Personally, I’d hate to be a plug-in creator for our market. We’re a jaded lot, always wanting to be wow’d by something new and easy to use, yet being apprehensive to embrace something brand spanking new because it costs money or might compromise our deadlines. (Valid reasons, by the way) Simulate: Illuma by digieffects deftly navigates that climate by offering rich, manageable control sets for light effects in post production. (BTW, there is a Simulate: Camera just to highlight naming conventions. I haven’t had a chance to review the Camera plugin yet, though. Check for future issues when I likely will, however.)
My first question (because I’m jaded) was, “Why should I be interested in yet another post-production light effects tool? I already have a bunch.” I quickly grew to appreciate the thoughtfulness and completeness that digieffects put into their product. While digieffects has a bevy of tools, I’m only personally familiar with one: Damage which I reviewed at this link. That tool was flat out awesome. But lighting effects, come on. Everybody and their cousin has something for this.
But, then the flip-side kicked in. Hey, it’s new, and probably cool. Let’s check it out.
Who’s it for? After spending some quality time with Illuma, I can tell you that this is tool for the person that operates under the principle: God is in the details. Once again, as in the Damage plug, the digieffect team proves that they know what the picky professionals want and need, even if they don’t know it until they try the plug-in. Illuma provides finessing controls that accommodate a significantly broader range of what-if’s and allows for the creation of nuanced looks that is difficult to achieve with other tool sets.
Ease of Use
Common sense permeates Simulate: Illuma. That common sense is transformed into a “correct” and appropriate amount of adjustable controls in a logical order with industry standard terminology. No guessing required. That’s nice.
The biggest workflow plus? You can save your settings in presets for later or to be used in other programs that have the Illuma plug installed. The presets are saved as a cross platform, cross software XML files. Very sweet.
Reality is king. Many other plug-in products create other worldly effects and things that resemble bad-tripping-while-wearing-a-tie-dyed-muumuu. Illuma can do this too, but where I found it excelling was in its ability to quickly dial in believable modifications to footage or 3D content but with greater finesse over detail than many of my existing plug-ins.
