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NEWS • JULY 31, 2000
Panopticum Launches FX 1
New package for After Effects includes four older plug-in suites

by David Nagel
Executive Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com

Panopticum today announced it's shipping Panopticum FX 1.0, a set of plugins for After Effects on the Mac. It includes filters from four previously released sets of plugins, including Fire 2.5, which was just released itself last week. The new package includes AnimaText 1.1, a tool for creating text effects; Fire 2.5, which creates combustion effects; Lens Pro 2, a set of tools for creating lens effects; and Tools 1.1, which includes eight filters.

AnimaText 1.1
Panopticum AnimaText is tool for creating effects with text in After Effects, with 127 total adjustable parameters, from font to style to position. Version 1.1 for Mac includes optimization for the G4 Velocity Engine; compatibility with PostScript Type 1 fonts with ATM 3.0 or better installed; new anti-aliasing algorithm; and adjustment of the kerning. Features include:

• Text Allocation, which draws text along curves, including Bezier, line, polyline, circle, loop and any custom curve given as standard After Effects mask contour.
• Various styles of symbol appearance, including standard solid filling, outline and filled outline.
• Gap for filled outline style lines can be set as transparent or solid filled.
• Outline rasterizing can be completed with round or square corners.
• Text letters can be independently blurred.
• Letters frames can be used to create special effects, including additional letter contour placement that looks like symbols in a rectangle, circle, rhomboid, star or heart.
• The distance between letters and lines can be modified using horizontal and vertical tracking parameters.
• Single letters of the text can be rotated or sheared at arbitrary angles.
• The user can assign lens rounding radius and its strength.

Fire 2.5
The new version of Fire offers variations on how the fire spreads and adds new True color and High color schemes. It also offers peripheral fire effects, such as shooting sparks, fire drips and "super glow mode." In the new version, the glow mode's parameters have been extended. Other features include:

• The source of the flame may be a selected region or transparent images in the composition.
• The fire can burn either on the whole region, source of the flame or on the edges.
• Users can change the direction of fire downward and create ice or frost effects by changing color, shape, direction and speed characteristics.

The new version also offers several transition effects for gradual burning. These include:

• Blend, which causes the fire to cross the image and divide it in two, each part burning to a set position.
• Page causes the image to burn like a page that was set on fire from one side and burns in a chosen direction and up to a set position.
• Hole creates a burning point in the center of the composition, which burns outward in all directions to a set position.
• Gate sets a fire on all sides of the composition that burns inward.

Lens Pro 2
Lens Pro II contains two sets of lenses and crystals effects that include six kinds of lenses and two kinds of crystals: Ellipse lens, Square lens, Droplet lens, Torus lens, Border lens, Star lens, Diamond crystal and Star crystal.

Users can adjust parameters of particles movement and create effects and animate backgrounds. Filter include:

• Contour Lens, which allows users to create a lens on any image with an alpha channel or mask;
• Gradient Lens builds a relief of a glass surface;
• Triangle Surface creates crystal textures and objects;
• Ellipse Lens creates circular and elliptical distortion effects;
• Square Lens lets users create a lens in the form of rectangle with adjustments for shape, optics and color properties;
• Droplet Lens creates the effect of drops flowing down on wet glass;
• Torus Lens emulates a donut-shaped lens;
• Border Lens allows users to create a rectangular a lens border;
• Universal Lens allows users to create a lens of any shape;
• Star Crystal allows users to create crystal effects, and users can set the number of facets, distance between center and border and cut of facets;
• Diamond Crystal is similar to Star Crystal, but the facets are in the shapes of diamonds.

Tools 1.0
Panopticum Tools 1.0 includes eight filters for After Effects, including Custom Speed (for changing a video fragment's speed); Photo Exposition (exposure effects); Echo (for creating a visual echo from a sequence of moving objects); Emboss; Speckle Glass (animatable wet glass effects); Strip (for cutting an image into thing, transparent lines); NULL Strobe (for creating the effect of hold field or null Strobe); and Camera Noise (for cutting out noise).

Panopticum FX 1.0 is available now for $249.95, $70 off the price of each set purchased separately. It's available for Mac and Windows running Adobe After Effects 4.x. For more information, visit http://www.panopticum.com.

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