v2024 Boris FX Silhouette – Perpetual License

Silhouette, the industry’s leading rotoscoping and paint tool, is packed with major compositing features. Silhouette delivers 400+ VFX nodes, including Boris FX Sapphire, Mocha Pro, and Particle Illusion.

Top artists have relied on Silhouette on Hollywood’s biggest titles for over fifteen years. The Academy and Emmy Award-winning toolkit created by visual effect artists recently made its mark on Deadpool & Wolverine, Rebel Moon, Barbie, Dune, and 3 Body Problem.

Why Silhouette?

• Industry leading rotoscoping and paint toolsAuto paint for speed and reliabilityPowerful tracking optionsNode based compositing and image processingEasy keying for green screensIncludes Sapphire, Mocha, Particle Illusion and Continuum effect toolsWarping and morphing toolsWork as a plugin in your favorite host or as a standalone application

What’s new in Silhouette 2024

• Matte Assist ML: Create fast animated mattes from a single frame.
• Optical Flow ML Tracker: Use next-gen optical flow data to track shapes, objects, or point trackers.
• Retime ML: Produce silky smooth time warps like never before.
• DeNoiser ML Update: 2x faster denoise models cover more footage types.
• Enhanced Performance: Faster processing with GPU nodes, less memory used on roto nodes, better caching.
• Paint & VFX: Support for Photoshop brushes(!), and updated Mocha Pro, Sapphire & Particle Illusion included.

Matte Assist ML

Instantly create animated mattes from a single frame. Use the Roto, Paint or new EZ Mask Node to create sample mattes, and let the AI power of Matte Assist ML do the rest.

• Mix it with traditional roto or procedural techniques to save massive amounts of time
• Data port communication between nodes delivers faster results with less work
• Add to the updated Power Matte node to make finely detailed mattes in record time

Optical Flow ML

Generate optical flow data for use in Silhouette’s roto nodes — Roto, Roto Blend, Tracker, Power Mask, Morph, and Depth.

• Quickly estimate per-pixel motion between frames
• Track shapes, objects, or point trackers using Optical Flow data or STMap data from other applications, e.g. Nuke’s Smart Vectors
• Seriously speed up roto tasks with the Auto Keyframe tool that uses flow data together with manual animation

Retime ML

Say no to pesky artifacts, and hello to silky smooth time warps with animated ramping driven by innovative ML motion estimation and retiming models.

• Easily speed up or slow down the timing of a selected frame range
• Driven by custom algorithms trained on thousands of images
• Keyframe your effects for maximum impact

Enhanced Functionality

The 2024 release gives artists huge performance gains with foundational improvements, updated nodes, and more.

• Up to 30% speed increases when using multiple GPU nodes
• Roto nodes use 33% less memory
• Big caching improvements mean more frames can be cached into RAM
• A new Cache Node caches all upstream nodes to disk, resulting in faster playback

Photoshop Brushes & More

• Silhouette’s fast and non-destructive paint tools get a boost with support for Adobe Photoshop brushes
• Mocha Pro Node includes new 3D tracking powered by SynthEyes
• Sapphire, Continuum, and Particle Illusion effects updated to the latest releases

Denoiser ML Refinements

Improved models trained with even more images to produce even higher denoising precision.

Professional Roto Tools

Create sophisticated masks using B-Spline, Bézier, X-Spline, or Magnetic Freehand shapes. Easy-to-use tools such as variable per-point edge softening and magnetic reshaping assist in creating articulate animations in record time.

• Specialized shape editing tools: Magnetic splines, point groups, weighted keyframes, brush-based reshape, split shapes, collapse, and distribute points
• Integrated tracking: Point, planar, and Mocha planar tracking
• IK (Inverse Kinematics): Animate limbs and all jointed creatures
• Render mattes with realistic motion blur
• Export to industry standard shape formats including Cryptomatte
• Stereoscopic 3D workflow
• Built for teams and collaboration with review/approval notes

Fast and Reliable AutoPaint

Silhouette’s 32-bit float raster-based paint and tracking system — with its unique non-destructive AutoPaint recording system — meets the demands of high-resolution, color-managed VFX pipelines.

