By Chris Gannon
When FXHome’s HitFilm came to Final Cut Pro X and Motion, users rejoiced (well, at least I did). The all-in-one editing, 3D and VFX software is a handy tool to add to your video editing toolbox.
Or perhaps I should say “tools.” The 130 plug-ins range from visual effects and professional green screening to procedural motion graphics and cinematic color grading. Filmmakers, visual effects artists and motion graphics designers can create organic particle arrays, design light flares, generate procedural fire and lightening, and add 3D muzzle flashes to action sequences.
The colorist’s toolkit enables pro skin retouching, cine style looks, bleach bypass and day-for-night processing and film damage effects. HitFilm also offers distortion and warp effects, rolling shutter correction and temporal manipulation.
The software makes professional compositing easy. It has everything a VFX artist needs for professional keying and matte creation, including a fully featured chroma key for green screen removal and a range of tools for perfecting and enhancing composites.
HitFilm’s cinematic color grading for color correction and video grading offers advanced skin retouching, bleach bypass and 3-strip color processing, day-for-night, and grade matching. I especially enjoy using its cine style for replicating classic Hollywood looks.
The software packs organic particle arrays to create complex systems of thousands of particles with extensive fractal shape and dispersion controls. There are pyro effects for explosive visual effects, including customizable, procedural fire simulation and fully animated lightning and electricity, enable realistic fire and lightning simulations.
Light flares and lens effects facilitate the designing of lens flares and addition of procedural lens dirt, anamorphic streaks, volumetric light rays and high detail glows. 3D particle-based muzzle flashes can be rotated and positioned in true 3D. Plus, they’re customizable so you can create just about any sort of any weapon for action sequences;
HitFilm’s grunge and film damage “repair” lets you create vintage and archival looks. Other plug-ins let you add film damage to video, simulate a poor TV broadcast, generate procedural film grain and more.
Users only need to buy the plug-ins once, and they get two licenses to install them in all their post-production software, including After Effects, Vegas Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro and Motion. The plug-ins cost $299 and are well worth it if you’re seriously into video production. Plus, a demo is available for download.
Apple World Today Rating (out of 5 stars): ★★★★
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