DaVinci Resolve 19 by Blackmagic Design
After a lengthy beta phase (compared to previous releases), Blackmagic has finally released Resolve 19. As always, we don’t have space here to talk about all the nearly 100 new features it offers. There are multiple advances in cloud collaboration, cut and edit, color, fusion, and fairlight. Rather than a large facility with multiple editors working on the same project around the world, or a broadcast studio broadcasting live sports, I use a Resolve workstation in my living room to bring it to our team. I think I’ll keep it to mortals only. Not even an important tool for them!
Cut and Edit modes have audio-to-text transcription features that generate editable text from clips containing dialogue in the Media Bin. You can then use that information to edit your clips based on the transcribed text in your timeline. When it comes to text, you can automatically generate subtitles in a subtitle track on your timeline. Titles appear as clips on the timeline and can be clicked and edited. Additionally, the cut timeline allows you to perform scene cut detection. This identifies shot changes in the footage and splits the clips accordingly.
OpenTimelineIO is now supported as an import/exportable timeline format (see our Nuke 15.1v2 review to see how it works together). And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s an AI-based voice separation tool and Dialogue Leveler. (I think Fairlight also has these.)
On the color mode side: Like many other AI tools, Resolve has an UltraNR noise reduction palette with separate controls for spatial and temporal noise. Film Look Creator introduces grain, halation, weave, flicker, vignetting, and more. It doesn’t go as deep as Dehancer, but it’s definitely powerful. RMB click moved compound mode into color node. For me, this is very useful as I like to compare versions via the Diff node before going back and forth between editing and coloring.
Fusion, a highly underrated compositing tool within Resolve, is getting some love in the form of some very sophisticated nodes. VDB files are supported for rendering volumetric effects such as clouds and explosions. The Multipoly tool collects all your roto shapes into a controllable list (I won’t lie, This probably should have arrived sooner). There is USD support. Because Fusion has a complete 3D system, you can introduce USD stages when rendering in Fusion via a Hydra-based renderer, or when you need an additional AOV pass rather than going back to the original AOV pass. makes absolutely sense. Requests from 3D DCC or writers. Finally, Fusion has a multi-merge tool that accepts multiple inputs to a layer system. It’s like a hybrid node/layer composition system.
Also available are a number of AI-driven tools powered by the DaVinci Neural Engine: Person Masking, Superscaling, Smart Refacing (for social media platforms), NPR Stylization, Face Refinement (!), Dead Pixel Fix, and Object Removal. , patch replacement, etc. Last but not least, there’s Intellitracker for tracking and stabilization. You can also use it to track characters and objects and drive audio with Fairlight to control audio panning. oh! It has many new features and is reasonably priced!
Website: blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
Price: $219
ZBrush for iPad
After two years of development, ZBrush has been ported to the iPad. That time was probably spent rebuilding ZBrush from the ground up, evaluating what could be improved not just on the iPad, but as a whole. Perhaps it took some time for the hardware technology to mature with the M2 and M4 chips and allow ZBrush to handle what it needed to do. In any case, the new tool is shipping as of this printing. I have a hunch that users will love it…and I say that because beta feedback has been positive and the new features will eventually move to the next release of the desktop version. is.
ZBrush users will be happy to know that many, if not most, of the desktop features are found in the mobile version. Hundreds of built-in sculpting brushes and the ability to import user-created brushes. This accessibility also applies to ZTools and ZProjects. Both are interchangeable between the iPad and desktop versions.
The interface has been reconfigured for your device, so you’ll need to do some searching first to find your favorite tool. But don’t worry, almost everything is there (tools not included in the initial release are definitely in development). Instead of modifier keys, a puck with customizable buttons appears on the screen, requiring you to rewire your head a bit. Plus, whether you’re holding the iPad from above or not, you can drag the puck across the screen for thumb access. Or down, or whether you’re right-handed or left-handed. Pencil Tap and Pencil Pro Squeeze are also customizable. These features, combined with multi-finger touch controls, create a very natural and intuitive experience.
