Autodesk Announces Combustion 2008
Finally. A press release came across the wire announcing Combustion 2008 for Macintosh and Windows. While a full list of features wasn’t provided with the release, it did make mention of the addition of the Colour Warper from flame. Click through to read the press release…..
Beowulf: Breaking Ground with Mocap
Beowulf once again raises the bar for films based on motion capture, extending the work from Polar Express and Monster House. Fxguide spoke to Doug Chiang at Siggraph about the film and we now follow that up with Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Visual Effects Supervisor Jerome Chen and CG Supervisor Theo Bialak. (Updated 30th Nov)
It’s all “Wet and Wild” at Fusion CI Studios!
Mark Stasiuk, co-founder and fluid fx guru at Fusion CI Studios, has been facing tsunami-sized demands for fluid fx work these days — from commercial work, to network idents, to feature film. Fusion focuses exclusively on fluid and particle fx and as a result has become an invaluable resource for production companies and vfx houses […]
fxguidetv #18 is on the air
John Montgomery visits Prime Focus in Mumbai to discuss post production in India and look at an award winning commercial produced there titled “Happy Dent Palace”. Jaynat Hadke and Sabu Joseph of Prime Focus are John’s guests and discuss the market, break down the spot and show other work. The tip of the week shows […]
Sapphire 4.03 for FFI Maintenance Release
Sapphire Plug-ins 4.03 for Autodesk systems is now released and available for download from: http://www.genarts.com/sapphire-sparks.html This fixes a problem with certain combinations of sparks in Batch and some issues with LensFlareAutotrackMask. This is a free maintenance release for version 4 customers and will work with your existing v4 license. If you have not yet upgraded […]
Movie Matte Painting to Shine at Academy Event
Beverly Hills, CA – Making stops at King Kong’s Skull Island and Darth Vader’s Death Star, the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will take audiences on a movie matte painting journey on Monday, December 10, at 8 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. “Fantastic Reality: […]
Oscar Visual Effects First Cut List
David S. Cohen from Variety has written an article about the visual effects films up for consideration for the visual effects Oscar.
Cooke Red Lens
Cooke Optics Introduces RED Set of S4/i Lenses for the RED ONE Camera . Cooke Optics has announced a new Cooke RED Set, a package of four standard Cooke S4/i lenses offering a range of focal lengths from 15mm through 100 mm. The lenses incorporate /i metadata capture technology that can be read directly by […]
If the van rockin’…
The new commercial for Honda Odyssey lives up to the vehicle’s name, taking viewers on an unexpected ride with the iconography of a time when people knew to “Respect the Van.” Created by design/production company Nylon, the spot uses visual wizardry (literally) to brand one of the leading minivans in the category.
The WGA Strike: Post Perspective
Post production clearly follows production, so what happens when production has no scripts to shoot?
In this week’s podcast we talk with David S. Cohen of Variety to get a post production perspective on the effect of the Writers Guild strike.
Golden titles
Ken Cato of Cato Purnell & Partner recently completed a 3D title design sequence for the UK feature film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, at Iloura in Melbourne. Ken Cato was approached by renowned Australian editor Jill Bilcock (credits include: Romeo+Juliet, Mouline Rouge, Elizabeth) to create a stylised title sequence for the film. The title sequence […]
GenArts Releases Sapphire Plug-ins Version 2 for After Effects and Compatible Products
GenArts, Inc., a leading provider of visual effects plug-ins for the film, broadcast and video industries, today announced the immediate availability of Sapphire Plug-ins version 2 for After Effects and compatible products including Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Autodesk Combustion, and Eyeon Fusion. The new release features over 30 new effects, plus many […]
The Art of Wire Removal
In our continuing and popular “Art of…” series, we tackle wire and rig removal. Far from being the most glamourous of visual effects, in reality wire removal is extremely challenging. We audit the current approaches and techniques of the craft. In this week’s podcast, we speak with Aaron Rhode from The Orphanage about the complex 2D and 3D solutions for scenes with wires.
Building The Ark
Grzegorz Jonkajtys directed the short film Arka (The Ark), which makes heavy use of miniatures and won Siggraph Best of Show this year. The beautiful, yet deeply sad film is the tale of an unknown virus has destroyed almost the entire human population. The title refers to the attempted escape by the only remaining survivors in a flotilla of huge ships, in search of uninhabited and uncontaminated land.
