Wow! I didn’t see that acquisition coming.
Email from Russ…
Greetings, valued SynthEyes customer,
Today’s email brings big news: SynthEyes is moving to Boris FX! It’s been 20 years since SynthEyes started solving shots for customers around the globe. Since that time, both SynthEyes’s feature set and its audience have expanded dramatically. I’ve been honored by, and grateful for, the loyal support that made that growth possible. SynthEyes now graduates from a boutique to the larger home befitting an industry-wide application.
You may already be familiar with Boris FX, as many customers use both SynthEyes and Boris FX tools. (Thanks for your kind words about SynthEyes to the Boris FX team.) Boris FX has strong development teams renowned for Mocha Pro, Sapphire, Silhouette, and Continuum, and brings more resources for support, training, tutorials, and web presence. Those resources will free more time for SynthEyes development under my guidance. SynthEyes will continue its focus on heavy-duty pro tracking, with the high performance and flexibility it is famous for.
Boris FX’s strong relationships with other leading visual effects tool providers will complement and enhance SynthEyes’s already outstanding exporter support.
You can read more in the Boris FX press release or blog post.
Thanks for your support. I look forward to seeing you at Boris FX.
Regards,
Russ Andersson
Andersson Technologies LLC/Boris FX
Nice. Our BorisFX subscription got some extra value…
Maybe that also finally makes the licensing process more straight forward and modern 
I hope Russ got a ton of money, and I hope that Boris doesn’t fuck with the very reasonable pricing of Syntheyes.
Worst case, I still own Syntheyes as it presently exists.
And with any luck we’ll be able to use it as a quasi-OFX plugin like we can with Mocha.
Hope this will get us a more friendly UI and licensing process!
Having gone through this journey with Silhouette when BorisFX acquired them, don’t hold your breath.
I had a perpetual Si license from pre-BorisFX. To keep currenlty with Si, you have to pay the same subscription as everyone else. I don’t remember if I got a discount the first year, but if I did, it wasn’t much. At least SynthEyes is relatively cheap as is…
But overall, that puts a lot of tracker knowledge into one team, which is a big plus. The Mocha planar trackers, the Si point and planar trackers, and now the SynthEyes 3D trackers, texture extraction, etc.
Not many other places that have such a diverse set of industry leading tracking technology.
Having it as OFX would be amazing, hope Boris is aiming to do that. like they did with the rest.
but the current pre-boris syntheyes release should remain functional in perpetuity, no?
(this is all probably answered in one of the press releases, but I’m lazy. haha.)
In theory yes. As was Si. But BorisFX does a lot of work on the products quickly, so by staying with the old version you tend to lose out (such as OFX integration, data format transfer, etc.), not to speak of OS compatibility, particularly on MacOS because Apple insists on a fresh meal once a year.
very true.
If you are a current BorisFX Suite subscriber, it may come out as a wash. The SynthEyes renewals were $125 (I just did mine 2 weeks ago). Unless BorisFX raises the price of the suite, which they might, but then look at the whole package and inflation, etc.
Hello all!
Excited about the SynthEyes merger- it happened very fast! More than happy to answer any questions you have to the best of my ability. Having Russ on board has been amazing already, lots of great mind share going on with the development teams.
Making SynthEyes into an OFX plugin sounds like a really smart idea! 
I depend on syntheyes, so I’m torn.
On one hand, I don’t have to worry that if something bad happens to Russ (god forbid), that syntheyes will not continue. On the other hand, yeah, I hope it doesn’t get screwed up, or become cost prohibitive.
But maybe the joke’s on Boris FX - That codebase is decades old - and completely written by one person (if I’m not mistaken)… so it’s extremely personal, and likely very idiosyncratic. Imagine what the code’s comments are like.
If the source code is as wacky as the syntheyes docs, it’s gonna be a while before any major changes will happen, while they untangle it.
Slightly tangent but related. I’m intrigued to see where Sillhouette ends up, especially if you have tools like Mocha Pro and Syntheyes built into it. I’ve never played with it to see what the compositing tools are like but it is Primatte built into it and is already the best roto and paint tool on the market…
I’m wondering if it could end up being a competitor to Nuke as a one shot compositing tool?
Boris or not, if anything happens to Russ, SynthEyes will not be the same. I LOVE SynthEyes and don’t hate this move. Russ has to step down at some point (hopefully not soon, guy is brilliant), but at least there’s a handoff procedure that can happen over time. I also like that a VFX company bought SynthEyes. Remember what happened to Boujou or Shake?
Worst case scenario, SynthEyes in it’s present form will be usable for a very long time.
Russ deserves a fat payout for pioneering one of the best 3D trackers ever made, by himself. I’m always in awe of that guy.
There are multiple tools that have nibbled at Nuke’s heels. And depending on what you need, they may in fact be more affordable and practical alternatives. Silhouette is a node based compositor with a rich set of nodes. But it’s no real threat to Nuke when it comes to larger project. For one thing, it has no 3D image functionality, and no-where near the depth of Nuke. Fusion for that matter may be closer, and is also affordable (essentially free), but won’t be a Nuke killer either.
If you just need to comp a shot onto another with some basic node tree, and maybe a GS key, yes, each of them can accomplish this. But there are still limitations.
If Silhouette is any indication, their folks have stuck around and are actively involved. This is often even a requirement of the acquisition. So short-term I don’t think this has to be a worry.
Exactly. Boris is a good company to buy SynthEyes. Apple and Vicon let Shake and Boujou die.
Yep… Marco and Paul are great, and they turned around a bug fix in less than 24 hours just yesterday in regards to a specific Silhoutte/Flame thing.