can be explored via the new Dashboard. In addition, there now is a “Save Preset” button for every Universe effect, which lets users save presets to the Dashboard (Adobe Creative Cloud apps) or the preset browser (non-Adobe Creative Cloud apps), depending on which application is being used. Red Giant Universe 3.0 is available for download now via this link. The price for the full license is $199 annually or $30 monthly. The Academic annual license costs $99. When it comes to compatibility, Universe 3.0 runs on Windows and OS X, and includes over 75 tools that run in: Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, Apple Motion, Magix Vegas, Hitfilm Pro. What do you think of the Red Giant Universe 3.0 Update? Have you been a Universe user? Let us know in the comments underneath the article.

It’s the time of the year again, when Red Giant, a company specializing in software tools for filmmakers and motion designers has its annual 40% off everything blowout sale, which is ending at 8am PST on December 6th, meaning it has been extended! Red Giant is known for creating high quality effects, motion graphics and transitions plugins for host applications like Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro X and Motion, Davinci Resolve, Avid and many more. Red Giant’s software has been known and popular in the industry for a long time now, with Universe being a standard for creative transitions and PluralEyes, which is part of the Shooter Suite, practically being synonymous with audio sync. Just recently they have updated all their products to be compatible with the newest release of Final Cut Pro X 10.4.4, Adobe Creative Cloud’s current versions and macOS Mojave. A few days ago we covered the introduction of the Trapcode Suite’s new version 15, featuring the introduction of dynamic fluids for After Effects. Red Giant’s software is structured in a highly flexible way. All products are bundled into six major suites that can be bought as a whole, with the components also being available in standalone versions, without the suite. The only exception to this is Universe, which is only available as a Suite, and in a yearly subscription model. All products also offer business, volume and education pricing – which is already 50% off. The suites and my personal standout products available right now are the following: Trapcode Suite – Particle simulations, 3D VFX – 11 tools included Was: $999.00 Now: $600.00 Magic Bullet Suite – Color correction and looks – 7 tools included Was: $899.00 Now: $540.00 Universe – Transitions and effects – 79 tools included Was: $99.00 Now: $59.00 Shooter Suite – Post utilities for shooters – 4 tools included Was: $399.00 Now: $239.00 Keying Suite – Chroma keying and compositing – 3 tools included Was: $799.00 Now: $479.00 Effects Suite – VFX and motion graphics – 9 tools included Was: $499.00 Now: $299.00 PluralEyes – automatic audio/video syncing Was $299.00 Now: $180.00 To get the 40% discount, you will have to purchase with the code “YEAREND40” through the Red Giant Website no later than 8am PST on December 6th, 2018 (the sale has been extended – it originally was going to end on the 5th). Note that the volume program is not included in the sale. Do you already use Red Giant products? Will you use the sale to get to know some of these products a little better? Let us know in the comments!  

The Trapcode Suite is synonymous with 3D motion graphics and VFX. Trapcode Suite 15 now brings you realistic 3D particle systems within After Effects. Ahead of their annual 40% off sale for 24 hours on December 5th, Red Giant have recently announced the latest update to the Trapcode suite, which extends and enhances the existing toolset of 11 plugins with new 3D particle physics and fluid dynamics, plus ability to import and work with 3D objects using Trapcode Mir. The addition of the Dynamic Fluids physics engine is a significant step forward in providing new creative possibilities within After Effects according to Chad Bechert, CEO of Red Giant. “The introduction of our Dynamic Fluids physics engine makes it possible to create particle systems that behave as if moving through a fluid environment and that interact with each other, producing stunning, organic results. This release will completely change the range of what artists will be able to create inside of After Effects, opening the door to new and more robust particle system animation, motion graphics and VFX.” Trapcode Suite 15 Dynamic Fluids in After Effects Long time Red Giant user Territory Studio, wh0 have worked on Blade Runner 2049 and Ready Player One have created a video to show off their experimentation with the new plugin. Trapcode Suite 15 Highlights Trapcode Particular 4 Trapcode Particular 4 lets users create realistic fire, water, smoke, snow and other organic effects. Multiple particle systems can be combined into a single 3D space along with 3D objects for complex and sophisticated effects. Trapcode Form 4 Multiple Trapcode Form particle grids and objects can be combined together in a unified 3D space. Trapcode Form particles live forever, and give you precise control over behavior. Trapcode Mir 3 Trapcode Mir creates flowing surfaces, endless tunnels, terrains and 3D objects for use in your motion graphics work. Buy Red Giant Trapcode Suite Trapcode Suite 15 is available now via the Red Giant website. Trapcode Suite 15 pricing. Full: $999 Upgrade: (from previous versions of Trapcode Suite) $199 Academic: $499 Are you already a Trapcode user? We’d love to hear what you think of the new features. Let us know in the comments.

