Today, in a move that will shape the next few years in high end compositing SGi announces a whole new set of workstation and supercomputer products completely replacing Octane and Onyx3 with Tezro and Onyx4. Fxguide has in-depth analysis of of the platforms and what it means to you, the professional compositing community. In part one, we have an overview with exclusive interviews with key staff both managerial and technical in both SGI and Discreet. In th

In Part 2, we have a detailed hardware module by module analysis of the new products, exclusively for fxguide by industry legend Jean-Francois Panisset. Some of his findings will surprise you, as he compares Octane and Onyx3 with Tezro and Onyx4. Now at one of the world’s leading visual effects houses, Panisset is widely known for his former work at Discreet where for 8 years he lead much of Discreet’s SGI hardware analysis team. Panisset (or JF as he is

Simon Scott, a veteran Flame Artist and Visual Effects Supervisor recently formed Process, a new Visual Effects company. For the inaugural project Process, collaborated with Directing duo, Arni and Kinski of Mars Media/HSI Productions on a music video for Dave Gahan and the track “I need you”. Working out of Gorilla Post the team including freelance CGI Artist Steward Burris completed a series of complex shots in just 6 days.

Here’s a quick look at a couple of the new features of shake, including Photoshop image import, the new MultiLayer compositing node, and the OSX Qmaster rendering feature.

2D3 announces Steadymove bundle with Adobe Premier Pro
SteadyMove, a New Plug-In From 2d3, Provides Adobe Premiere Users With
Automated Camera Stabilization.

The Foundry, the leading effects plug-in developer, will be beginning the beta program of Furnace on Discreet. This was one of the more interesting products which was shown at NAB in April The site list includes The Mill and Rushes both in London, Digital Pictures in Australia and Riot Pictures in Santa Monica, USA amongst others. Furnace on Discreet is scheduled for release early September.

With Apple releasing Final Cut Pro version 4 today, the next anticipated offering from the pro applications group is Shake version 3. The fxguide crew had a chance to chat with Dion Scoppettuolo, Senior Product Manager for Pro Applications, about Apple’s new offering due to be released this month…..

Frantic Films, founded in 1997, has recently completed both pre-visualization and effects work on Fox ’s spring blockbuster X2.

The Pixel Farm, a new company focused on innovation in the field of high-end digital post-production, announces today that it is to release a student and academic licensing scheme for future Pixel Farm products.

Times are hard for telecine manufacturers.
Acterna Corporation (formerly Dynatech Corporation) parent of da Vinci Systems, Inc, along with all of its other subsidiary companies, filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in the US Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York on May 6th. Cintel has announced another batch of reductions, including the highly respected Peter Swinson, known widely throughout the

What is the average pattern in a facility doing high-end work? Increasingly, it involves moving the images into data from either film or tape and then having the images remain as data until output. Tape is a linear interchange format. From TVC to Feature films the desire is to scan or telecine the footage into data and never use video tape. This is being accelerated by such products as lustre – Discreet’s new advanced workstation grading system, and by the

FXguide caught up with one of our favourite Mac (and PC) software companies, Realviz. makers of Stitcher, Imagemodeller, ReTimer and others. Fxguide tracked down Luc Robert, one of the founders of the company and asked about their new Matchmover Pro or ‘Corsica’ and the future of the innovative line of image processing products.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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 …

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