We had such a good reaction to our fxguidetv eps on the red camera that we have decided to do a RED podcast every 2 weeks. Join Jason Wingrove and Mike Seymour as they look at a summary of what’s happening in and around the RED Camera. We’ll cover updates – news of third party […]

MPC plans to open a Santa Monica-based visual effects facility in late 2008. MPC LA will initially focus on the U.S. commercials VFX market, and it will also provide a front-end presence to MPC’s Los Angeles-based studios features VFX business. MPC LA is to be headed by VFX executive producer Mark Tobin. Tobin was most […]

Imagineer Systems is getting out ahead of the NAB PR rush by announcing that they will be talking with customers at NAB about their new compositing system “Mogul”, described as “a new vision for the visual effects industry: a new approach, a new workflow, a new architecture.” John Montgomery takes you direct to the source […]

A new episode of fxguidetv is available for download. It is part two of our special look at using RED footage in post production. We’ve been shooting a ton of RED footage since receiving our camera last year, working through the various ways to efficiently get from R3D to other formats which can be used […]

Sapphire Sparks have long been a favorite on flame and smoke systems and over the years have grown in popularity on other platforms such as After Effects and Avid. The plugins have now made the leap to Apple products such as Final Cut Pro and Motion which support the FxPlug architecture. Click through to read […]

We’re big fans of the Cineon/DPX tools here at fxguide and are looking forward to the improvements in the new version, set to be released at NAB 2008 in April. The new version will include Cineon and DPX Sequence Presets along with a full Cineon or DPX Codec. The combination of these two features now […]

The Golden Compass….Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood Congratulations to the winners of the Best Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar this year. The crew also won the Special Visual Effects category at the BAFTA awards earlier this month. “(The) four people standing up here represent over a thousand artists so, it’s kind […]

The Foundry announced that the much-anticipated Nuke 5.0 was released today. The version is a major release featuring a new user interface, 3D stereoscopic workflow, Python scripting, and a number of additional features and enhancements. Nuke 5.0v1 is available to all customers with current support contracts and anyone with a valid evaluation license. You will […]

Autodesk announced today that developers of its Autodesk Maya Fluid Effects System have been awarded Technical Achievement Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Maya Fluid Effects System allows digital artists to create realistic animation of liquids and gases, using novel simulation techniques for accuracy and speed, as well as a […]

The 6th Annual VES Awards were held on Feb. 10, 2008 at the Kodak Theatre Grand Ballroom in Hollywood by the Visual Effects Society. Dennis Muren presented Steven Spielberg with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award. This award recognizes the contribution that his vast body of work, as both a director and producer, has made to […]

An article at TV Technology.com spills the beans that Apple will not be having a booth at NAB this year. This follows an announcement in November last year by Avid that they weren’t going to be having a booth in Vegas. Apple has been missing from the list of NAB 2008 exhibitors, so this news […]

Nuke 4.8v1 is now available to download from The Foundry web site. Nuke 4.8v1 includes several feature enhancements, increased stability, and numerous bug fixes. With Nuke 5.0 on the horizon, The Foundry is releasing Nuke 4.8v1 for customers with projects in progress who choose not to upgrade to Nuke 5.0 until their projects have completed. […]

Nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced today (Tuesday, January 22) by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and Oscar® winner Kathy Bates. For Achievement in Visual Effects the nominated films are: The Golden Compass Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End Transformers To reach these nominations seven films […]

This episode features an interview with members of the ILM vfx crew from “Transformers”. The fxphd.com tip shows taking an aerial shot that was filmed from a light plane and turning the footage into the kind of smooth move you would expect from a helicopter with an expensive camera mount. This tip is done by […]

fxphd.com worked on two short films that are in competition in the Sundance Film Festival. Each day for 10 days Sundance makes available one film for free and on the first day (Jan. 18th, 2008) it was “I Love Sarah Jane”. The other film, “Spider” is scheduled to be the closing film of the ten […]

Boris Continuum Complete’s Snow filter is an auto-animated snow generator which can composite snow over a sky color or an image layer. The filter offers extensive options for customizing the effect and allows you to create drifts or make flakes pile up along the edges of an alpha channel. Download the Free Snow Filter Boris […]

January08 term classes start next week over at our online vfx training sister site fxphd.com. We’ve got over 10 new courses with over 30 offerings in total. We’ve got some great new design based courses with Tim Clapham from hypa.tv in the UK, an Apple Motion course taught by Damien Allen, and even a Typography […]

The Visual Effects Society (VES) today announced the nominees for the 6th Annual VES Awards ceremony recognizing outstanding visual effects in over a dozen categories of film, television, commercials and video games. Nominees were chosen Saturday, January 5, 2008 by numerous panels of VES members who viewed submissions at the FotoKem screening facilities in Burbank. […]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced 10 winners of Scientific and Technical Academy Awards, which will be presented at The Beverly Wilshire on Saturday, February 9, 2008. Unlike other Academy Awards, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not have been developed and introduced during 2007. Rather, the achievements must demonstrate […]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that seven films remain in contention for Achievement in Visual Effects for the 80th Academy Awards

Variety is reporting that The Motion Picture Academy’s Oscar will be decided from “Beowulf,” “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “Evan Almighty,” “The Golden Compass,” “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix,” “I Am Legend,” “Live Free Or Die Hard,” “National Treasure: Book Of Secrets,” “Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End,” “Ratatouille,” “Spider-Man 3,” “Sunshine,” “300,” […]

From the press releases on NVIDIA site and Mental Images, the chip maker based in Santa Clara, CA has bought Mental Images (Berlin, Germany), makers of Mental Ray. Cash or share details of the transaction are yet to be published. NVIDIA has seen its share price swing between $25 a share to $37 and back […]

A new episode of fxguidetv is available for your viewing pleasure. This week’s episode includes an interview with Theo Bialak, CG Supervisor for Sony Pictures Imageworks, who chats with us about the work that went into Beowulf. We caught up with Bialak at the Digital Media World conference in Sydney. The fxphd.com tip of the […]

There are two stories about visual effects by David S. Cohen in Variety today. Vfx supervisors increasingly important explores how the role has expanded as technology allows us to create lead characters and complete environments, crossing all departments. Should Oscar honor animation effects? discusses the role of visual effects in animated films and how that […]

A group has formed to encourage both sides in the writers strike to come together and reach a deal. They are staging a rally and march this weekend at Hollywood and Highland. From the organizers web site: We are not organized or sponsored by any union, guild or association. We are a spontaneous grass-roots outgrowth […]

In this week’s 100th fxpodcast we talk to Lee Wilson of Anthem FX about the companies amazing work on this weekend’s Tin Man miniseries, which premieres Sunday Dec 2nd 9/8c. As this is our 100th episode we just wanted to thank all of you for listening and supporting the podcast. We really appreciate it and […]

In our last fxguidetv episode, we visited Prime Focus in Mumbai and chatted with two of their smoke editors about their Cannes award-winning spot. The company is one of the largest in India and had been looking to acquire more companies in addition to their stake in the UK-based VTR Group. News came across the […]