SIGGRAPH GPU Power Panel
At SIGGRAPH 2011, on Monday 8 August at 1:45pm to 3:00pm, fxguide’s own Mike Seymour is moderating a panel hosted by NVIDIA with leading CTOs and R&D experts from some of the world’s greatest facilities. We speak to Dominick Spina, Sr. Product Manager of NVIDIA, about the great panel from WETA, DNeg, Blue Sky, ILM and SPI.
film RIP one step closer
Variety is reporting that in the USA lab giants Technicolor and Deluxe have reached subcontracting agreements that move them toward an end to their century-old competition in 35mm release printing. ” Deluxe will take over 35mm release printing for the major studios in the U.S. and Canada beginning this week. Technicolor will exit the 35mm […]
Making Green Lantern – bonus material
fxinsider members can watch two making of clips of Sony Pictures Imageworks’ effects from Green Lantern.
Foundry releases NUKE 6.3
The Foundry have released an update to their flagship NUKE and NUKE X products today, which are available free of charge for customers under subscription. The big features of the release include a brand new 3D particle system as well as new planar tracker, but there have been an number of other improvements.
Rhythm & Hues breaks down Popper’s Penguins
Rhythm & Hues details its vfx for Mr Popper’s Penguins in this making of video.
Peter Wolf – leading the way for deaf filmmakers
Mike meets deaf filmmaker Peter Wolf at the Cine Gear Expo in LA.
63rd Primetime Emmy Award Nominees
Nominations were announced this morning for the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards.
Cars 2 animation progression
Disney/Pixar have released a neat breakdown of the opening drilling platform chase sequence from Cars 2.
The sound fx of Cars 2
Here’s a video we worked on with The Daily on the sound design and effects by Skywalker Sound for Pixar/Disney’s Cars 2.
Free Scratch + RED Webinar July 14th
fxguide’s own Mike Seymour will be leading a webinar on July 14th covering SCRATCH and RED workflow. If you own a RED camera — or if you don’t own one and need to manage productions and post that are using RED, this short webinar will be useful for you. Register here or click through for more details.
Some recent TVC highlights
Here’s just five TVCs from the last few months that have caught our eye for their inventive use of visual effects.
The Foundry releases NUKE/MARI workflow
The Foundry have announced a new set of tools which makes getting data back and forth between MARI and NUKE much simpler. It’s exactly the type of workflow that compositors using camera projections to do set extensions and fixes will surely find incredibly useful as the lines further blur between comp and CG. Click through for the full press release from The Foundry.
How previs shaped X-Men: First Class
We recently partnered with The Daily to produce a story on The Third Floor’s previs work for X-Men: First Class.
Cannes Film Craft Lions
The shortlist for the 2011 Film Craft Cannes Lions has been released, with the winners to be announced on 25 June. We’ve covered a number of these projects at fxguide. UPDATED to include the winners.
VES Career Fair & Workshops
On June 25th, the Visual Effects Society is holding a Career Fair with representatives from many visual effects companies who are looking to meet new talent. Companies hosting booths include Walt Disney Animation Studios, MPC, Sony Imageworks, Digital Domain, Deluxe, Technicolor and many more.
Academy invites 178 to Membership
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the list of people invited to join as Academy Members for 2011. The list includes thirteen animators, two art directors, nine cinematographers, nine editors and twelve people in the visual effects category.
Retro spotlight: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Tony Hudson, who worked at ILM as the CG Model and Creature Supervisor on A.I. Artificial Intelligence, outlines some of his favorite memories from the experience.
VES 2.0 is here and ready to lead
The Visual Effects Society (VES) today released an open letter to “VFX Artists And The Entertainment Industry At Large” announcing VES 2.0, we talk with Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of VES.
Dutch Tilt – how much should you be paid?
We spoke to Jules van Den Steenhoven of the NSC about their new iPhone & iPad app that maps global salaries for production and post professionals. Some things like this have been tried in the past, none it would seem as successfully as the NSC’s app is proving to be. But what was their approach to gathering this information and how current is it? Does it take into account month to month currency fluctuation? And just why is this being done by the NSC anyway?
Bear of a time at Cannes
Director Nash Edgerton along with producer Lauren Edwards have just completed a week at Cannes with the short film Bear.
Digital Domain buys site license of KATANA
The Foundry announced today that Digital Domain has purchased a site license for KATANA, making them the first customer of the product. We caught up with Bill Collis for an update on this news as well as more info about open source and support of the recent deep compositing spec that’s part of OpenEXR 2.0
Pixar’s Chris Ford on RenderMan Pro Server 16.0
We talk to RenderMan Business Director Chris Ford about some of the key features of the new RenderMan Pro Server 16.0 release.
Mirada dreams of black for ROME
We thought we’d point you to some of the latest work from Mirada, the new studio collaboration between director Guillermo del Toro, director Mathew Cullen, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and executive producer Javier Jimenez.
Kessler Motion control slider : the rc bonus extra
In this bonus RC video, we speak to Eric Kessler about the new Motion Control Slider – first shown at NAB 2011.
Cooke Panchros: the rc bonus extra
We caught up with Les Zellan from Cooke Lens. Cooke recently we introduced the Panchros (or Mini-S4s as Les jokes). We talk to Les and test drove the lens.
FMX 2011 – Day Four
The final day of FMX 2011 included a Harry Potter VFX tribute and presentations on animated films and games. We also talk to Proof’s Ron Frankel about the concept of stereo previs.
FMX 2011 – Day Three
More impressive talks punctuated day three at FMX 2011. We take a look at some of the highlights and sit down with ILM’s Tim Alexander and Patrick Cohen to discuss Rango.
FMX 2011 – Day Two
Day two at FMX 2011 brought a major announcement from Weta Digital and The Foundry, along with some great presentations on virtual characters. We also speak to Molinare’s Dayne Cowan about The King’s Speech.
Congrats to our HP EliteBook Winner
We got some great entries for our HP EliteBook giveaway, but there can only be one winner. And that winner is Chris Hocking, whose “server room shower” took top place with an inventive install to get the job done in pinch. Click through for more images as well as some impressions of running The Foundry’s Mari on the EliteBook.