Foundry (registered as The Foundry Visionmongers Limited; also known under its former brand name The Foundry) is a British

visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action foota ...

software development company with headquarters in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, and offices in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

History

Foundry was founded in 1996, by Bruno Nicoletti, with Simon Robinson joining soon afterwards. In 2007, software developers Bill Collis, Simon Robinson, and Ben Kent from Foundry, in association with

Anil Kokaram Anil C. Kokaram is a Trinidadian engineer and entrepreneur. He is famous for his Oscar-winning inventions enabling the restoration of audio and images and is currently the Chair of Electronic Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. Background ...

from

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

won a Scientific and Technical Award from the

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

(Oscars) for the design and development of The Furnace, an integrated suite of

software tools A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can ...

that provides temporal coherence for enhancing visual effects in motion picture sequences with high robustness, modularity and flexibility.

Alex Mahon Alexandra Rose Mahon (born October 1973) is a British businesswoman. She has been the chief executive of Channel 4 since October 2017, succeeding David Abraham as the first female CEO of the channel. Early life Alexandra Rose Mahon was born i ...

was named CEO in November 2015. She superseded Bill Collis, who remained president and board member. Craig Rodgerson joined Foundry as new CEO in October 2017. Foundry was bought by the owners of

Digital Domain Digital Domain is an American visual effects and digital production company based in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California. The company is known for creating digital imagery for feature films, advertising and games from its locations in Californ ...

, Wyndcrest Holdings, in March 2007, and took over DD's existing Nuke business. Subsequently it was subject to a

management buyout A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout became noted phenomena of 1 ...

with backing from Advent Venture Partners, and then acquired by

The Carlyle Group The Carlyle Group is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, real assets, and pri ...

in April 2011. In September 2012, Foundry merged with

Luxology Luxology, LLC is a software company that creates 3D software 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometr ...

, a Mountain View-based software house known primarily for Modo, a 3D modelling and animation package. Earlier the same month, it ranked at number 70 in

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

Tech Track 100 The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 is an annual league table published in association with The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK. It ranks Britain’s 100 private technology (TMT) companies with the fastest-growing sales over their last three years. ...

, with 2011/2012 sales of approximately £15 million, a 49% increase from 2010/2011. In April 2015 reports were that

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

was preparing to buy Foundry from

. In May 2015 it was announced that private equity firm

HgCapital Hg is a private equity firm targeting technology buyouts primarily in Europe and the US. Hg focuses on investments in technology and services sectors. It invests out of its 8th £2.5 billion core fund and its 2nd £575 million Mercury fund, target ...

acquired Foundry from The Carlyle Group "for an enterprise value of £200 million". In February 2017, the company rebranded as Foundry, dropping the "The". In April 2019, Foundry was acquired by

Roper Technologies Roper Technologies, Inc. (formerly Roper Industries, Inc.) is an American diversified industrial company that produces engineered products for global niche markets. The company is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida. Roper provides a wide range ...

. Following the change in ownership, in July 2019 Jody Madden took over the role of CEO from Craig Rodgerson with Madden's former role as Chief Customer Officer being taken on by Alex Foulds.

Products

Foundry had its origins in plug-in development, and its first product was the Tinder (and later Tinderbox) plugins. This business was sold to

GenArts GenArts, Inc. was a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based developer of visual effects software for the film, broadcast and advertising industries. A majority of traditional video content such as movies, commercials, television shows, newscasts and mu ...

in 2010. It continues to sell the Furnace motion-estimation based plugins, which won an Academy Scientific and Technical Award in 2006 Other plugins include Ocula, a set of tools for

stereoscopic Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the depth perception, illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stere ...

post-processing; Keylight, a

keyer A keyer is a device for signaling by hand, by way of pressing one or more switches. Modern keyers typically have a large number of switches but not as many as a full-size keyboard; typically between four and fifty. A keyer differs from a keyboar ...

; RollingShutter, which reduces

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

artefact distortion; CameraTracker; and Kronos. Foundry continues the development of Nuke, a node-based compositor. Version 10.0v2 was released in June 2016 Mari, a texture painting application was released in July 2010. It was originally developed in-house at Weta Digital for use on ''Avatar'' by Jack Greasley.

Katana A is a Japanese sword characterized by a curved, single-edged blade with a circular or squared guard and long grip to accommodate two hands. Developed later than the ''tachi'', it was used by samurai in feudal Japan and worn with the edge fa ...

, a tool for look-development and lighting, originally from

Sony Pictures Imageworks Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. is a Canadian visual effects and computer animation studio headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with an additional office on the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California. SPI is a unit of Sony Pi ...

, was released in 2011. Hiero, a shot-management, conform, and review tool, was released in March 2012. The software was designed in-house by Foundry.

References

External links

Foundry.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foundry Visionmongers Software companies established in 1996 Visual effects companies Software companies based in London