This past Saturday the Visual Effects Society held their annual meeting in Hollywood. Scott Squires has written up a nice summary of the meeting on his blog. I know the words “Annual Meeting” tend to make one think of a boring affair but I think you will find the speakers brought up many of the big issues of the day. To encourage you to read the entire blog post let me quote one small passage:

Bill Taylor was awarded the VES Board of Director’s Founder’s award.
Bill talked about many things including:
1. Keeping production local
2. Having a visual effects trade organization for visual effects companies.
3. Having a visual effects union.

Head over and read the entire post on Scott’s blog.

Making the rounds on YouTube today is a video featuring the flame user interface as a music video. To view the video click the read more…
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In this week’s fxpodcast we discuss linear workflow. We geek out with 3D guru Master Zap of Mental Images about linear compositing workflow: separating fact from fiction, and discuss just how viable it is to set up a correct linear pipeline.

Why is linear compositing valuable?

Feature film compositing is nearly always ‘linear’ ironically – given the files are normally log ( ! ) but in the world of video and HD often multipass compositing and compositing is often done incorrectly leading to a series of hacks, fudges, and workarounds to make images look right.  Zap and Mike discuss the issue and flag ways to set up a correct pipeline.

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

Our latest fxguidetv covers news and items from IBC in Amsterdam earlier this month. We speak with the folks at Blackmagic about the daVinci acquisition, check out a tech demo of realtime Nvidia GPU processing of filters in Adobe Premiere, drop by The Foundry booth to see an interesting application of their upcoming tech in Nuke X, and more.

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

Over the last year, we have been following the story of the group of visual effects artists who worked on the film Journey to the Center of the Earth for Meteor Studios (see here and here). These artists were not paid for their months of work when Meteor Studios folded. Over the last year, the group was offered several low ball settlements which were subsequently rejected, but they have now voted to accept a 70% payment of what they are owed.

What follows after the jump is a communication between Dave Rand, the leader of the group, and the Canadian Commission des Normes du Travail. As Dave points out in his letter, this is a case that hopefully will be followed and remembered by all visual effects artists. We hope to do more about this story and some of the issues in coming months.
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Posting work online has become such a common and crucial part of workflow and we often take it for granted. In this fxpodcast we talk with Andreas Wacker of INTERDUBS, a company that provides hosting of clips for review and approval for over eighty post production and production companies. This large client base gives Andreas the ability to look at the state of posting your work from a unique view.

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

After the jump are some images from the INTERDUBS interface, links to demos on the site, as well as the discussion forum link where we ask for your perspective on the current state of the business.
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We have new episodes of fxguidetv English and Spanish.

In fxguidetv #67, Angie and the team talk to Chris Bond and Chris Harvey of Prime Focus about GI Joe and workflow. (also see our feature written story this week)

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

In fxguidetv en español,  María Castelló gives a rundown of the cool things at Siggraph this year. En el segundo episodio de fxguidetv en español, resumimos los mejor del Siggraph.

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

Today the Primetime Creative Arts Awards were presented at a ceremony at the NOKIA Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. The show, hosted by Kathy Griffin, will be televised on September 18th at 1:00 p.m (ET/PT) on E! Entertainment Television.

A list of the winners for selected categories follows the read more:

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In this week’s fxpodcast we trip out with Mr X – and their visual effects for Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock. This comedy required the visual effects team to visualize an acid trip, make the world become a rolling ocean and show the centre of the universe.

In a fun and technical discussion Mike Seymour talks to VFX supervisor Brendan Taylor who led a team of 45 artists at the Mr. X facilities in Toronto and Montreal over a period of eight months, delivering 138 shots on the project.

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

ibc begins on Friday in Amsterdam and we’ll be covering the conference via fxguidetv as we have for the last several years. To start out the show, our first episode covers the new extension releases from Autodesk for flame and smoke. We traveled up to Montreal before this week to get the scoop on the new releases from Philippe Soeiro, product designer for the effects and finishing products.

Highlights of the release include new 3D text presets, more particle presets, a new procedural texture generator called “Substance” (flame/inferno only), improved R3D support, a new audio tracker to generate keyframes for animation, and more.

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

While the entire episode is devoted to the new releases, we had to cut material for time — so if you’re interested you can download the full length interviews by clicking on the “Read More” link.
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