Adding more power under the hood for VR content creators using Adobe After Effects CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe has just acquired all of Mettle’s Skybox technology. The Mettle Skybox products are a collection of post-production tools including VFX, transitions, and standard editing (titling, Picture in picture inserts and other tasks), which for the cinematic VR video maker, would be difficult to manage or sometimes impossible without precise knowledge of working with 360 and stereoscopic 360 degree footage on a typical flat editing screen environment. One of the Mettle plugins allows viewing through the Oculus Rift.
Although the Skybox suite tools are now offered as individual plugins by Mettle, Adobe will integrate SkyBox plugin functionality natively into future releases of Premiere Pro and After Effects.
The news release also mentions that:
“To further strengthen Adobe’s leadership in 360-degree and virtual reality, Mettle co-founder Chris Bobotis will join Adobe, bringing more than 25 years of production experience to his new role.”
Mettle will continue to exist, though under different leadership, and current Mettle product owners are encouraged to go to their current Mettle account to use the new installers. These new installers include recent builds that include bug fixes and optimizations to the SkyBox products. Existing and legacy SkyBox customers will continue to have the same contact and support process through Mettle at: www.mettle.com/support.
All Mettle SkyBox Customers have an additional SkyBox Suite in their accounts, with 10 activations. All prior purchases have an additional 10 activations. Purchases made up to 15 days prior to this announcement will be reimbursed.
While SkyBox plug-ins will no longer be available for purchase during the integration process, following the transition process, Current Adobe Creative Cloud paid subscribers will be able to access SkyBox plugins through Adobe by sending an email to [email protected]. Include your Adobe ID and first and last name as it appears on your account. You will receive a response within 24 hours.
*SkyBox Suite includes: SkyBox Studio V2, SkyBox 360/VR Post FX 1 + 2, SkyBox 360/VR Tools, SkyBox 360/VR Transitions 1 + 2, SkyBox VR Player)
