This episode features an interview with members of the ILM vfx crew from “Transformers”.

The fxphd.com tip shows taking an aerial shot that was filmed from a light plane and turning the footage into the kind of smooth move you would expect from a helicopter with an expensive camera mount. This tip is done by fxphd professor and author Mark Christiansen in After Effects.

Visit the fxguidetv page for downloads and iTunes subscription links to both high resolution and iPhone/iPod formatted versions of the netcast.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced 10 winners of Scientific and Technical Academy Awards, which will be presented at The Beverly Wilshire on Saturday, February 9, 2008.

Unlike other Academy Awards, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not have been developed and introduced during 2007. Rather, the achievements must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures.

In addition, three Scientific and Technical Special Award recipients will be recognized at the black-tie awards dinner: David A. Grafton, who will receive the Gordon E. Sawyer Award; David S. Inglish, the John A. Bonner Award; and Jonathan Erland, the Award of Commendation.

List of the awards in the read more….
(more…)

Listen to the latest fxpodcast (see panel right) to hear our AVPR interview with the Directors, and also hear a preview of the new fxphd term.

John Montgomery visits Prime Focus in Mumbai to discuss post production in India and look at an award winning commercial produced there titled “Happy Dent Palace”. Jaynat Hadke and Sabu Joseph of Prime Focus are John’s guests and discuss the market, break down the spot and show other work.

The tip of the week shows tweaking settings to get the most out of Quicktime and Compressor. A recent background fundamentals class in this term of fxphd covered more quicktime tricks.

A new episode of fxguidetv is up which has interviews with Philippe Soeiro from Autodesk who talks about the new 2008 smoke and flame releases. We also speak with Matt Plec from the Foundry about what they were showing at IBC, which is a technology preview of the upcoming Nuke — complete with a brand new UI. Visit the fxguidetv page to download directly or subscribe in iTunes. We also have a new iPod/iPhone low-bandwidth version as well.

We also used the RED camera to photograph Angie in the studio. Sure, we compress it with H.264 and down res it signicantly. So why do it? Because we can. Not to mention the fact that it helps us develop the workflow for using the RED camera in production.

The latest episode of fxguidetv video netcast is on the air! All you need to do is click here to subscribe in iTunes>
fxguidetv episode #3 is out! This show contains a longer interview with Ken Ralston and Dennis Muren recorded at the VES Festival of Visual Effects. John Montgomery talks with them about their inspirations, the dangers of endlessly tweaking a shot, a book Dennis is working on and much more. If you are involved in visual effects you will enjoy hearing what these two industry icons have to say. Also Mike Seymour takes a look at shooting greenscreen with digital camera systems like the new Sony F23 Cine-Alta camera - part of a test shoot for fxphd.

fxpodcast wise (the audio variety) make sure you check out our Siggraph 2007 preview. fxguidetv will be at Siggraph in force bring you many updates, in this weeks fxpodcast we bring you a preview of the show including Paul Debevec’s paper picks! Also for the first time we snuck in a podcast with no feature story. This was part two covering Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer where Mike talked with VFX Supervisor for Hydraulx, Jake Morrison. One of the goals for the site redesign was to give us more flexibility and sometimes a podcast has come along where we just had little for the written story but that was the only way to get the podcast to you. If you are not a subscriber in iTunes you will always find the last two podcasts and latest fxguidetv episode in the fxpodcast + fxguidetv box on the home page.

And check out the new term course listing over at fxphd. The term has just started and there is a new orientation week video showing a look at how we bring this training to you. We have many classes including new ones on Flame, PFtrack, Nuke, and the Imagineer suite of tools like Mokey… much of the software is available to students using VPN licenses during the term. Also fxphd has its own podcast which gives you extra information about the courses and behind the scenes information, it can be found on the fxphd site and is also available in iTunes.

One of our postgrads says it best:

“fxPHD is the exact training community that I have been searching for. I say community because fxPHD is much more than just online training. With fxPHD, I get the specialized knowledge I need, feedback from industry pros, interaction with other students, content for my reel and all this from the comfort of my home. What more could you ask for? fxPHD rocks! “
Wes McDermott, United States

The latest episode of fxguidetv video netcast is on the air! All you need to do is click here to subscribe in iTunes or visit our fxguidetv page to download each episode.

Hi I am the host of fxguidetv, Angie Richards, and this week we again bring you the latest news, info and tech about not only the latest vfx effects, but also the tools used to make them. In this episode we interview key industry figures such as Ron Frankel, Ray McIntyre, Dennis Murren and others, in a follow up piece regarding the Variety Story we ran last week. We also include our fxphd tip, this week covering Photoshop CS3 and AE.

We hope you guys will enjoy this episode. Please use the new forums to let us know what you think and what you’d like to see. I also want to thank everyone who emailed after last week’s first episode.

On behalf of the fxguide crew - enjoy !

After almost a 100 audio podcasts (91 to be exact), fxguide is launching our video netcast: fxguidetv. All you need to do is click here to subscribe in iTunes or visit our fxguidetv page to download each episode.

This show is hosted by me, Angie Richards, and will bring you the latest news, info and tech about not only the latest vfx effects, but also the tools used to make them. For Each episode we will interview key industry figures in areas such as 3D, previz, compositing and more. We’ll also be including fxphd tips on key software such as After Effects, Photoshop, Nuke, Maya, Flame and many more.

We hope you guys will enjoy this new addition to the fx family of tips’n tricks, news, training and effects advice. Please use the new forums to let us know what you think and what you’d like to see. I also want to thank all the team behind the scenes for all the hard work in making the pilot, from wardrobe to editing - thanks crew!

On behalf of the fxguide crew - enjoy !

We’re happy to make our new fxguide site live this weekend — its been in the works for a while and the first hardware upgrade in five years. We have a new, higher bandwidth server in preparation for the release of our new video netcast fxguidetv. 

What have we changed? Quite a bit under the hood and we’re still working on things. We just wanted to get the site moved over to take advantage of the larger disks and higher bandwidth connections.

Feature Stories : This really isn’t a change, but this is what we’re calling the stories everyone has come to appreciate from the site. In-depth articles digging deeper than press releases. You can find the two most recent articles at the top of the home page in the white boxes. On the right hand side, there are picture links to other recent stories. Finally, we’ve improved our Stories Archive page — this is now called “Feature Stories” and is easily accessible via the navigation bar at the top of the site. The left column has our most recent articles, sorted by date from top to bottom. The middle column has older features you might have missed, but that we especially love. And finally, our most viewed articles are in the far right column.

fxguide Quick Takes : Sometimes we want to post a shorter news story that we found interesting, such as the minor release of some software — or maybe some site news and information. This is where you’ll find such items….and we made it much easier for us to post more frequently. This area will also include the fxNewswire press releases. We don’t plan on posting tons of press releases…just one’s we find might be of major interest to our readers.

fxForums : We’re upgrading our new forums to vbulletin, so we’ll have more features as well as a wider variety of discussion areas. You’ll be able to use the same username from the old site, but will have to update your password. Once we get the old forum messages transferred over (this will happen very soon), we’ll have instructions on how to do this. The New Posts button at the top of forums will show you posts since your last visit. We have used this forum engine for a while on fxphd and found it much improved. 

Faster Server : Our new server is much faster than the old one, with a faster connection to the net. While you might not notice it on a daily basis, this will allow us to serve our podcasts and video much better to more users.

Hope you enjoy…the code should be leaner and lighter as well.

John, Jeff, and Mike
(more…)