Outpost Digital: Desktop systems use in production

April 23, 2003

Gangs of New York is a masterpiece,… but tonight you’re just not in the mood for the film’s graphic gore, no matter how artistically director Martin Scorsese presents it. So you and the kids opt to see a frothy romantic comedy instead. The lights go down and, predictably, and the Gangs of New York trailer appears. No need to hid the kid’s eyes, however:
You won’t find so much as a spot of blood on Leonardo DiCaprio’s determined visage.

Thanks Outpost

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Hollywood Reporter: Summer tentpoles rush

April 22, 2003

Not sure how we missed this one when it came out (oh, yeah we were recovering from NAB!), but here is a link to an April 17th Sheigh Crabtree article in the Hollywood Reporter:

Click here for the full story.

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LA Times: In with a Big Bang, out with a Wimper

April 20, 2003

There is an article by P.J. Huffstutter in today’s Los Angeles Times on the state of the visual effects industry…

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Discreet Users Group Report – Flame Tech Demo

April 17, 2003

The second demo of the afternoon at the 2003 Discreet users group was a technology demonstration of new stuff being prepped for the next release of flame and inferno. Not everything that was shown at the show will make it into the software — potentially the features will never make it in — but it was an impressive showing nonetheless. The software engineers, who just wrapped up the 5/8 release and maintenance releases, pulled out all the stops to show s

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Discreet Users Group Report – Fire Tech Demo

April 10, 2003

The standout events at the discreet users group meeting are always the previews of upcoming software releases. As usual, these were “technology demos”, and not promised features that will be part of the mix when the release is final. Long time users know this — the promised 3D tracker took several years to see the light of day. We’ll first look at the upcoming Fire/Smoke release and in our next article take a look at the effects software.

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NAB ’03 FXGuide Live & the User Group Meeting

April 7, 2003

Well NAB 2003 got off to a fast start with the first FXGuide Live event followed by the Discreet User Group Meeting. A big thank you to all who attended our inaugural event, as well as your support. We really enjoyed the opportunity to create a user session at NAB — the questions and interaction from the audience was great.

For our intital report on the gossip and news of the events .. click “read more…” at the bottom of this panel. A more detailed

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Artist in Action: Adams, Director and flame artist

March 28, 2003

In our continuing Artist in Action series, we thought it would be good to look at Flame artists who have move over to directing. Many, such as Keith Adam’s at SPIN in Atlanta, – do their own visual design work, for complete creative control.

We caught up with Adams when he was recently on a shoot in Sydney and asked him about his latest spot for Charlotte, USA.

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Digital Fusion NAB Pre Show Discussion

March 23, 2003

FXG’s Sydney crew member caught up with Eyeon’s Adam Zolis based in Canada to discuss one of the industries top desktop solutions Digital Fusion.

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Artist in Action: Freeze Frame : Daredevil

March 15, 2003

Pixel Magic, a division of OCS/Freeze Frame has completed an array of visual effect shots for 20th Century Fox’s ‘Daredevil’, starring Ben Affleck. Pixel Magic created a seamless mix of CG and real-life elements, a challenging task, considering the super-human display of
acrobatics and quick-pace style of the movie.

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Artist in Action: Digital Dimension with DF

March 15, 2003

The job of breathing “life” into the endless “death” of Final Destination II was awarded to long time Digital Fusion users, Digital Dimension. The visual effects studio completed 85 shots, all of which traveled through DF. Everything from the 4000 frame premonition sequences that aided our star, Miss Rivers, in evading numerous pitfalls, to the action packed log disaster scene, a precursor to the theme of “frightening consequences”.

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Is Photoshop’s dominance to be challenged?

March 4, 2003

Feature films produced using Linux include Star Wars Attack of the Clones, Lord of the Rings 2, Star Trek Nemesis, Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo and many more. Every major studio has converted to Linux or has a Linux conversion underway. Linux has become the most popular operating system for feature film production. But with no Adobe Linux version of Photoshop, – the most popular open source Linux application in the post industry is now Film GIMP (or it was …

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Latest VFX casualty – Cinesite Los Angeles

February 28, 2003

There have been rumours for weeks about the possibility of Kodak closing Cinesite…

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1st Annual VES Awards Winners

February 21, 2003

The winners of the 1st Annual Visual Effects Society Awards…

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New Version 5/8 QuickTime Tutorial Available

February 14, 2003

Our first version 5/8 tutorial is now available online. It is an overview of getting around the new and improved batch.

Click here to view the tutorial

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Announcing nucoda Data Conform

February 13, 2003

nucoda Announces World’s First PC-Based Full-Resolution Pre-vis Tool for Film Incorporating Truelight Colour Cube Technology and Timeline Editing

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Visual Effects Oscar Nominees

February 11, 2003

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the nominees for the 75th Academy Awards®. The nominees in the Visual Effects category are…

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Max-T’s Sledgehammer NAS and HD!O

February 10, 2003

Sledgehammer is a new network attached storage (NAS) system that provides a very fast shared storage resource for any facility. Clients simply mount the Sledgehammer and access its contents over an ethernet network. The newest release, Sledgehammer HD!O also incorporates SD/HD video I/O and playback capabilities.

