We announced our new July 08 term over at fxphd today and have a line up of 29 courses this term — including a record 15 new courses. This includes a new advanced DOP course covering RED, a miniatures and stop motion course, an advanced After Effects offering with some serious compositing and graphics, and more.

Registration is now open at the site and first class downloads begin on July 14th. Visit fxphd.com more more details….

In this week’s Red Centre the guys finally talk about build 16 and explain both the immediate benefit of the new version and also explain some of the the theory behind the improvements. Plus News, Reviews and the Red Room. 

If you haven’t already, subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes podcast on our redcentre page. 

Click through for a summary of the Red Build 16 improvements, including the difference between the new RedSpace and and RedFlex colourspaces.
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In this fxpodcast we talk with Chris Sage, VP of operations at Luma Pictures, an artist driven facility in Venice California that does high end visual effects.

From time to time we like to do facility profiles rather than stories about specific films or techniques. Luma Pictures initially caught our attention because they promoted themselves as a primarily Mac based facility. We discuss this as well as their work, pipeline and tools.

To hear the podcast or subscribe to it via RSS or iTunes, click on Podcasts. You can also search for fxguide in the iTunes Store.

Show notes, images and links after the jump….
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This episode the guys chat with Cinematographer Geoff Boyle, founder of the Cinematography Mailing List,  about his recent stereo 3D RED feature film. They also chat about lighting and introduce their first guest into… The RED Room. 

All this and the winner of last week’s quiz in the “Pimp My RED” competition.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes podcast on our redcentre page. We also now have downloadable shownotes in pdf format available on the redcentre page with photos from Geoff of his stereo 3D RED rig.

REALVIZ was a unique company, one of the first to solve and commercialize a range of outstanding visual effects tools ranging from panoramic Stitching to 3D Tracking. The fxguide founders actually visited REALVIZ about 2 years ago in its location just outside of Cannes, France. This visit cemented our opinion about the quality of the team and depth of their image research and development. The company’s contribution to the visual effects industry has been enormous, thus their future is of great importance to many in the industry.

The purchase of REALVIZ by Autodesk initially received some bad press – perhaps due to the online suspension of purchases via their website, or perhaps because of discussions suggesting a reduced product line. As reports have widely speculated about the future of these French developers, we approached Autodesk directly to set the record straight: would the French R&D team be leaving, would the original founders be moving on, and just what could we expect from the company formerly known as REALVIZ?

fxguide spoke with Marc Petit, SVP, of Autodesk Media & Entertainment about the the deal….

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This week we talk to Michael Rubin about his book DroidMAKER: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution. While the book is very much the history of Lucasfilm, it doubles as a history of the computer graphics industry. From ILM to Pixar, Alvy Ray Smith to Brad Bird, and from Francis Ford Coppola to Steve Jobs, the book shows the inter twinning of the computer graphics industry and the Hollywood blockbusters of the last 3 decades.

We discuss both the book and ask Rubin to name the four most significant turning points of each of the last four decades. Rubin got unparalleled access for the book and today he is the premier historian of the period. His knowledge, insight and first hand experience results in a fascinating discussion and perspective on a time and group of people that have shaped the entire industry as it stands today.

To hear the podcast or subscribe to it via RSS or iTunes, click on Podcasts. You can also search for fxguide in the iTunes Store.

The Visual Effects Society (VES) has published the first ever set of VES guidelines for titles in the visual effects industry. The list has been vetted by VES members and ratified by the VES Board of Directors. Major studios have reviewed the list as well and are encouraged to utilize it.

“Through these collective efforts, a harmonized master list of titles has been created that should be useful as a touchstone for all effects stakeholders,” says VES Executive Director, Eric Roth. “We think it represents a major step forward for our craft in standardizing the use of titles in the credits process for effects artists.”

Credits/Titles to be submitted in accordance with VES Guidelines are after the jump:
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We’ve got one of the new Autodesk HP xw8600 systems fired up at the fxphd loft in Chicago. The new systems started shipping last month and we got it quickly up and running and paying the bills. But before we shut down our old IBM6217 system, we took the time to run our fxguide suite of benchmarks so we had something to which we could compare the new system. In our results, we’ve also included results from our old school original Onyx 2 system, which was running Inferno version 5.3. The new xw8600 was from 1.1 to over 2 times faster than the 6217 on our benchmark test.

The new systems ship with dual Quad Core Intel Xeon processors, a Quadro FX 5600 card with SDI daughter card, and a Lucid 88192 D/A converter. Gone is any need for a DVI ramp, as the broadcast monitor is fed directly from the FX5600 daughter card. The VTR feed (or dual 4:4:4) feed is fed from the AJA 2K OEM board breakout box.

For more details about the system, as well as surprising results that include the fact the Onyx2 still comes out on top on one of the tests, click through for the rest of the story.

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