It’s hard to believe another year has already come and gone. This year has seen some incredible advancements in the VFX industry. We’ve covered so many new VFX tools and plugins on our blog throughout the course of the year, so we’re here to help you keep track of the top six that we found most exciting.  

These are in no particular order, but we’ve touched on how they have all significantly pushed the envelope for VFX in 2019. 

Let’s get started!

Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 has evolved far beyond its utility as a game engine, now becoming a staple in the VFX industry for pre-visualization, real-time VFX, and Virtual Production. Environment design can be a time-consuming prospect for UE4 users. Luckily Brushify.io makes the process so much easier!

Brushify.io’s terrain toolkit allows you to quickly produce everything from lush forests to canyons, deserts, mountains, icy tundras, and everything in between. What makes Brushify.io even more appealing is the fact that you can generate your own unique look by using it in tandem with UE4’s shaders.

Learn how you can build your own environments with Brushify.io on our blog. 

Red Giant’s VFX Suite launched with an array of incredible tools, including Spot Clone Tracker.

Simply identify the areas you’d like to track for removal, then select the area you’d like to fill from (similar to Photoshop’s Clone Stamp Tool). Click here to learn the ins and outs of Spot Clone Tracker!

The function of one of After Effects’ most technically impressive tools made its way to HitFilm earlier this year in the form of HitFilm Pro’s 3D Camera Tracker.

HitFilm Pro’s 3D Camera Tracker was huge news for users of the comprehensive software package from FXhome, and it’s yet another great reason to love the industry’s most affordable and feature-rich VFX software.

If you’d like to learn more, here’s how to use HitFilm Pro’s 3D camera tracker.

The work being done by the folks at Quixel to democratize photogrammetry for visual effects is unbelievable. The Megascans library boasts the world’s highest volume of photorealistic scans (including proper scaling, PBR calibration, and detailed topology, UVs, and LODs for 3D meshes) elevating VFX to a completely new level.

Both the quality and quantity make a subscription to Megascans essential for VFX studios and artists looking to create industry-leading content. 

Click here to see how you can use Megascans along with Mixer and Bridge to create stunning photorealistic VFX!

One of the most pleasant surprises of Adobe’s spring 2019 Creative Cloud update was Content-Aware Fill for Video in After Effects.

It works just like Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop and allows you to even import a frame into Photoshop and manually adjust it to your heart’s content before round-tripping it back to After Effects for Adobe’s Sensei AI technology to use as a reference for the object removal.

You can generate some astoundingly clean plates from even complex footage with a lot of motion, so make sure you read our write-up on how to use content-aware fill for video in After Effects! 

A poorly-composited shot can ruin a lot of great VFX work. Even the smallest details can make or break an otherwise solid visual effects shot.  

Thankfully, Red Giant’s VFX Supercomp makes the compositing scene so much easier! Supercomp is like a Swiss Army Knife for VFX artists, in that it includes 17 unique effects to create the most seamless composite possible. 

Some of our favorites are Light Wrap, Reverse Light Wrap, Edge Erode, Edge Blend, and Displacement Layers. You can read more about how VFX Supercomp enhances your workflow here!

Of course, we’d recommend studios and artists take it one step further and opt for Red Giant’s entire VFX Suite, an incredible value with a tremendous amount of VFX plugins to make your hard work truly shine.

This year was filled with some truly mind-blowing technological breakthroughs in the visual effects industry.

Each of these tools and plugins, coupled with so many other new innovations in the world of visual effects, are sure to pave the way towards a bright future in the VFX industry for years to come. We look forward to exploring this future with you here at ActionVFX!  

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