My impression of this release in general are much better than the CS4 release overall, with serious productivity enhancements (64-bit optimized, memory allocation/management) and much-needed production tools such as the Roto Brush tool and FreeForm 3D plug-in. I had the opportunity to watch this product evolve through the beta cycles and put it through it’s paces and provide feedback about the usability of the tools during development. Using the Roto Brush on a real post-production assignment gave me a true sense of the usefulness (and possible pitfalls) of this new workflow, and in the end, I found it much more accurate and effective than trying to do hand-roto with a spline mask on complicated tasks such as hair and intricate backgrounds. (link to the final online commercial will be posted here as soon as it’s live)

I might also add that while Digieffects FreeForm from mettle.com is truly a 3D warp mesh and displacement effect that can be applied to any AE layer in 3D space, and integrates well with other 3D layers , lights and cameras, After Effects CS5 still doesn’t provide a true volumetric 3D workflow. FreeForm will definitely garner much more useful 3D capabilities and in the days to come, we’ll see some remarkable projects come to life utilizing this amazing technology. I’ll be posting some examples myself here on my blog as well as reviews and tutorials with FreeForm in the weeks ahead.

I’ve had a lot of fun exploring this software and found it pretty amazing to say the least (it got a 4-mice rating by Macworld standards) though some of the tools and interface were a little non-intuitive and you’re left with little resources to find out things on your own. It still produces some incredible models.

They have lots of gallery examples on their web site that really show off what the product can do, but I wanted to share with you what I did by exporting a model (as an OBJ file) and imported it into Photoshop as a 3D layer. I applied a texture and my own lighting to it and created this animation: Click Here to View

I also created a 3D Stereographic version (get out those Red/Blue 3D glasses) that really shows this incredible robo-organic model! Click image below to view the 3D movie

If you’d like to check out GroBoto yourself, go to their web site: groboto.com

Macworld >> First Look: After Effects CS4

Check out the overview I’ve given this great new upgrade of Adobe After Effects! (and make sure to click the “YES – Recommend” button at the bottom of the review!)

I will be doing a more extensive feature review of After Effects CS4 for Macworld Magazine later this next month, so I’ll let everyone know when that will get published as well!