So in an unexpected move, The Foundry announced today that it has acquired Made With Mischief. Mischief, of course was a sketching application that popped up some time ago but never really went anywhere. So why is this important?
First, the technology the application uses is actually rooted in 3d. The use and application of ADF can be used in a variety ways, including 3d painting and even sculpting.
Following this acquisition, Brad Peebler hired some feelance programmers to play with the tech. One of them is the guy behind the fluid simulation painting application, Verve.
Whether or not this changes the game or not in regards to content creation is to be seen, but its worth following.
This is a link to an indepth article (with videos) regarding ADF and its uses as well as the Foundry Mischief acquisition.
Side note, Mischief is now officially the cheapest foundry product on the market…it will break your bank for only $25.
FAQ – The Foundry and Made With Mischief
What are you announcing?
We’re excited to announce we’ve acquired Made With Mischief, founded by Sarah Frisken. With Made With Mischief, we’re ideally positioned to extend The Foundry’s presence into a new market with engaging, easy-to-use offerings for creative people.
Its flagship product, Mischief, is a unique pen-based application for Mac and Windows. Mischief’s sophisticated core technology and clean, elegant interface make it both powerful and simple to use, ideal for professionals and creative hobbyists alike.
Key to its underlying technology is revolutionary patented shape representation, known as Adaptively Sampled Distance Fields (ADFs), which Frisken co-invented. ADFs have several advantages for creative applications: they provide high-quality stroke rendering; they are amenable to hardware-based rendering so drawing is extremely responsive; they are very compact, resulting in small file sizes; they can be scaled without introducing pixelation artifacts; and they can accurately represent much richer and more complex shapes than traditional vector-based stroke representations.
How does this fit with The Foundry growth strategy?
Our strategy has always been to enter into the broader creative market once we had the right technology and products. Therefore, the benefits of this acquisition are two-fold. First, Mischief allows us to immediately establish a legitimate presence in the market with an inspiring offering.
Second, Mischief’s powerful new technology has massive potential to impact future creative solutions. As we work to enhance the current Mischief platform, we’ll identify ways in which we can incorporate relevant Mischief technology into solutions for design, visual effects and games.
How will Made With Mischief fit within The Foundry organization? It seems very different from your typical customer/product?
Made With Mischief will remain a stand-alone entity with a unique value proposition for creative people. While it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of The Foundry, we’ve made a conscious decision to preserve its Mischief brand and independent website to make it easy for people to engage with Mischief.
While the customers and product are new, the process by which we’re bringing Mischief to market mirror our past success. We’ve commercialized solutions that have become pivotal to the creative process at studios like Dreamworks, Pixar, ILM. We’re now applying that same expertise to deliver a relevant offering to creatives with Mischief.
At the same time, we’ve already begun researching ways in which our collective technologies strengthen future product development for both The Foundry and Made With Mischief. Therefore, we’ll see benefits for all our customers, while still remaining true to the qualities for which each brand is known.