weta gets nuke

The Nuke worldwide take over has just added one more major studio to it’s bed post.

Welcome WETA!

Things are starting to get pretty exciting. And I think it’s safe to say that this is a major sign that Shake’s days at VFX studios is numbered.

LINK: Weta Digital Purchases Site License Of Nuke

Since receiving critical acclaim for its VFX work on this project, the company has gone from strength-to-strength producing astonishing effects for Jackson’s subsequent blockbusters King Kong and The Lord of The Rings. Weta Digital’s talents have also been employed by many other Hollywood directors and can be seen on box office hits including I, Robot, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Day The Earth Stood Still and Jumper. In total its efforts have netted the company five Academy Awards® for Best Visual Effects

Paul Ryan, chief technology officer at Weta Digital, commented: “With ambitious projects on the slate, we need to ensure we have the best tools at our disposal. Our long-standing relationship with The Foundry and our faith in their product development, support and focus on producing a truly useful artist tool set, have given us the confidence to make this investment. We have a lot of challenges ahead and are looking forward to seeing the difference that Nuke makes to our workflow.”

Mat Welford, head of 2D at Weta Digital, added: “We have been employing The Foundry’s software here at Weta since purchasing Furnace for some tricky work on The Lord of The Rings Trilogy. Since taking on the development and support of Nuke, The Foundry has demonstrated the same commitment they have always applied to their plug-in business. Nuke is a great compositing tool that extends the parameters that a 2D artist usually works within. My team and I are looking forward to putting it through its paces on a large project.”

Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry, commented, “Weta is one of a few studios that sets the bar when it comes to VFX. The Foundry has been lucky enough to enjoy a very collaborative working relationship with them for many years. Their work on Avatar has been key in helping us develop our stereo plug-in set – Ocula – and we are delighted that, having been using Nuke on a smaller scale, they have taken the decision to roll it our across their site.“

goodbye sabre, hello nuke

Some really great news has just come off the wire for all us Nuke Compositors out there! FXGuide is reporting that ILM has purchased a bunch of Nuke licenses. Raising the question, “Is ILM shelving their proprietary compositing system Saber?”

Well I’m sure they wouldn’t completely throw out their old pipeline, because the cost to do so would just be enormous. But it is very cool to see a major studio finally jumping on board the Nuke wagon! And promises for some exciting opportunities for the future.

Welcome to the family ILM!

LINK: ILM Purchases Nuke Site Licence

Hot on the heels of its management buyout, The Foundry has completed a major deal with Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm Ltd’s multiple Academy Award-winning visual effects studio. ILM has purchased a site licence for Nuke.
ILM’s visionary work has earned thirty-seven Academy Award® nominations for Best Visual Effects.

Lucasfilm’s chief technical officer, Richard Kerris, commented, “ILM has a history in providing breakthrough imagery for production, and to do that our artists need to be equipped with the best possible tools. We believe Nuke is a forerunner in the compositing field. The Foundry’s investment in research and development and its customer-focused approach have produced a flexible, artist-focused toolset. We are excited to work with The Foundry and to see where these new possibilities will take our work.”

“Nuke allows us to leverage our 3D pipeline while remaining in the compositing environment, which puts a great deal of power into the hands of the compositors,” explained Pat Tubach, ILM’s compositing department supervisor. “We work on very complex shots and the remarkable speed at which Nuke operates means our artists can focus on the art of visual effects and not have their creativity impeded by a software speed limit.”

Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry, commented, “ILM is a huge force in the world of visual effects and we are thrilled that they have chosen to add Nuke as a key tool in their compositing workflow. We are very excited to see where our working relationship takes us.”

foundry freedom

Today brings some good news for not only The Foundry but also Nuke artists out there in general. Read the full article over at FXGuide, but the nickel version is that The Foundry has successively negotiated a management buyout from Windcrest Holdings and are independent once again!

LINK: The Foundry Announces Management Buyout

Since NAB, we’ve heard rumors from around the world that The Foundry was no longer going to exist as a company due to financial problems at Digital Domain. However, to steal a quote from Mark Twain, the reports of The Foundry’s death are greatly exaggerated. Thankfully for artists and those who wish for a diverse software market, The Foundry has announced that they are independent once again….

