Technical Animations just came out with their first Combustion v2 Training Video/DVD from. Here is a brief review written by Jack Pfeiffer, who is a demo artist and trainer for a discreet dealer in Denmark.

“we’re getting results in a matter of minutes and its just great to see it all working straight off. Boujou takes the tedium out of match moving”

-Will Bylkes Head of Aardman’s CG dept.

FXGuide caught up with Chris Steele CEO of 2d3D recently to discuss their market leading Boujou tracking software and sneak a peak at their new “Pixel Dust” product.

Following up on NAB and our coverage of Colossus, we wanted to get more information on what 5D is doing and their other products. We spoke recently with J Miguel Ferros, Products Manager for 5D Solutions about Cyborg, Colossus, Commander, Monster Sparks and more…

This week we spoke exclusively to Maurice Patel, product manager of the Toxik product line, officially now called the Discreet Media Architecture. We checked out their plans, and reviewed the NAB technology showing.

Thanks to everyone who emailed us and asked for more screengrabs.. well, we managed to snap more exclusive screen grabs – showing 2 of the most interesting new user Interface features, the transparent menus and the new editing tim

One of the most exciting things we saw at NAB was in the 5D booth. This marked the first NAB for Colossus, a software-based, digital grading and mastering solution. One of the only areas remaining in the film post production process without computerization has been color correction. On feature films this has primarily remained a photo-chemical process done by a lab color timer, for television it has meant a very expensive room with equipment from variou

One of the most interesting corporate moves in recent months was Apple buying Nothing Real. At NAB, FXguide, and many others treked to the Apple Booth to see the new Apple OSX Shake, and find out just what was the story? How much will it be ? And just when can we get a copy for our Ti Powerbooks ?

Since the management buyout Quantel has changed a lot, at this years NAB they were showing PC software versions of their products, their stand was a lot smaller than in previous years, and like other management buyout Post companies – such as Cintel, Quantel are now very open in talking to other equipment suppliers about combined solutions. One such solution that caught our eye at FXGUIDE was the use of the iQ at ILM to help colour grade Star Wars Episode

With offices closing, price drops, no NAB booth and all the associated rumours, we sat down with Alias/Wavefront to find out just what is going on with the Maya guys.

One of the smallest and one of the most interesting stands at NAB were the boy’s from Guildford in the UK with their MoKey software. We spoke to Alan Jaenicke who wrote the code about the newest must-have spark and FX software at NAB.

FXguide FIRST with this screen grab from Toxik..

This is the first grab of the new user interface…( hey what else would you expect from us !!)

Discreet’s Strata (only the code name) will feature new tools in what Discreet is calling an “immersive 3D creative environment”, where artists can quickly combine visual effects with audio, editing and 3D rendering.

The new technology which was rumored to be revealed at NAB this year (Film & Video Magazine) was shown as the last item of the evening on Sunday. The presentation on Sunday was a bit confusing at points and it was the end of a long presentation and and because of that it seems as though some information might have been lost to the users. We’ll try to break down what was shown that evening with what was also shown during the week in special showings on the

Ten years in the making.

For the 9th time Discreet’s users gathered for the FFFIS users group meeting. With word of private showings of new technology, attendence registrations were up almost 50% on last year. It is now 1.55am and the fxguide crew have just returned from an array of product demonstrations and future technology previews.

Media solutions developer 5D has revealed that its family of compositing, visual effects, colour grading, and record and review systems are all playing key roles in the digital intermediate process for motion pictures and visual effects post production worldwide