Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Software |
Founded | 1996 |
Founder | Bruno Nicoletti |
Headquarters | London |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Jody Madden, CEO Karen Slatford, Chairman Alex Mahon, Deputy Chairman Simon Robinson, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist Alex Foulds, Chief Customer Officer |
Products | Visual Effects and 3D Software |
Owner | Roper Technologies |
Website | foundry.com |
Foundry (registered as The Foundry Visionmongers Limited; also known under its former brand name The Foundry) is a British visual effects software development company with headquarters in London, and offices in Manchester and in Austin, Texas. [1]
Foundry was founded in 1996, by Bruno Nicoletti, with Simon Robinson joining soon afterwards. [2]
In 2007, software developers Bill Collis, Simon Robinson, and Ben Kent from Foundry, in association with Anil Kokaram from Trinity College Dublin [3] won a Scientific and Technical Award from the Academy Awards (Oscars) for the design and development of The Furnace, an integrated suite of software tools that provides temporal coherence for enhancing visual effects in motion picture sequences with high robustness, modularity and flexibility. [4]
Alex Mahon was named CEO in November 2015. She superseded Bill Collis, who remained president and board member. [5] Craig Rodgerson joined Foundry as new CEO in October 2017. [6]
Foundry was bought by the owners of Digital Domain, Wyndcrest Holdings, in March 2007, and took over DD's existing Nuke business. Subsequently it was subject to a management buyout with backing from Advent Venture Partners, and then acquired by The Carlyle Group in April 2011. [7] [8] [9]
In September 2012, Foundry merged with Luxology, a Mountain View-based software house known primarily for Modo, a 3D modelling and animation package. [10] Earlier the same month, it ranked at number 70 in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100, with 2011/2012 sales of approximately £15 million, a 49% increase from 2010/2011. [11]
In April 2015 reports were that Adobe Systems was preparing to buy Foundry from The Carlyle Group. [12]
In May 2015 it was announced that private equity firm HgCapital acquired Foundry from The Carlyle Group "for an enterprise value of £200 million". [13] [14]
In February 2017, the company rebranded as Foundry, dropping the "The".
In April 2019, Foundry was acquired by Roper Technologies. [15] Following the change in ownership, in July 2019 Jody Madden took over the role of CEO from Craig Rodgerson [16] with Madden's former role as Chief Customer Officer being taken on by Alex Foulds.
Foundry had its origins in plug-in development, and its first product was the Tinder (and later Tinderbox) plugins. This business was sold to GenArts in 2010. [17] It continues to sell the Furnace motion-estimation based plugins, which won an Academy Scientific and Technical Award in 2006 [18] Other plugins include Ocula, a set of tools for stereoscopic post-processing; Keylight, a keyer; RollingShutter, which reduces CMOS artefact distortion; CameraTracker; and Kronos. [19]
Foundry continues the development of Nuke, a node-based compositor. Version 10.0v2 was released in June 2016 [20]
Mari, a texture painting application was released in July 2010. It was originally developed in-house at Weta Digital for use on Avatar by Jack Greasley. [21] [22] Katana, a tool for look-development and lighting, originally from Sony Pictures Imageworks, was released in 2011. [23] Hiero, a shot-management, conform, and review tool, was released in March 2012. The software was designed in-house by Foundry. [24]
Adobe Flash is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash displays text, vector graphics, and raster graphics to provide animations, video games, and applications. It allows streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera input.
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing, but in digital art as a whole. The software's name is often colloquially used as a verb although Adobe discourages such use. Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, and duotone. Photoshop uses its own PSD and PSB file formats to support these features. In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop has limited abilities to edit or render text and vector graphics, as well as 3D graphics and video. Its feature set can be expanded by plug-ins; programs developed and distributed independently of Photoshop that run inside it and offer new or enhanced features.
Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Inc. on December 3, 2005.
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Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Systems and used in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Among other things, After Effects can be used for keying, tracking, compositing, and animation. It also functions as a very basic non-linear editor, audio editor, and media transcoder. In 2019, the program won an Academy Award for scientific and technical achievement.
Vegas Pro is a video editing software package for non-linear editing (NLE) originally published by Sonic Foundry, then by Sony Creative Software, and now by Magix. The software runs on the Windows operating system.
Autodesk Media and Entertainment is a division of Autodesk which offers animation and visual effects products, and was formed by the combination of multiple acquisitions. In 2018, the company began operating as a single operating segment and reporting unit.
Nuke is a node-based digital compositing and visual effects application first developed by Digital Domain, and used for television and film post-production. Nuke is available for Microsoft Windows 7, OS X 10.9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and newer versions of these operating systems. Foundry has further developed the software since Nuke was sold in 2007.
Motion graphics are pieces of animation or digital footage which create the illusion of motion or rotation, and are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects. Motion graphics are usually displayed via electronic media technology, but may also be displayed via manual powered technology. The term distinguishes static graphics from those with a transforming appearance over time, without over-specifying the form. While any form of experimental or abstract animation can be called motion graphics, the term typically more explicitly refers to the commercial application of animation and effects to video, film, TV, and interactive applications. Motion graphics are exceptional way to communicate with viewer, and it can add depth to the story. Also it can give us a message by music and effective copy together, they use it to create ads, television title sequence, explaining a concept, and share a product video that help to communicate their message.
Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a very small number of browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation, and gave support to developers for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.
Luxology, LLC is a software company that creates 3D software products. One of its primary products is the 3D art software modo.
3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery.
CineForm Intermediate is an open source video codec developed for CineForm Inc by David Taylor, David Newman and Brian Schunck. On March 30, 2011, the company was acquired by GoPro which in particular wanted to use the 3D film capabilities of the CineForm 444 Codec for its 3D HERO System.
Boris FX is a visual effects and video editing software plug-in developer based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The developer is best known for its four flagship products, Continuum, Sapphire, Mocha, and Silhouette.
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GenArts, Inc. was a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based developer of visual effects software for the film, broadcast and advertising industries. A majority of traditional video content such as movies, commercials, television shows, newscasts and music videos included at least some special effects created in a GenArts product. GenArts created visual effects software and plugins that integrate visual effects such as glows, lightning, fire and fluids into post-production video editing software from companies like Apple, Adobe, Autodesk and The Foundry.
OpenFX (OFX), a.k.a. The OFX Image Effect Plug-in API, is an open standard for 2D visual effects or compositing plug-ins. It allows plug-ins written to the standard to work on any application that supports the standard. The OpenFX standard is owned by The Open Effects Association, and it is released under a 'BSD' open source license. OpenFX was originally designed by Bruno Nicoletti at The Foundry Visionmongers.
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