Once again, the Red Giant Spring Sale is on! For only 24 hours they offer 30% discount across their wide catalogue of post production plugins like Pluraleyes, Magic Bullet Looks, Universe and many others. It’s really only a once-in-a-year happening, which is why it is reporting about: 30% off all their products only until 8am PDT / 4pm GMT on April 25th 26th (it was just extended for 24 hours!!). You can find a link to the store HERE. Here are some examples of Red Giant software we like and use. Pluraleyes Pluraleyes is a brilliant piece of software that automatically syncs audio and video from different sources based on the waveform. Incredibly helpful for dual-system audio, for example when shooting with small mirrorless or DSLR cameras, while recording the audio on a separate recorder. It’s quite mind-boggling how good it really is at doing its job. HERE’s a tutorial we released a while ago! In my opinion, this is a must-have piece of software. You can get it HERE. Magic Bullet Suite Magic Bullet really was the first plugin to offer an easy way to add a film look to your footage – actually even working quite well on low-quality footage from small-sensor cameras. It’s quite astonishing what it can do and I’ve used it many years ago on MiniDV footage already (and it did wonders to my first documentaries!). The entire Magic Bullet Suite also includes their very efficient Denoiser (now in version III) as well as Magic Bullet Colorista, which adds professional color correction tools to the suite. You can get the entire Magic Bullet Suite HERE, and if you are only after Magic Bullet Looks, you can get it HERE. Trapcode Suite If you’re after high-end 3D motion graphics and visual effects, this is probably the tool for you – it’s quite comprehensive with 11 different included tools, such as different particle effects for fire, water or smoke creation, all GPU accelerated. It also brings you 3D objects such as terrains to include in your post production without branching out into high-end dedicated 3D software. Trapcode includes also volumetric lighting tools that are 3D-camera aware and can be used with masks and paths to put glimmer on logo and title animations, and so on. The coolest feature in my opinion is the possibility to use audio to generate keyframes you can use as basis for your animation – that means you can animate to your beat easily. You can get Trapcode Suite HERE – like the other products, 30% off only today. Red Giant Spring Sale ends very soon, so be sure to get your discount in time!

The folks over at Red Giant have teamed up with alternative rock band They Might Be Giants on a new music video contest. Make their next music video and you could win cash and a ton of nifty Red Giant production software. All the contest details are below:  The contest is asking for unique music videos to highlight the track I Left My Body. Take a listen to the song below: Follow the link HERE for more contest details. Red Giant software has long been a fixture on set and in post-houses because of its user-friendly interface and useful tools for first-time filmmakers and professionals alike. There will be 3 winners: $3000 + the complete set of Red Giant Tools to the Grand Prize winner (Total Prize Value: $6,694) $1000 + the complete set of Red Giant Tools to two other winners (Total Prize Value: $4,694) The complete set of Red Giant tools includes: Trapcode Magic Bullet Universe Shooter Keying Effects So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start creating. All entries must be submitted by March 1st, 2018 for consideration.