LogInLeft Angle's CEO Alexandre Gauthier-Foichat told us about the development journey behind the company's software Autograph, discussed its role in streamlining motion design and VFX workflows, and shared how users can benefit from its customization options to enhance their creative processes.
Introduction
I'm Alexandre Gauthier-Foichat, co-founder and CEO of Left Angle. Together with François Grassard, co-founder and CCO, we created Left Angle to provide modern reliable solutions for creating motion graphics and VFX. We are now a team of 8 working towards maintaining and promoting Autograph, our main software solution.
I entered the world of VFX when I worked as a research and development (R&D) engineer in computer vision, focusing on practical tasks in digital compositing including tracking moving objects, background subtraction, stereo calibration, and 3D camera pose estimation. I spent a large amount of time and energy working on a node-based compositing system during which I became a member of the Open Effects Association. I began contributing to the open-source implementation of their Open Effects standard. Through my work in digital compositing software development, I encountered a large user base and realized just how slow and painful node-based compositing systems were for users of this type of software. I became interested in knowing more about user workflows when creating mixed, live-action, and 3D compositing and motion graphics. It was around that time that I met François, a long-time Adobe After Effects user and Blender 3D artist.
François was also an active user of the open-source software I helped develop and offered suggestions to help improve and shape the software. He had been working as a 3D artist and graphic designer for a while and was interested in transitioning to a product manager position to have more input in developing software. His years of extensive experience in motion design, visual effects, and production for a wide range of clients in the fields of film, television broadcasting, and advertising gave him the drive to improve on current workflows and shape the future of the industry.
With these common interests and motivation to assist the graphic software industry in moving forward, we stayed in touch and worked together, exchanging perspectives and ideas for the betterment of industry workflow. We both saw a gap in the industry, aspects that could be improved upon, as well as many ways that we could work together to provide solutions.
In 2019, after years of exchanging ideas, we started Left Angle to tackle workflow constraints and develop a modern solution – from the ground up. When designing Autograph, our starting point and motivation were user-focused and based on efficient and high-performance interactive workflows that don’t depend on programming and maintain the ability to go into detail to perform low-level image processing tasks.
Autograph's co-founders: Alexandre Gauthier-Foichat & François Grassard
Image credit: Left Angle
Autograph
Autograph is a hybrid professional compositing/VFX and motion design tool optimized for the latest technologies. It provides a streamlined workflow for creating both animated content and performing heavy image processing tasks.
François and I took time to study current software solutions with utmost attention to detail.
We found that these options seemed to offer almost all the features you would find in a high-end compositing environment, providing a somewhat efficient workflow and user interaction to control these features. We realized that their popularity is largely due to processing speed, despite not being able to scale well, and timeline/layer stack-centric UIs oriented mainly towards creating and adjusting animated content, making them efficient enough to control timing so that users could develop their creativity in the animation process itself.
The downfall of these options, however, is their slowed progression in development due to the addition of scripting capabilities that seem to place this responsibility on users. They also sometimes offer little or overly complicated control over the image processing pipeline, such as alpha channel management, premultiplication states, and image colorspace. The very scriptic nature of certain UIs makes it very difficult, if not almost impossible, for new users to be creative in terms of the animation process itself. Most node-based systems also offer poor performance when dealing with a lot of animated graphics, making it difficult to work on animation other than just pre-caching elements.
Autograph was made to be fast through the use of both the GPU and CPU for calculating images. It includes new concepts such as generators and modifiers that supersede expression languages entirely and make it easy for users to express complex constraints. Autograph’s take on responsive design video makes it really easy for a beginner to be able to simultaneously produce multi-format content. Its industry-grade color-difference keyer provides a powerful, real-time alternative that completely changes the speed at which compositing artists create. Feature by feature, our team, takes the time to analyze how users work with Autograph and comes up with creative and efficient solutions to improve artist workflow, which is our #1 priority.
Image credit: Left Angle, Autograph
Autograph Creator vs. Autograph Studio
Autograph Creator comes with a feature-packed toolset for creating stunning motion design, a complete 3D environment, a full-featured VFX/compositing toolset, responsive design tools for videos, and a powerful, versatile instancer for mass animating graphic elements.
Autograph Studio includes everything available in Autograph Creator plus command-line rendering, Python API, and priority support.
Image credit: Left Angle, Autograph
Autograph's Approach to Design and Functionality
Current software solutions are well established as they date back to 30 years ago; however, they were not built to keep up with modern technological advancements. Adding additional features is done through coding with scripting languages, which forces users to learn how to code or purchase scripts to be able to create what they want.
Autograph eliminates the need to know scripting languages and purchase scripts altogether as it includes smart features like modifiers and generators that let users create what they want easily and fast. Users can design their projects with confidence knowing that Autograph is a complete and reliable tool that removes barriers to creativity.
Autograph also supports Disney/Pixar USD standard and provides a full 3D environment without plugins, with full access to connected scene hierarchy.