Mercury Masterpiece
As part of the ongoing campaign for Mercury, The Brothers Strause directed another Mercury Sable spot : Synapse. The spot is featured in this week’s fxguidetv. The amazing campaign combines Swing and Tilt lens with complex keying, complex roto and some cool cutting edge 3D.
fxphd: Orientation Week Special Just Released
We’ve just released our Background Fundamentals Orientation Week special episode over at fxphd. It provides an overview of what’s going on during the term over at our sister vfx training site….I think you’ll see why were excited about the October07 Term. We’ve got a ton of great courses and professors lined up, including RED camera […]
Eyeon Announces Software World Tour 2007
Eyeon has announced their Software World Tour 2007, visiting the following cities in the months of October and November: San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington, Dallas, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, Sydney, Melbourne, Wagga Wagga, Paris, London, Madrid, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Munich, London , Manchester. Click through for more details….
Kerner Optical : The ex-ILM Model Shop
This week we take an in-depth look at miniatures and the ways digital works alongside large scale miniatures at one of the worlds leading shops, Kerner Optical. After decades of award winning work, the company’s results are the gold standard by which all others are judged. The company certainly has a respected history, but you might be surprised at just how forward-looking the company is.
Emmy-Winning Small Effects
In Part 2 of our Emmy coverage we talk to award winners Stargate Digital about their winning Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King/ Battleground. Stargate, nominated a stunning three times this year, won for Oustanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie, or Special.
Atmosphere Visual Effects: Emmy Winner
This week we honor winners of 2007 Emmy Awards, starting with Atmosphere Visual Effects for their amazing work on Battlestar Galactica. The work is all the more exceptional considering it is episodic television – done week in, week out. Coming up later in the week, we’ll speak to other category winners from this year’s outstanding collection of Visual Effects submissions.
fxguidetv: flame2008, Nuke Tech Preview – Shot on RED
A new episode of fxguidetv is up which has interviews with Philippe Soeiro from Autodesk who talks about the new 2008 smoke and flame releases. We also speak with Matt Plec from the Foundry about what they were showing at IBC, which is a technology preview of the upcoming Nuke — complete with a brand […]
New Autodesk Site: myfirstflame.com
Autodesk has rolled out a new web site targeted towards flame users called myfirstflame.com. It’s a fun site with some longtime flame users such as Sheena Duggal, Jake Parker, Vico Sharabani, and more. It also has links to the past NAB tutorials, including the presentation I gave earlier this year. Fill out the survey and […]
Flame and Smoke 2008 @ IBC
New versions of flame 2008 and smoke 2008 were at IBC this weekend. The most striking thing is that the UI has been adjusted to fully take advantage of the 16:9 screen. Yes…time to give that muscle memory a bit of a shock. The smoke release has a totally reworked DVE module, inspired by the Action module, as it provides compatibility with the effects app. Read why you’ll want them….
Emmy winners
Congrats to the winners of this year’s creative Emmys. Dexter, Battlestar Galactica and NightMares & Dreamscapes. Outstanding work once again in this years 59th Prime Time Emmy awards. Outstanding Main Title Design: Dexter (Showtime) Eric Anderson, Creative Director Josh Bodnar, Editor Lindsay Daniels, Designer Colin Davis, Main Title Producer Oustanding Special Visual Effects for a […]
RED Podcast discussion
Jeff Heusser and Mike Seymour have an informal discussion about the new RED, their experiences on set with them and most importantly the post pipeline. You can download from the right hand side podcasting panel on our homepage or from iTunes. Coming up on fxguide . . . In addition to our audio podcasts, we […]
The Film Industry is Broken
Stu Maschwitz over on his ProLost blog has written a must read article titled “The Film Industry is Broken” about the lack of a Universal Color Metadata format.
PFTrack 4.1 Now Shipping
The Pixel Farm is pleased to announce PFTrack 4.1 is now shipping. Released at Siggraph this year, the additional features within PFTrack 4.1 – including the addition of Autodesk FBX and Apple Motion file format and support for Vista – further enhance the company’s well established reputation for innovation in the field of high-end digital […]
Shooting with RED
Saturday was our first day shooting with the RED Camera. We know the community is keen to see real shots and we will publish more in coming days and weeks. For now, we aim to address the expectation of RED with the reality of filming with it. It is after all a camera – it exists to produce footage – and so that is what we did.
RED Day: The Launch in LA
RED has begun shipping their RED ONE camera After many people initially questioned the project and some even called it a sham, the RED team today proudly delivered their first 25 cameras. We were there to pick up our camera number 22. In characteristic RED style it was informative, crazy and a really great place to be.
Mr. X creates lasting images for Resident Evil Extinction
A Case Study from the FoundryWhat follows the Apocalypse? Extinction, of course. Like its predecessors, the third installment of the Resident Evil trilogy is rife with zombies, survivalists, Milla Jovovitch, villains, and… zombies. But given that this was the final chapter (so says the official word), the filmmakers wanted to send fans of the video-game-inspired […]