Paint and rotoscope artists can now access all of Boris FX Silhouette’s Academy and Emmy Award-winning tools as a plugin inside Nuke, After Effects, and other hosts.

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A — May 13, 2021 — Boris FX Silhouette is set to further cement its indelible mark on the world of film and television. The Academy and Emmy Award-winning advanced rotoscoping, non-destructive paint, and compositing toolset is now available as an affordable plugin to the post-production industry’s most popular host applications.

Artists who have previously relied on Silhouette as a standalone application on projects including Avengers: Endgame, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and The Mandalorian can now access the same powerful tools directly inside Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Foundry Nuke, Blackmagic Fusion and Resolve, Autodesk Flame, and VEGAS Pro.

The new 2021 release follows Silhouette’s recent acceptance as a participating product in the prestigious Netflix Production Technology Alliance.

“The role of paint and rotoscope artists has become increasingly important as production values soar. Invisible effects work is a major component on every film and TV project — think matte painting, wire removal, digital make-up, and more,” says Boris Yamnitsky, President and Founder, Boris FX. “The ability to use Silhouette as a plugin directly inside host applications like After Effects, Nuke, and Resolve will dramatically change how these artists work. It also further aligns the Boris FX product family ( Sapphire, Continuum, Mocha Pro) together and streamlines post-production workflows as artists can easily jump in and out of any Boris FX product without leaving their project timelines. The result? Major time-savings and greater collaboration.”

“Our goal with Silhouette 2021 was to create next-level editing tools to handle the most difficult roto shots,” states Marco Paolini, Silhouette Product Designer. “Complex shape animations are easier than ever before with the new gestural brush reshape tool, point grouping, collapsing, and distribution. Many of the new tools and enhancements, too many to mention, are a result of artist feedback from around the world.”

"Silhouette has always been the go-to software for getting the hardest roto, tracking, and paint tasks done. When you are faced with a difficult deadline it's nice to know you can rely on a solid set of tools to help knock out the task in front of you,” remarks James Pina, LAIKA, RotoPaint Lead Technical. “With the new user-suggested features, it just keeps getting better and better every year without compromising the original spirit of the software."

Silhouette 2021 Highlights:

New! Multi-Host Plugin: All Silhouette features are now available when launched as a plugin. (The previous Silhouette Paint plugin was limited to paint-only functions.) Artists now have access to the entire node-based workflow for roto, paint, tracking, warping, keying, and compositing in their host application.

New! Affordable Subscription Options: Purchase an annual subscription to the Silhouette plugin for only $395/year or choose the Silhouette standalone application + plugin option for $695/year.

New! Lens Correction Node: The Lens Correction node can calibrate and correct lens distortion for advanced effects tasks or generate and export an ST Map for other host applications. The Lens Correction node is built on shared technology from Mocha Pro’s Lens Module.

New! Roto Editing Tools: Based on artist feature requests, new tools and functionality make Silhouette’s superior rotoscoping capability even stronger.

• Brush Reshape: Uses a circular brush to automatically select and then move points when you click and drag them using the Magnetic Reshape behavior.
• Point Collapse and Distribute: Collapses a selection of points into a very small area that can later be distributed between surrounding points. This is useful for shapes where the complexity changes over time.
• Point Groups: Groups of points can be pre-defined and then quickly edited as a group in the Reshape and Transform tools.
• Split Shapes: Similar to the Split Edit function in non-linear editing systems where a clip is split in two. Split Shapes is practical for shapes that transform from simple to complex and vice-versa.
• Weighted MultiFrame: Using the new Fade In/Fade Out parameters, keyframe adjustments can be dynamically weighted over user-definable time periods to control the intensity of an adjustment over multiple keyframes.

New! Roto Review and Approval Improvements: Notes assigned to objects (shapes, layers, trackers) can now be displayed in the Viewer. The convenient review and approval tool lets artists easily see notes provided by their supervisors.

New! Paint Enhancements: Clone Source Masking and improved Color Picker.

New! Nodes and User Interface Improvements:

• Nodes: Alpha Composite, Dot, Notes, OCIO Colorspace/Display/LUT
• Custom File Importer, Flyout Menus, Node Coloring, Node Alignment, OCIO Roles, Sapphire Node Tab
• Trees window organization with Clean Up, Align, and Distribute

New! GStreamer Movie File Support: Versatile media handling library to read various codecs and footage containers.

New! Roto render workflow: No license required. ( see related video)


Boris FX Silhouette 2021: New Lens Correction node ( Download the image)

Pricing & Availability

Silhouette 2021 is available as a permanent license, annual or monthly subscription, and upgrade from previous versions. Plugin host applications include Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Foundry Nuke, Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve and Fusion, Autodesk Flame, and VEGAS Pro. Supports macOS, Windows, and Linux operating systems.

Customers on current subscription or upgrade and support plans receive a free update to Silhouette 2021.

Silhouette 2021 (Standalone + Multi-host plugins)

• Single license: $1795
• Upgrades start at $695
• Annual Subscription: $695
• Monthly Subscription: $100

Silhouette 2021 (Multi-host plugins)

• Single license: $995
• Annual Subscription: $395
• Monthly Subscription: $50

About Boris FX
Founded in 1995, Boris FX is a leading developer of VFX, compositing, titling, video editing, and workflow tools for broadcast, post-production, and film professionals. Boris FX products have grown to serve over a million artists worldwide. The company’s success lies in its ability to tightly integrate and leverage technologies through strong partnerships with Adobe, Apple, Avid, Blackmagic Design, Autodesk, Grass Valley, VEGAS Pro, and other leading developers of video editing software. In 2014, Boris FX acquired Imagineer Systems, the Academy Award-winning developer of Mocha planar tracking software. In 2016, Boris FX acquired GenArts, the developer of Sapphire, the gold standard plug-in package for high-end visual effects. In 2019, Boris FX acquired Academy and Emmy Award-winning SilhouetteFX and Digital Film Tools for advanced feature film rotoscoping, painting, and effects.