To learn more about Flame, we sat down with Will Harris, Flame family product manager at Autodesk, to get his take on top industry trends, the biggest challenges faced by Autodesk’s customers, and the demo we’ll see in the Quantum booth.
Quantum: Tell us about Autodesk, and more specifically, about Autodesk Flame and its top differentiated features.
Harris: Autodesk provides software and services to the manufacturing, architecture, and media and entertainment industries. Our Flame system has been a leading visual effects (VFX) software platform for more than 20 years now and provides tools for fast, interactive 3D VFX, finishing, compositing, graphics, color grading, and more. It’s used for blockbuster feature films, TV series, commercials, music videos, VR experiences—you name it.
Quantum: What’s your role at Autodesk and some of your relevant industry experience?
Harris: I’m the product manager for the Flame family, which includes Flame, Lustre, Flare, Flame Assist, and Smoke. I have a post-production background as an artist and technical specialist in Los Angeles and London, at places like Company 3 and Framestore.

Quantum: What are the top trends you’re currently seeing in the industry?
Harris: 4K is here. 8K is coming for some, and many projects are being produced with high-dynamic-range (HDR) displays in mind. Our customers want to achieve more and more in less time!
Quantum: What are the biggest challenges your customers are facing?
Harris: Not including an amazing post-production software solution like Flame, our customers need a robust hardware infrastructure to enable the quality and scale of projects they are required to achieve. High-performance, scalable shared storage is an essential part of that.
Quantum: What future trends should your customers start preparing for now?
Harris: They need to be ready for the complex challenges of larger projects, more people working together, with more and more assets to track and store—in addition, HDR/wide color gamut content delivery.
Quantum: Tell us about Autodesk’s demos at IBC2017 and what you’re most excited about seeing.
Harris: One of our Flame superstars—Alex Arce from New York City—will be doing demos at the Quantum booth. Alex is a talented motion graphics, 3D, and VFX compositing artist. He’ll be showing our latest version of Flame, the 2018.2 update.
To learn more about Autodesk Flame and how our joint partnership enables the most demanding media and entertainment workflows, download and read the joint solution brief—and check out the demo of Autodesk Flame at the Quantum booth at IBC2017.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]