Autodesk has released the trial version of Smoke 2013 for Mac today. You can download the free trial from their website, and they’ve also kindly put up several demo videos showing of its new features and interface.
The how to videos are a must, as it’s been a long time since I’ve fired up the old SGI Octane and run Smoke, and the interface has completely changed with this release. I remember back in 1999 when I was working for Warner Brothers and our promo department bought a smoke* (somewhere along the way they lost the asterisk and gained a capital letter) from discreet logic. It ran on a maxed out SGI Octane, required customized fibre channel storage called “stone” that had 18 hard disks in it, and cost around $300,000. It’s blend of effects compositing and video editing pretty much rocked my world, and there was nothing else like it at the time.
Smoke for Mac 2013, runs on an iMac, using an external hard drive, costs $3,000 (not including the computer), and it’s blend of effects compositing and video editing still rocks my world, and I’ll be damned if there’s still nothing else like it now.