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Announcement: fxguide 5/8 event at NAB 2003

February 3, 2003

As part of NAB 2003, fxguide will host a live advanced user session – specifically focused on last month’s breakthrough releases of Inferno 5.0 and Flame/Flint 8.0. The event is scheduled prior to the Discreet 2003 User Group on the Sunday at NAB, allowing users to go the FXG event in the afternoon before the User Group. Special thanks to our sponsors Discreet and sgi, who were kind enough to help make this event possible. More details…

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XStoner Software Focus

January 28, 2003

Xstoner is a product for Discreet advanced effects and editing systems from Light, Inc., designed to make networking, transfer and conversion of images to/from PCs and Discreet Stone systems much faster and simplified. A PC version is currently in release, with a Mac version expected in Q1 2003. We asked the developers to provide us with an overview of the software…their story follows.

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Discreet Releases 5.0/8.0 Effects Software

January 23, 2003

Discreet has announced it is releasing its new version of software (inferno 5 and flame/flint version 8. The software contains lots of great new features and fxguide will be focusing on tips and tricks in the new software. We’ve also started up a special section in the Forums area for discussing the new software. All of us have been running the software for the last several months and will be glad to share any help or information we can. Read on for the Di

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Visual Effects Society Awards 2002 Nominees

January 13, 2003

The Visual Effects Society will hold the 1st Annual VES Awards in February, nominees were announced today….

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New Combustion Training Book Now Shipping

January 11, 2003

The FIRST “third-party” Discreet Combustion v2 Training Book is shipping and has already received excellent reviews. The book was authored by Jack Pfeiffer, newly appointed fxguide editor and moderator for Combustion. He works in Denmark for MCI Videotronic as a Demo Artist, Trainer, and Systems Engineer and was the founder of the Danish Discreet User Group.

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Discreet and Colorfront alliance for Digital Grading.

January 9, 2003

Discreet has entered into a strategic alliance with ColorFront, a privately-held software company based in Hungary, to jointly develop, market and sell a powerful new generation of digital color correction systems.

FXGuide has an exclusive interview with Maurice Patel, Discreet Systems Product Marketing Manager, and Product Manger Bill Roberts of Discreet about what this means to the visual effects and color grading communities.

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Combustion 2.1 launch at Macworld

January 9, 2003

Fxguide caught up with Discreet’s Peter Moxom and John Worthington to discuss the new directions for Combustion.

John Worthington is at MacWorld this week launching version 2.1 of Combustion. This version is not only a new release, but is now being dramatically reduced in price.

UPDATED Jan. 9, 2003

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Visual Effects Oscar 2002 – 7 considered films announced

January 8, 2003

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the seven films being considered for Achievement in Visual Effects for the 75th Academy Awards®…

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Centropolis FX closes and Matrix work moves shop

December 20, 2002

Centropolis FX based in Los Angeles closed its doors on Tuesday, December 17th 2002, according to CGChannel.

Centropolis FX was working on the Matrix Reloaded (Scheduled for release May 15), it is understood that this work has moved to Sony ImageWorks.

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A look at Ultimatte – AdvantEdge

December 20, 2002

Ultimatte has always pulled one of the best blue/green screen keys, hands down. If there was a complaint it was never quality, it was likely the learning curve and number of controls that required tweaking. AdvantEdge answers that by offering a new user interface that helps produce the expected great results with less struggle, while maintaining the full controls for fine adjustments. We took a look under the hood at this great new advance in plug-in keyer

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Speedsix Announces 5D Plug-ins Acquisition – UPDATED

December 19, 2002

Updated with information about support for inferno 5/8 and Digital Fusion 4 and as well as other info.

Speedsix Software has announced their purchase of the the sparks and plugins assets from the 5D liquidation. Hopefully we’ll have more information shortly, but in the meantime you can check out their press release….

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Exclusive Interview: Discreet Purchases Several 5D Assets

December 18, 2002

Rumors have been flying around the industry regarding the future of 5D technology and assets. What’s happening to the sparks? What about Cyborg? As we first speculated back in October, Discreet certainly did end up having an interest in some of the former company’s assets. Fxguide had the great opportunity to chat with Maurice Patel, Discreet Systems Product Marketing Manager, regarding Discreet’s purchase of several 5D assets and how those assets fit into

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5D’s Assets Sold

December 16, 2002

You can read the background here first about the disappointing demise of 5D Solutions, Ltd.

We’ll be posting an exclusive report early on Wednesday morning regarding this story as soon as we’re able to publish. The rumor mill has been swirling since the weekend regarding the purchase of 5D’s assets…..

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