Furnace 4.0v4 is now shipping. This is a bug fix update recommended for all users. The 4.0 major release, which included a new motion estimation engine, new plug-ins, speed ups and simplification of some of the controls that have baffled many. Motion vectors can be generated offline then used as inputs while compositing, and on-screen tools have been improved. See the Release Notes for details.

Furnace, developed in conjunction with some of the world's leading post facilities, is an advanced collection of plug-in tools designed to tackle everyday compositing tasks. Many of the plug-ins automate time-consuming processes in the creation of digital visual effects.

Furnace is the culmination of over seven years' research into advanced image processing algorithms, notably motion estimation technology. In February 2007 The Foundry's development team was honoured with a Scientific and Technical Academy Award® for their work on Furnace.

There are 40 advanced image processing tools in Furnace 4. Plug-ins include noise and grain removal tools, a revolutionary plug-in to remove motion blur, a multi-point tracker, intelligent plug-ins that utilises our advanced motion estimation technology to automatically extract both motion mattes and depth mattes. Also included are tools to re-align colour channels, add motion blur, perform automatic colour matching and more.

Shake 4.10 on Mac OS X (universal binary) and Linux are supported. Furnace 4 is licensed using Foundry FLEXlm Tools.

Furnace (3.0v4) for Shake 4.0 is no longer actively developed and will not be supported from November 2009.