Brideshead Revisited,” Miramax Films’ recently released feature adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel, is peppered with seamless invisible visual effects created by CIS London. Working closely with the film’s director, Julian Jarrold, visual effects supervisor Adam Gascoyne oversaw the challenging subtleties that were essential in bringing Jarrold’s version of the classic story to life.

fxguide spoke to the vfx artist in London.
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A new episode of fxguidetv is up today, with more from last week’s SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles. Motion capture seemed to take center stage on the exhibition floor this year, and we cover it from two angles. First, Jeff Heusser visits House of Moves in Los Angeles to see real-world applications of motion tracking technology. Then, Mike Seymour stops by the Organic Motion booth to check out their markerless tracking technology.

To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link. Visit the fxguidetv page for the direct RSS feed links.

In this our first netcast from Siggraph we follow up on last week’s netcast with Paul Debevec. We speak to the team at Image Metrics about the facial animation of Emily. In an interview with the real actress she herself did not believe the animation was not just footage of her. This could represent the bridge to the other side of the uncanny divide of unnatural facial animation.

fxguidetv will be netcasting multiple episodes this week from SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles. To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe via this link. Visit the fxguidetv page for the direct RSS feed links.

At Siggraph fxguide/fxphd hosted a roof top party. Recorded live at the event is this week’s fxguide podcast simulcast with fxphdod. The event was great fun and the combined knowledge of all the attendees made the podcast both a lot of fun and vaguely informative ! Thanks so much to everyone who attended - it was great to see you there and watch the sunset over Los Angeles.

guidetv will be netcasting multiple episodes from SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles. To be notified automatically and have the episodes downloaded in iTunes, subscribe.

MAXON Computer introduced a new version of their flagship CINEMA 4D product at SIGGRAPH this week. The tool has long been a favorite of motion graphics professionals and is also used in numerous other applications. A number of huge new features have been added to the software, including built-in support for Pixar’s Renderman, a new global illumination model, improvements to the texture painting-focused BodyPaint 3D, 64-bit on OSX, and more.

Click through for the full press release from Maxon….

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After last night’s user group meeting at SIGGRAPH 2008, Autodesk today announced new versions of several of their products. Several of the programs, such as Maya and Toxik, include new tools for stereoscopic pipelines.

We’ve pulled highlights from the press releases and will be covering this further as well as other news from Los Angeles. For updates from the show, subscribe to our twitter feeds: mikeseymour and johnmontfx — we’ll be highlighting cool things we see when wandering the halls.

Click through for highlights from the Autodesk press releases….
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Massive announced today that they’re shipping the new 3.5 version of their software.

New Agent Fields handle local interactions between large numbers of agents for such things as collision avoidance, pedestrian visualization and flocking. Users can define an area, or field, around an agent in which another agent’s proximity, orientation, velocity, direction and color can be assessed.

There is also improved hair and dynamics support in the new version with increased control of hair with a guide hair shape constraint that can be used to get hair to keep to a user-defined shape or hairstyle.

Click through for the press release…..

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If any event could challenge the Super Bowl for outstanding TV advertising it is the Olympics. This week saw a round of amazing and arresting new spots hit the airwaves. A spot that really caught our attention is an amazing United Airlines Sea Orchestra spot, one of five major spots that will be shown during the Olympics.

Created by artists from around the world, including South Africa and India, each of the six spots paints a picture of optimism and exploration using unique artistic forms such as shed bird feathers, coloured sand and plastic modeling clay on glass. Musical scores of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue were performed by members of the L.A. Philharmonic Symphony and in one of the ads, Grammy award-winning American jazz legend, Herbie Hancock, and the classical world-renowned Chinese concert pianist, Lang Lang, who is performing live during the opening ceremonies, played a piano duet. The voiceover tag line is read by Robert Redford.

To see the spot click read more below.

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eyeon announced a new version of their flagship composting product Fusion today, which gets a bump to version 6. The release joins the stereoscopic compositing crowd with integrated compositing and viewing. They also have put time into improving their 3D system with a new 3D Open GL renderer, environment mapping, bump maps and more.

We’ll be talking to eyeon next week at SIGGRAPH, but in the meantime, click through for the press release…..

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Many readers will know Richard Szalwinski as one of the founders of Discreet Logic. After having left Discreet a while ago, Richard and a few other ex Discreet friends such as Mike Hughes have surfaced at a new company called Xtranormal. The company produces visualization software based on natural speech and produces simple 3D video animations. In its simplest form it will allow socal networkers to make 3D animations from simple normal english scripts. In its most advanced form it holds the promise of blocking and previz for ‘the rest of us”. Keen to see what creative professionals can do with the software, and to offer a glimpse at the technology roadmap, Xtranormal will be at Siggraph in a whisper suite.

A short interview with Mike Hughes and information on how to make an appointment at Siggraph can be found after the jump.
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