fxguidetv #31 from SIGGRAPH
In this episode we continue our Siggraph 2008 coverage from Los Angeles. We look at what Autodesk is doing with Stereoscopic, get the scoop on the latest developments in Fusion, and have some fun in the New Technology area.
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Siggraph Day Four and Five
We visit the job fair, catch up with Eyeon, Pixel Farm, check out some new fast hardware from Sony and Texas Memory Systems and discuss the FJORG! winning entry.
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fxguidetv #30 @ SIGGRAPH : fake or real?
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 […]
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fxpodcast online: SIGGRAPH barcamp
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 […]
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Siggraph Day Two and Three
With the trade show now open and the event fully under way we do a quick survey of cool events and tech on the Tuesday and Wednesday of this years Siggraph. Today we focus on XSI, Massive, C4D, RealFlow, coffee and the great Stan Winston.
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New CINEMA 4D R11 announced at SIGGRAPH
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 […]
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Siggraph Day One
Siggraph opened on Monday. On day one, highlights included the conference keynote from Ed Catmull (Pixar), Nuke and Autodesk User groups, new software from Maya, Renderman, Motion Builder and some great technical papers – and Fjorg started.
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Autodesk Announcements @ SIGGRAPH
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. […]
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Massive 3.5 Released at SIGGRAPH
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.
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If you thought the Superbowl ads were good…
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 […]
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fxpodcast: DI on Journey to The Center of the Earth
In our last fxpodcast we interviewed Dave Rand about the artists who went unpaid by Meteor Studios after working on Journey to the Center of the Earth. This week we take a break from that Labor Series and focus on the technology in the film and in particular doing DI on a stereoscopic film. Our […]
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eyeon To Show Fusion 6 At SIGGRAPH 2008
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 […]
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New at Siggraph – Xtranormal
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 […]
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fxguidetv #029 Posted
fxguidetv is back this week with a special pre-SIGGRAPH episode. Mike Seymour recently sat down with Paul Debevec to catch up on the research Debevec and his team have been doing. It’s very interesting stuff, including a cool discussion about separating the specular and subsurface properties of skin and how it relates to creating high […]
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Red Giant Software Acquires Digital Anarchy Plug-Ins
Red Giant, one of our favorite plugin vendors, has acquired the motion plugin portfolio of Digital Anarchy. The plugins include PlaneSpace (formerly 3D Assistant Lite/Pro), a 3D layer animation tool; Datamator (formerly Data Animator), which creates and animates charts and graphs in 3D space; Psunami (formerly Psunami Water), a photorealistic water and wave generator; ToonIt (formerly […]
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red centre #011r posted
A revised Red Centre Episode #011 is up – we had some killer server issues this week, but it is all solved and we are sorry for the delay. This week we discuss workflow from a personal point of view. We discuss Jason’s recent baby TVC spot – which was shot all on RED. We […]
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Labor Series Part One: Unpaid Artists
In part one of a new series on Labor issues we talk with Dave Rand who has taken on the role as spokeperson for about 100 artists who worked on a film in Canada at Meteor Studios who were not paid for the last few months of work as the company filed bankruptcy. This is an important story and a great conversation about the state of visual effects as a business.
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fxguidetv is back!
After an early summer hiatus, fxguidetv is back on the net. We haven’t abandoned the podcast, but simply had a lot of other work to get done as well had a couple of interviews back out. We know our fxguide visitors love the netcasts and we simply want to keep them at a high level. […]
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Dark Knight : Imax, Effects and That Bike
The Dark Knight is a masterful film. There are brilliant performances, great direction and some magnificent visual effects. This week we cover lead facility Double Negative about their impressive IMAX batpod shots and how their work fits so seamlessly into this powerful dark masterpiece.
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60th Primetime Emmy Awards Nominations
Early this morning Kristin Chenoweth (“Pushing Daisies”) and Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”) announced the 60th Primetime Emmy® Awards Nominations at the Academy’s Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood. We have the visual effects nominees after jump as well as a link to a complete list of nominees.
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The Animation Guild Blog
We have recorded an interview with Steve Hulett of The Animation Guild for an upcoming podcast and part of a series we are working on concerning labor laws. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce you to them in advance by providing this link to their blog post about some visual effects […]
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VES releases “The State of Visual Effects” White Paper
The Visual Effects Society has released a document titled “The State of Visual Effects In the Entertainment Industry”. Written by Renee Dunlop, Paul Malcolm and VES president Eric Roth it covers topics like “Advances in Visual Effects Technology Drive Changes On and Off the Set ” and “Impact on the Bottom Line”. You’ll find the […]
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fxpodcast: Motion Theory
In this weeks podcast we talk to Motion Theory in California. We speak with Nick Losq (VFX Supervisor) and Matt Winkel (VFX Producer) about their work and the powerful mini-studio concept that they have helped build in Motion Theory the company.
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red centre #009r posted
A revised Red Centre episode #009 has been posted, which corrects the issues with the audio towards the end of the podcast. This week the attention is on Shutters with the boys back from shooting Kung Fu in China. RC interviews DOP Peter Holland and talk to Toyko based Paul Leeming in the Red Room. […]
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fxpodcast: New Deal Studios
In this fxpodcast we get an overview of New Deal Studios with co-founder Matthew Gratzner. New Deal made their name in miniatures but can take a project from design through finish using whatever tools and tricks the job requires. Matthew shares some great stories about favorite past projects as well as offering a perspective on […]
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New July08 term courses announced at fxphd
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 […]
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Indiana Jones and the Destroyed Miniatures
Kerner Optical was once again called upon to contribute a stunning array of miniature models to destroy for the fourth installment of the epic film series. We spoke to Brian Gernand, model/miniature supervisor for Kerner Optical about the film. Kerner is the former ILM model shop, directly responsible for so many of the stunning visuals that made the first three Indiana films one of the most loved film franchises in history.
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Prince Caspian: Pre & Post-viz on the Third Floor
Third Floor started as the third floor pre-viz department at Skywalker ranch. Now a separate company, Third Floor is a pre-viz and post-viz specialist. In this week’s fxpodcast we talk to CEO Chris Edwards about their recent work on Narnia, and explore their filmic approaches to previz. We also present Edward’s play book for successful pre-viz along with some client survival tricks.
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Build 16 for RED released: Red Centre #8
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.
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Stan – We Miss You
Stan Winston, one of the great names in special effects, has died at age 62.
The Oscar-winning visual effects artist died at his home Sunday evening surrounded by family after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma, according to a representative from Stan Winston Studio, reports David Cohen from Variety.
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