Most creative programs require expressions to establish relationships between parameters. In Autograph, a simple click is enough to connect parameters together. Once the parameters are linked, you can add modifiers to locally change behavior, for example, add an offset to a value, change the visibility of a layer according to a custom rule, and much more!
Image credit: Left Angle, Autograph
Autograph's Use of CPU and GPU for Image Processing
Autograph uses both the CPU and GPU to compute images which means it ensures incredible responsiveness when setting up projects. Users can easily work with large-scale images without lagging and running into issues. These images can be used in compositions that are infinite in size.
Current solutions use mostly the CPU so they are slower because they're not parallelized for one image. They try to compensate by rendering multiple frames concurrently, which puts a lot of pressure on available system memory and requires users to have powerful workstations, even though these workstations are not used to their full potential.
Since GPUs are increasingly more powerful, in particular for image processing, it only made sense to base compositing software on this hardware.
Image credit: Left Angle, Autograph
Integration of Disney/Pixar USD
Universal Scene Description (USD), created by Pixar, has quickly become the standard to interchange 3D data between DCC and much more. USD lets you create complex 3D scenes called "Stages". Any operation involving 3D in Autograph is done using this format.
Since Autograph is based on Disney/Pixar USD standard, it offers a complete 3D environment where you can create and import complex scenes for rendering and compositing in 2D on the fly, all within the same software, which is an incredible time-saver for the multiple iterations in today’s productions. We believe that a smooth work experience is essential and we've developed Autograph so it's possible to assemble visually complex images quickly and easily by combining 2D and 3D assets directly in the Timeline and rendering everything in one place through a unified workflow. Adding textures to 3D models using any image or composition created or imported in Autograph can be done simply and effectively.
It's possible to create scenes to compose 3D environments from scratch or reference USD assets and edit their contents. It's important to note that assets are not imported, but linked by Autograph, with the ability to override all objects or materials, while keeping the link to the original USD file.
Autograph also comes with Filament, a high-quality, real-time physically-based renderer that lets you illuminate scenes using environment images (IBL), project shadows, simulate penumbra (SSAO), depth of field, reflections, and refractions (SSR).
Image credit: Left Angle, Autograph
Packages
Packages are beneficial for creating custom tools and sharing them with collaborators and clients in an encrypted bundle for reuse.
In Autograph, you can create additional tabs in compositions where you can create custom control panels. By simply dragging and dropping any parameter onto one of these tabs, a new controller will appear with an automatic link to the parameter. You can then easily export a composition with a custom control panel as a package to create a new generator or modifier. The package can also hold documentation and assets used. Everything is encrypted, so all data and resources are safe, and there is no need to master programming languages to share templates.
We have an entire YouTube series that goes over how to create templates and in-house tools without any code.
Autograph's Customization Options
Customization is a great way for studios to optimize their workflows and ensure that teams can work together on projects seamlessly.
For example, in the case of a TV channel that creates projects in accordance with graphic guidelines, a graphics team can prepare templates with custom control panels in which they expose important parameters that they want other graphic artists to use. By doing so, they can ensure that other aspects of the guidelines that have to remain the same are not altered.
Another good example is with teams in visual effects studios where a senior compositor can prepare a template to apply some custom effects such as custom keying passes, custom looks, custom Shaders, etc. (for example, you can learn how to create your own modifiers based on Shaders in this video). They can then provide junior team members with this custom generator/modifier without risking that they accidentally add unwanted modifications. This is also a great way to have a more structured workflow as it allows for gradually updating custom templates without having to manually replicate the modifications everywhere.
Image credit: Left Angle, Autograph
Benefits of Autograph
Autograph is a modern tool built for today’s industry needs and is the culmination of years of extensive research on workflow issues and pain points. We really want to give users what they want – whether it be the ability to change the composition format to meet last-minute client demands or being able to easily connect to external CSV files to change project elements. Autograph is built to perform with speed and accuracy which means that work can be done faster and project elements can be modified without lagging.
We’ve combined 3D rendering within the compositing process, making iterations go a lot faster between 2D and 3D. There is no need to write EXR files on a disc, which saves users time and reduces the risk of errors. Autograph is accessible even to users who are not familiar with writing code as it uses Modifiers and Generators to execute complex tasks. This means users don’t need to use expressions to complete their projects. All in all, our focus is listening to users and providing them with the best tools to help them succeed.
Image credit: Left Angle, Autograph
Left Angle's Future Plans
Our November 28th release includes some major feature enhancements like sound features with audio analyzers to drive parameters, a new 2D shape engine, a new text engine with animators, and overall workflow enhancements. We’ve also put together a new series of learning videos and a learning platform to help first-time users and busy professionals get familiar with the software quickly and easily. Our free, watermarked Autograph trial version is now unlimited so this will make learning much easier.
As always, we continue to incorporate user feedback and have many other ideas for the future, including a bi-directional dynamic node graph editor, some brand-new 3D render features, a more optimized properties panel, and AI image generator capabilities.