• Paint tools: Pressure-sensitive customizable brushes and presets, including Clone, Grain, Repair, Drag, and more.
• Channels & detail separation: Paint on individual RGBA channels or work on separated detail and color views for advanced control.
• Sophisticated cloning: Advanced offset and warping, onion skin, and display views enable a streamlined workflow for aligning, patching, and removing unwanted pixels.
• Powerful tracking options: Native point, planar tracking, and Mocha options.
• Warped surface paint workflow: Use the Mocha Pro and PowerMeshWarp nodes.

Node-based Compositing & Image Processing

Silhouette’s core is a powerful gestural node-based effects tree that delivers film-grade results.

View or edit any combination of nodes to control every detail in your image with 400+ specialty nodes organized into Color, Composite, Diffusion, Filter, Film Lab, Image, Key, Light, Particle Illusion, Sapphire, Special Effects, Time, Tints, Transform, Warp, and OFX groups.

• Tracking and spline data ports and node actions
• OCIO v2 color-managed workflow
• Customizable workspaces for dual monitor set-ups
• Precision color grading with 4-way color wheels and presets
• Proprietary matte generation
• Edge tools to color correct or blur the composite’s edge
• Matte manipulation using shrink, grow, blur, and wrap functions

Multi-Host Plugin

The full Silhouette interface can also be launched as a plugin from standard VFX applications: After Effects, Premiere Pro, Nuke, Fusion, Resolve, and Flame.

The Silhouette multi-host plugin is included with Silhouette standalone application licenses or can be purchased as a separate option.

Warping & Morphing

Get the highest level of artistic control and render quality on digital retouching, image deformations, and even talking animals.

Shape or pin options: Create invisible touch-ups, subtle facial exaggerations, or dramatic transitions.

Music videos & effects shots: Unique shape-to-shape morphing transitions can be timed per layer with interactive previews for fast flexibility. Used in some of the world’s most famous music videos. Intro to Morphing Video

Beauty Work: Pin Warp allows user-defined image areas while leaving other areas untouched. Create a subtle nip and tuck or completely reposition an arm or leg. Watch Now

Keying & Matte Generation

Handle the most difficult keying and matte challenges — including shots with fine hair detail, smoke, or reflections — with proprietary matte extraction techniques.

• Primatte: The keying industry standard uses a GPU-accelerated algorithm based on 3 multi-faceted polyhedrons which can be visualized using the 3D Preview display.
• zMatte keying: Features multiple matte creation, light wrapping, edge correction, spill suppression, and matte manipulation. Watch Now
• Power Matte: A unique interactive workflow enhances matte creation on normally non-keyable shots with foreground and background shape selectors that generate incredibly realistic and accurate results on semi-transparent objects. Watch Now

Powerful Tracking Options

Access the industry’s top tracking tools to speed up paint, roto, warp, and stabilization tasks.

• Choose point tracking, native planar tracker, or the award-winning Mocha Pro node.
• Create a seamless workflow between Mocha and Silhouette nodes with the surface tool, data ports, and node actions.
• Pre-processing filters — Blur, Sharpen, Contrast, Gamma, De-Noise, or Remove Flicker — increase track accuracy on problematic images.
• Apply post-processing filters to tracking data: Average, Smooth, Merge, and more.

Sapphire, Particle Illusion & Continuum

Create with compositing and effects plugins from Boris FX sister products.

• Sapphire: Best-in-class effects include UltraGlow, UltraZap, Lens Flare, Shake, and more. Watch Now
• Particle Illusion: Add 2D/3D animated simulations like snow, smoke, and fire with fluid dynamics.
• Continuum: Select nodes include Atmospheric Glow, Magic Sharp, Beauty Studio, Light Leaks, Video Glitch, Film Glow, and many blur filters.

Mocha Pro Node

Award-winning Mocha Pro planar tracking is now a node included with Silhouette.

Features:

• GPU-accelerated object removal
• 3D tracking powered by SynthEyes
• PowerMesh warped surface tracking
• Insert compositing with AdjustTrack
• Award-winning stereo 360/VR tools

Learn more about Mocha Pro

Looking for bundle options? Silhouette + Mocha Pro is also available as a standalone application bundle for savings.