We’re big fans of the Cineon/DPX tools here at fxguide and are looking forward to the improvements in the new version, set to be released at NAB 2008 in April. The new version will include Cineon and DPX Sequence Presets along with a full Cineon or DPX Codec. The combination of these two features now completely eliminates the need to render your sequences in Final Cut Pro’s timeline. No more red render bar. There’s also support for Compressor 3.

Glue Tools has also released v2.5.12a of its Cineon and DPX QuickTime Components for Filmmakers.  This is largely a bugfix release, which should address any  issues discovered since the last release. This is to be the last update of v2.5 before the release of v3.0 at NAB 2008. This upgrade is free to existing 2.5.x owners.

Click through to read more features, as well as pricing and upgrade info…..
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The Golden Compass….Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood

Congratulations to the winners of the Best Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar this year. The crew also won the Special Visual Effects category at the BAFTA awards earlier this month.

“(The) four people standing up here represent over a thousand artists so, it’s kind of a strange award,” acknowledged Westenhofer backstage at the Oscars. “It’s not like best actor. We have hundreds and hundreds of people working with us…I would like to say it was a fantastic team effort on all their parts. I represented the mechanical effects side and a lot of the work that we do you don’t even see on the screen. There’s a lot of rigs and everything built to support some of the animation that’s done….by these guys here (the other winners). And I’m really, really pleased.”

Congratulations to the other nominees as well: Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier for Tranformers and John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and John Frazier for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

The Foundry announced that the much-anticipated Nuke 5.0 was released today. The version is a major release featuring a new user interface, 3D stereoscopic workflow, Python scripting, and a number of additional features and enhancements. Nuke 5.0v1 is available to all customers with current support contracts and anyone with a valid evaluation license. You will not need a new license key to run Nuke 5.0v1.

Click through to read some of the key new features listed in the press release….
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Autodesk announced today that developers of its Autodesk Maya Fluid Effects System have been awarded Technical Achievement Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Maya Fluid Effects System allows digital artists to create realistic animation of liquids and gases, using novel simulation techniques for accuracy and speed, as well as a unique scripting language for working with volumetric data.
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The 6th Annual VES Awards were held on Feb. 10, 2008 at the Kodak Theatre Grand Ballroom in Hollywood by the Visual Effects Society. Dennis Muren presented Steven Spielberg with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award. This award recognizes the contribution that his vast body of work, as both a director and producer, has made to the art and science of visual effects. Nominees were chosen Saturday, January 5, 2008 by panels of VES members who viewed submissions at the FotoKem screening facilities in Burbank.

The winners of the 6th Annual VES Awards are:
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An article at TV Technology.com spills the beans that Apple will not be having a booth at NAB this year. This follows an announcement in November last year by Avid that they weren’t going to be having a booth in Vegas.

Apple has been missing from the list of NAB 2008 exhibitors, so this news doesn’t come as a huge surprise, especially after Avid’s decision. Trade shows are extraordinarily expensive for exhibitors — booth space, travel and hotels for employees, insurance, and more add up to a huge bill. In recent years, other manufacturers such as Autodesk have reduced the size of their presence at major tradeshows such as NAB and IBC. The internet provides a great way of disseminating information — and even local user group meetings provide a more personal interaction with artists.

One can hope they invest the money in software developers — fixing bugs (see our QuickTime article above) and bringing new features to market.

Nuke 4.8v1 is now available to download from The Foundry web site. Nuke 4.8v1 includes several feature enhancements, increased stability, and numerous bug fixes. With Nuke 5.0 on the horizon, The Foundry is releasing Nuke 4.8v1 for customers with projects in progress who choose not to upgrade to Nuke 5.0 until their projects have completed. The features and fixes in Nuke 4.8v1 will also be included in Nuke 5.0, when released.

Click through to read more about the changes as well as important information for Furnace, Tinder, or Keylight plugin artists using Nuke.
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