After a hugely successful three year run, we’re taking a break from doing fxguide live at NAB in order to cover the convention for all of our readers who can’t make it to Vegas. With no fxguide event at NAB this year, Autodesk took over and is holding their own style of smoke and flame master classes at NAB on April 23rd. In this week’s podcast, we speak with Jake Parker and Michael Ruzicka — two of the artists who will be presenting at this year’s event
The fxguide crew spent several months this winter figuring out how to best reach more people with news and training from the huge NAB conference in April. We decided that online would be the best place to do so since our readership has so dramatically expanded around the world. This meant that even though we’d had a blast doing the live events in Vegas and still obviously love our flames and smokes, we couldn’t devote the months of prep it takes to put on a show like fxguide live and still provide high level coverage from Las Vegas.
“When we learned that fxguide wouldn’t be hosting an event at NAB 2006,” says Autodesk Senior Trainer Jeremy Kerr, “we knew this would leave a very big hole at the show. fxguide has become ‘the’ resource for compositors, visual artists, and the post-production industry around the world and their partnership with Autodesk Media and Entertainment over the past years has been invaluable.”
Autodesk, however, decided to fill the void by holding their own master classes at NAB this year on Sunday April 23rd url(http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&pl=&eventId=30927,[register for the master classes]). There will be two two-hour sessions: flame from 10:30 to 12:30pm and smoke from 1:30 to 3:30pm. These will be held before the Autodesk user group meeting url(http://i.nl03.net/ltr0/?_m=1n.00fh.1.00seed0019.4,[register for the user group meeting]) Autodesk has enlisted the help of several artists to share their knowledge with attendees. For the flame session, Jake Parker, senior Inferno Artist at Crash and Sue’s in Minneapolis, will be dissecting a commercial he worked on which includes camera tracking and expressions. Jake has been a longtime flame user and at fxguide we consider him to be one of the legends of flame-news. Philippe Soeiro, formerly of Éclair Laboratoires in Paris and now working for Autodesk in Montreal, will be sharing a first look at some future technology during the effects session.
For the smoke session, CE Raum, of R!OT Atlanta — who has contributed tips to fxguide.com in the past — will be demonstrating how to push smoke’s 3D capabilities. Raum has applied his talents to commercials for national brands such as Cingular, Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola as well as promos for TBS, TNT and CNN. Joining Raum will be past fxguide live presenter Michael Ruzicka who wil cover building and animating a sports open and graphics package from still images as well as sharing some advanced techniques. Among Michael’s many credits and distinctions in the industry are an American Advertising Award and several BDA and Promax Awards
“fxguide has set the standard for advanced-level artist sessions,” says Kerr, “and we examined their model very closely when building our Master seminars for NAB 2006.” For details about the event, the bottom of the story has a rundown provided by Autodesk about what will be covered during the sessions.
Registration for the event is $150 US ($115 US early bird discount before April 1st) and includes a 40% discount on Fire 7.0 and Smoke 7.0 courseware manual, a 20% discount on classroom training, and a training tutorials DVD. There will also be 1 classroom seat and 1 full courseware package given away per session.
For information about the event, email [email protected] or register for the event
Class Descriptions
flame tips and tricks
Part 1 – Jake Parker
Jake Parker, a senior Inferno Artist at Crash and Sue’s in Minneapolis will deconstruct a typical ad campaign he worked on which presented some not-so-typical challenges. The spot, which involved integration of keyed elements and particles into a virtual environment required modifying his “CameraDad†technique to ensure realistic tracking of particles in a 3D scene while still manipulating the camera and maintaining control of the depth-of-field. Jake will walk you through how he took full advantage of flame’s advanced 3D tracking, expressions and particle systems for some very creative solutions.
Part 2 – Philippe Soeiro
Philippe Soeiro, Customer Solutions Manager and Workflow Architect for Autodesk Media and Entertainment, will provide you with the first sneak-peak into upcoming features for future releases of inferno, flame and flint. Philippe, a well known and well respected expert in the industry joined Autodesk in November of 2005 from Éclair Laboratoires in Paris where he was the Artistic Director for 8 years.
Philippe will highlight feature improvements in recent releases, and will give you an ‘insider’s view†of how he is driving the products into an even more consistent and productive data-centric workflow model.
smoke tips and tricks
Part 1 – Michael Ruzicka
Michael Ruzicka, the post production manager for CBS Corporate/Boston, will highlight the speed and flexibility of smoke in fast-paced, changing environments.
Some of the topics he will cover include building and animating a sports open and graphics package from still images, using consistent color treatments to turn poor-quality video into dramatic images, and advanced keying, tracking and stabilizing techniques.
Part 2 – CE Raum
CE Raum, a senior smoke artist at R!OT Atlanta, will show you how to push smoke’s 3D capabilities to the extreme. You will see him create an entire 3D “winter wonderland†scene from a single stock image as well as see his techniques to clone and animate people to create a fuller set. CE will also cover advanced “day-for-night†workflows and as an added bonus he will detail how to export RAW animation to Excel in order to obtain “expression-like†control in smoke.
