The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) awarded the 2003-2004 Creative Arts Primetime Emmys for programs and individual achievements at the 56th Annual Emmy Awards presentation at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 12, 2004. Here are the winners in the visual effects categories.

Apple Computer’s new Motion software was a big hit at NAB earlier this year, winning the 2004 Editor’s Choice award in the Content Creation category. The release is now shipping and making waves here at IBC in Amsterdam. Guest reviewer Roger Bolton, a freelance flame/shake artist based in Sydney, takes a look at what he found to be an impressive software package.

With our 5th anniversary, our 5 millionth page view, and IBC in Amsterdam, we thought there was no time like the present to debut our new look. The best thing is that the cost of the upgrade is free. We hope you like the new cleaner and more easily-navigatable site. The new version has been tested in most browsers (Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Safari, Opera, and Firefox) on the Mac, PC, and Linux and we feel pretty good about its compatibility. Please Read the Article

In significant move, The Foundry have announced that all new purchases of Furnace, Tinder, and Anivil for discreet will include free site licenses for Burn. Burn will most likely be opened up to even more facilities, with burn support in Fire shown as a technology demo at NAB. This may help many facilities in their decision about the software, since adding sparks to burn nodes can quickly add up…making the purchase of burn a fairly expensive proposition.

Discreet announced new versions of their effects last week — inferno 6, flame 9, and flint 9. The technology demo at NAB this year gave a preview of some of the possible features and now the final ones have been locked in. The number one feature request for years — Clip History — is now a reality and forms the basis of a strong new offering from Discreet. Click below to get the full story….

Discreet introducted new versions of its inferno, flame, and effects software today. The software is planned for a fall release and brings to reality many of the new features seen at the technology demo at NAB 2004. Fxguide will be taking an up-close look at the software in the coming days, but for now, here’s the Discreet press release…..

With deadlines for the films worldwide release looming, I, Robot visual effects supervisor John Nelson spoke to Fxguide on a busy Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles. We also caught up with lead visual effects house’s Digital Domains Andy Jones & Erik Nash, and WETA’s Joe Letteri, on the push to finish one of the summers biggest effects films.

They were 18 people, trapped against the odds, with little or no hope of reinforcement. For five months they laboured, with minimal resources, and that’s just the visual effects team! FXG caught up with Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Leven about the new Starship Troopers 2.

We are sad to report that Donald Trumbull, a true pioneer and visual effects legend has passed away.

Cars don’t tend to be small enough to race around the inside of watch faces, but Jonathan Dearing puts them there anyway. Dearing is a visual effects artist at Digital Pictures Sydney, and he recently road tested boujou bullet.

While fxguide is primarily aimed at practicing VFX professionals, even the most senior supervisor occassionally wants to get up to speed with another piece of software. As most of us never have time to read the manual, Fxguide has selected 4 of the best training sources for DVDs, CD_ROMs and quicktimes covering Shake, Painter, Concept Art/photoshop, Digital Fusion

Van Helsing, directed by Stephen Sommers, spins an amazing tale of adventure and suspense. With help from Vicon motion capture, ILM delivers a stunning set of familiar horror figures and a universe of rich, imaginative visuals including Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man.

The Fire/Smoke part of the NAB users group showed a lot of cool new features. Similar in flow to the effects demonstration, the editing part of the show was hosted by Discreet’s Stephane Labrie and Brian Reid from TOYBOX Toronto. Find out what’s coming up in the next releases of the discreet editing products.

At fxguide live2 in Las Vegas this year, we announced the first half winners of the Tips and Tricks Giveway. Congratulations to the three winners, as well as a big thank you to the many users who have submitted tips. There is still a month left to submit your tips to be eligible for the second half giveaway. For the list of winners and official contest rules, read o

The Sunday before NAB was a busy one, with fxguide live2 starting out early in the afternoon and followed up by the discreet users group meeting. The fxguide live event was once again a big success and based upon what was shown afterwards at the discreet event, fxguide live3 will be packed with new features to cover. A special thanks goes out to discreet and sgi, who kindly sponsored the event. Without their support, the event would not have been possible.

The Visual Effects Society (VES) will present VES 2004, its sixth annual Festival of Visual Effects, June 18-20 in San Rafael, California…

Maximum Throughput Inc, in an exclusive interview with fxguide, confirm that they have just bought Xstoner. Both Xstoner and Max-T are companies we follow closely at fxguide, for their outstanding high end products, so we sat down and talked to Mike Hughes at Max-T, and asked what this means for both Max-T and Xstoner customers, and what this will opens up for the future.

Following last years highly successful Live training session in Las Vegas, fxguide will again be hosting advanced user training at NAB, – just prior to the discreet users group meeting.
Sponsored by discreet and sgi

12.30 – 3.30 Sunday, April 18th at the Venetian Hotel

Registration is now closed due to space considerations — all slots have been taken.

Winner of 2004 Academy Award for Visual Effects Joe Letteri sat down to talk to Fxguide just prior to heading over from NZ to this year’s Oscars, to discuss his work on Lord of the Rings.

FXGuide recently road tested the latest major release of Combustion on the Mac. Peter Webb a Melbourne visual effects supervisor put Combustions new features through their paces, and examined each in depth.

Fxguide was started as way to bring together professional visual effects artists and designers in an online community. One of the main reasons Jeff, Mike and I started the site was to serve as a clearinghouse for cool tips and tricks for artists to share with other artists. For this reason, we’re starting our 2004 Tips and Tricks drive with a giveway for those artists whose tips are accepted for publication. Thanks to the generous support of Digital Fusion

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Receives Top Prize.
Complete list of winners…

Deb Ristic is a Flame designer & storyboard artist at Modern Digital in Seattle, Washington. She joinned from BB&J, Los Angeles, where she was working on visual effects for such television series as Third Watch. Ristic works extensively with both Painter software for concept art and storyboarding, and follows projects through to Flame compositing.

Gen Arts have just released a version of their famous Sapphire plugins for Combustion. FXGuide managed to get a late Beta to road test over several weeks. Feature Film Visual Effects Supervisor Peter Webb road tested the new Sapphire Sparks for Combustion. Peter is a highly award features effects artist at Iloura, in Melbourne – who uses both Combustion on Location and Flame in the suite. Peter compares not only functionality but performance of the Sapphi

Sapphire Plug-Ins from GenArts is one of the most popular plug-in sets for inferno, fire, and Shake. Now they’re available for Adobe After Effects as well. Along with After Effects, they are also usable in applications which can use AE plug-ins such as Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro, Discreet combustion, eyeon Software Digital Fusion, Quantel generationQTM, and Media 100 844/X.