NEW
2014
HITFILM 3 PRO
Make your first movie.
© 2014 by HitFilm.
A month or two back I was writing the ‘What’s New?’ page for the upcoming HitFilm 3 Pro website. As the page grew longer and longer, detailing feature after feature, vastly overtaking the equivalent HitFilm 2 webpage, I thought: yeah, this is a good one.
Let me introduce you to HitFilm 3 Pro, NOW available to Mac and PC.
Designed for everyone
If you’re looking for new particle simulator features, they’re here. The editor is hugely more powerful. The editor-compositor workflow works better than ever thanks to new background proxying. We’ve added over 20 new effects and OpenFX compatibility.
Mocha HitFilm’s capabilities have been expanded to include mask tracking. There’s even a new 16-bit in-to-out OpenEXR pipeline.
The interface has a new, low profile design which disappears into the background, bringing the focus back to your shots. It feels both fresh and familiar – and faster, thanks to intelligent caching.
There’s also that new name, which better reflects the direction of the product and also has the benefit of being shorter, which is good for everybody’s typing fingers. In case you were wondering – yes, HitFilm 3 Pro is the direct successor to HitFilm 2 Ultimate.
Beginner or expert, there’s features here that you’ll like.
What is HitFilm?
HitFilm 3 Pro gives you everything you need to be an editor, VFX artist and colorist. It merges a non-linear editor with advanced 3D compositing and over 180 effects, plus mocha tracking from Imagineer and 130 plugins for your other video software.
How does it work?
HitFilm’s unique design combines an NLE and compositor in a single interface so that switching between timelines is as easy as changing tabs in your web browser. It’s the fastest way to iterate and innovate.
3D particle textures are a big deal
Below is a 3D particle cityscape built procedurally using Videocopilot’s Metropolitan pack. Note the low level ground fog hugging the buildings.
Take a simulator capable of generating hundreds of thousands particles, then combine it with live 3D model rendering. That’s HitFilm 3 Pro.
The city image above was built from a single city block. You could create much greater variety through the use of multiple particle systems and 3D object combinations.
Fleets of ships, sprawling cityscapes, flocks of birds, asteroid fields, a hail of arrows, a squadron of fighter jets. Are you thinking bigger yet?
Proper 3D particle textures revolutionizes the entire system.
Atomic shapes
HitFilm 3 Pro has a new version of atomic particles which can be applied directly to 3D objects, creating an array of particles arranged according to the model’s 3D geometry.
Tracking masks with mocha
Every purchase of HitFilm 3 Pro includes mocha HitFilm 4.0 from Imagineer Systems. You can now export a tracked shape back into HitFilm 3 Pro to use as an animated mask. This one feature alone saves you hours upon hours of work.
This short video shows an auto-tracked mask in action. While a simple shape, it’s nevertheless something which would have taken a considerable amount of time to manually animate. Note how mocha’s planar tracking copes easily even as the actress moves her hair.
Taking 3D models to the next level
We’ve improved the overall visual fidelity of 3D objects. Ambient occlusion now uses 32-bit rendering and you can even go up to 32x MSAA if your hardware can handle it.
A cool new feature is the wireframe mode, which does exactly what you’d expect. Combine wireframe with a heavy light falloff to generate some awesome holographic ‘scanning’ visuals.
Over 20 new effects
I’ve picked out some of my favorite new effects – there’s plenty more still to reveal.
Auto volumetrics creates 3D light rays. At first glance these can look similar to the light rays effect found in HitFilm 2, until you realize that volumetrics react properly to a 3D camera. It’s great for augmenting on-set lighting.
Heat distortion is needed in a lot of projects. From jet exhaust to a burning desert landscape, this new effect makes it super fast and easy to create realistic heat distortion without needing to generate your own displacement texture.
Lens blur provides a post-processed depth of field, based on a depth map and with customization of the iris bloom shape.
On the grading front there’s pro skin retouch for an application of digital make-up and grade transfer for instantly matching looks across multiple clips.
Oh, and did I mention curves?
Faster and faster
HitFilm 3 Pro takes a giant step forwards towards that dream of a no-waiting, no-rendering workflow.
Even if you’ve created an intensive particle simulation with hundreds of thousands of particles, you can continue to edit and work on other shots while HitFilm silently renders a proxy in the background. Before you know it, the VFX shot will be playing back smoothly on your timeline.
Want to know more?
HitFilm 3 Pro is right around the corner. Now you can download for free, just choose your version and hit the button below.
HitFilm 3 PRO minimum system requirements:
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Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, OS X 10.10 Yosemite or OS X 10.11 El Capitan
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64-bit operating system
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1 GB free hard disk space for installation
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Internet connection required for online activation and web services
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Intel Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 or Intel Xeon (Nehalem) processor or AMD equivalent
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4GB RAM
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OpenGL 2.0 capable hardware with at least 512 MB video memory (NVIDIA GeForce 9 series, Radeon HD 5000 series, Intel HD 4000)