VFX Design for Anyone with FXHome's Free Visual Effects Suite

FXHome works hard to bring high-end visual effects to professionals and amateurs alike. Read the story behind their new free visual effects suite, HitFilm 4 Express. And check out their Pro versions on our site here.

How a 'Star Wars' nerd made VFX software for the rest of us

FXHome's free visual effects suite is designed for amateurs. Engadget by Daniel Cooper If you've ever tried to make your own movie, you know that emulating J.J. Abrams isn't easy. Moreover, even if you were the greatest unheralded cinematographer in history, you still couldn't compete with Hollywood. After all, even modestly budgeted films employ a legion of visual effects artists tasked with bringing the impossible to the big screen. That feeling of teenage disappointment may not be the same for future generations, however, and it's all thanks to FXHome, a British software house whose flagship product offers amateurs the ability to produce high-quality visual effects in a matter of hours. Last Thursday the company launched HitFilm 4 Express, a free visual effects and editing suite aimed squarely at teenagers and other young visionaries. It's designed to enable the YouTube generation to create copycat visual effects from the latest movies with a minimum of time, money and skill. As long as you're capable of following the tutorial, it should take you less than an hour before you start to see results. You don't need expensive computing hardware to run it either, with company founder Josh Davies saying that it will work well on the "£250 [$363] computer that you'd pick up for your kids at PC world." In addition to running his own software operation, Davies is an obsessive movie geek and says that HitFilm was built for "people like us." The company's open-plan office is covered in posters for famous sci-fi movies, while Davies' desk is guarded by a Lego X-Wing and a small army of Funko Pop figurines. To celebrate the launch of HitFilm 4 Express, the team built an off-the-shelf clone of Iron Man's heads-up display for anyone to use. The company even created the necessary on-screen graphics, so all you have to do is shoot a video of your own face on a black background. In many ways, it's just a variation on what Davies was doing 15 years ago: figuring out ways to put realistic lightsabers into Star Wars fan films...[continue reading]