Powering Invisible VFX, with Paul Miller and Marco Paolini, creators of Boris Silhouette | TVAP EP44

This week it's been a real pleasure to meet Paul Miller and Marco Paolini - Software Developer and Product Manager behind the Oscar winning software, Boris Silhouette.Despite advances in AI, manual rotoscoping and invisible paintouts are still an essential bullwark of the VFX industry and not going away anytime soon.We begin our discussion  with their work on Elastic Reality (used on classic shows like Quantum Leap) and talk about how they have built Silhouette for artists who need to paint 100 stokes a second and export mattes accurate to better than a 16th of a pixel.Recently Silhouette has expanded it's compositing toolset so we discuss their choices around this. Of course machine learning is something cannot avoid discussing, so we look at both its promise and its limitations at the high end.In closing both Paul and Marco give some excellent career advice for anyone entering or advancing in the VFX and Software Development industries.Enjoy!00:00:00 : Preview00:01:39 : Introductions00:02:20 : Founding the team00:03:55 : Elastic Reality00:06:51 : Original plan for Silhouette00:07:43 : The Node Graph00:10:56 : Marco's Journey from Artist to Software00:14:01 : The Smallness of the Industry00:20:05 : What Keeps the Team Busy00:25:34 : The Scripting Engine00:28:38 : The Decision to Add More Comp Features00:31:28 : Performance and Paul's Nightmares00:35:49 : Silhouette as OFX Plugin00:41:15 : Limits of Machine Learning01:06:26 : Retimes01:17:38 : Paul's Advice for Aspiring Developers01:20:50 : Learn Python!01:22:41 : Marco's Advice for Getting into VFX and into Software01:28:41 : Closing thoughts(chapters powered by [Chaptered.app](https://Chaptered.app))#Silhouette #Oscars #scitech #VFX #Podcast #rotoscoping #invisiblevfxAs always, if you liked this episode, please like, comment, subscribe and share!Listen to all episodes on our websitehttps://www.thevfxartistspodcast.com/You can watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel. Subscribe & Watch all episodes on our YouTube Channel Visit our website Thank you for your support! We appreciate you!