ZBrush for iPad includes powerful tools such as ZRemesher, Sculptris Pro, Dynamesh, Live Boolean, Array Meshes, Dynamics, and PolyPaint. All of this is available to artists while remaining incredibly responsive. The M2 iPad handles meshes with a density of 40M polygons, while the M4 can accommodate up to 92M polygons. Honestly, it’s amazing.
Beta testers love the interaction and customizability so much that they are pushing for the same features to be implemented in the desktop version. For novice users who want to take a step-by-step approach to digital sculpting, Maxon offers a free version of ZBrush for iPad with 28 of its most popular brushes and ratcheted-down versions of Dynamesh, SculptrisPro, ZSpheres, and ZRemesher I’m doing it. This is a great opportunity to learn the basics. If you purchase, your subscription is part of Maxon One, but you can also get your own subscription that covers both iPad and desktop licenses.
This is the result of passionate, very smart people spending weekends and overtime, buckets of sweat and tears, and thousands of hours getting this right. We are happy to report that they achieved their goal.
ZBrush for iPad requires iPadOS 17 or later and is available on iPad models with A12 Bionic or later.
Website: zbrushforipad.com
Price: $33.25 per month. $399/year
Foundry’s Nuke 15.1v2
It hasn’t been that long since our last Nuke review, but the new 15.1v2 has some important technical features worth mentioning. As you know, Nuke is the industry’s go-to compositing system, powered by Foundry and started as Digital Domain’s in-house compositor.
Let’s take a quick look at the new things happening in this seemingly chunky point release, including Nuke, Nuke Studio, and Hiero.
BlinkScript, Nuke’s internal C++-like framework for running code on pixel data, has undergone several changes to make it more accessible and efficient. Some of this is achieved through more thorough documentation and visualization of things like variable types. However, with the BlinkScript node, you can now pass four channels of data from the channel layer, giving you more room to modify channels such as motion and depth, as well as RGBA data, and allowing multiple Blink scripts to can be made more efficient. One.
CopyCat nodes, the core of Nuke’s machine learning capabilities, are accelerated by using mixed-precision training, which dynamically adjusts accuracy at different stages of the training process. The workflow is also more robust and optimized, providing controls for pausing and resuming training, or deleting previous training runs and creating inferences within the CopyCat node. It used to be a more manual process.
USD integration continues to evolve with new staging tools and time remapping capabilities for changing the timing of 3D animations within Nuke. Foundry supports the latest version of Pixar, but we want to make it easy to switch between versions in case the people you work with or other software you use don’t use the same flavor of USD. provides new environment variables.
Foundry also continues to make strides in using open tools to become a leader in connecting studios and DCCs. Nuke Studio supports full OpenTimelineIO roundtrips for moving edit information between platforms. Additionally, OpenAssetIO, which allows Nuke to access published assets in production tracking systems, adds further integrations to retrieve frame ranges, color space properties, and ingest types. This relies on the tracking system’s “entity references” rather than explicit file paths, so if things change your Nuke script won’t break if the file isn’t found.
But what caught my eye is actually hidden in this latest build, but revealed by environment variable changes. This is multishot support. This feature makes managing similar shots easier and more consistent. For example, let’s say you have 8 CU shots of Scarlett Johansson with a CG background. Typically this means eight nearly identical Nuke scripts. But if I get a note saying I want the BG to be more blue, or I want to change the CG, that means opening up 8 Nuke scripts, making the changes, rendering the changes, and making sure the same changes happen the same way for every shot. means to confirm. With this new methodology, you have one script that contains all similar shots, and you can make any changes to the frame range, roto, tracking, or anything via a switch node via some control variables, switch and all is determined by a specific shot number. You’re rendering, but the overall focus is on every shot. I think it’s like a state change in 3D software.
You have run out of time and are asked to leave the stage. good night. Tip the waitstaff!
Website: foundry.com/products/nuke-family/nuke