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The next 12 to 18 months should be critical as several major players will most likely replace their Shake pipelines or begin the transition to a new compositing software package. On the Toxik side, an OSX version was supposed to ship in March and is now about two months overdue. Layoffs at Autodesk towards the end of last year and recently have impacted all areas, including each of their products’ development staff. Eyeon has been improving their Generation app while development continues on Fusion 6, which was announced at SIGGRAPH 2008 but hasn’t shipped yet. These aren’t easy economic times for any company, as spending on upgrades and purchases has declined dramatically in the last 6 months.

This is really great news. And I’m very excited to see The Foundry continue to thrive and dominate the market with Nuke.

avatar e3

avatarmoviegame1

The flood of news is starting to pour in from E3. And so far, one of the show stoppers was of course, James Cameron’s video game adaptation of ‘Avatar’. The promises are great, and honestly I’m more than a little bit skeptical. But will this decade long experiment work? Or will it fall short like so many before it. I really don’t know which side of that fence I fall on yet. But you can’t deny that James Cameron is a fierce visionary. Check out the Ubisoft presentation below for more details from the man himself.

A stereoscopic video game?! That’s either going to blow my mind or hurt my eyes like hell. But again, only time will tell. So while we wait, check out the concept art for both the film and game. It looks pretty incredible. Though I still have no idea what the hell the film is about. But it sounds pretty close to his Cameron’s original treatment.

LINK: Summary of the Avatar Scriptment

We begin on planet Earth a hundred years hence, and it’s pretty depressing. The planet’s ecosystem has been so exploited by humankind that it can barely even shelter us any longer. Stripmining, air pollution, and every other form of exploitation and abuse have lead to mankind living in a tired world. “A cross between THX-1138 and a Calcutta train station,” says the scriptment.

avatar-creature

avatarmoviegame2

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do you have the tools #2

So by a show of hands who all saw ‘Drag Me to Hell’ this weekend?

Ok, well I’m not actually sure if anyone is raising their hands or not. So I’ll just take a wild guess based on the box-office and say ‘Me too!’ Now normally this would be the point where I talked all about the VFX in the film, and give you a bunch of links to read further. But since this is generally a 90% recycled blog (because I’m lazy), I’m at the mercy of all the other VFX sites out there who have much more time to actually write articles about this stuff. So…we’ll save that for another day.

Anyways while we wait, I wanted to also write a post talking about all the tools that I use as a VFX artist day to day. Hell that MOST of the artists I know use actually. So to start off, lets talk about something that every VFX artist would kill for rather than be without…

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1) VLC Player / HULU / YouTube

After years and years of watching television, movies, and playing video games it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that VFX artists typically have a short attention span. Not in a bad way really. We’re constantly just multitasking between coding, rendering, comp’ing, you name it. And we do that for long hours at a time. So what keeps us from going insane? Streaming videos and DVD box sets. I’m not sure if everyone is like this, but for me personally when I have a good movie playing I swear I’m just more productive. Seriously! Ok well maybe not, but at least I’m happier. And in the end, isn’t that all that matters?

LINK: VLC Player

LINK: HULU

LINK: YouTube

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2) Sequence 911

Got a image sequence that’s all out of wack? Need to dump a bad frame but don’t want a sudden jump? Well Sequence 911 is coming to your rescue.

LINK: Sequence 911

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3) Google Reader

It’s important to say on top of what’s going on in the industry. And I have a lot of VFX blogs that I read each morning. And I mean A LOT. 80+. Which is a lot of content to sift through to say the least. Now I could open up every blog in a tab and just take the time to see what’s new. But that would take FOREVER, and I don’t think my supervisor would be all too happy if that’s what I spent most of my day doing. So thank God for Google Reader.

LINK: Google Reader

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4) DropBox

DropBox is a life saver. Plain and simple. It allows me to sync all the work I do at home with my computer at the studio. And saves me tons of time and frustration since I never have to deal with thumbdrives or wondering if I have the latest file. It’s all there. And as easy as dragging and dropping a file into a folder. So if you’re a VFX’er who does a lot of work at home as well as the studio…seriously get this program installed. It’s awesome.

LINK: DropBox

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5) Notepad ++

You wouldn’t think it, but a good code editor is pretty hard to find. Sure you have Notepad…but honestly, that program will cause you more headaches than anything when you’re writing python tools or tcl. Notepad ++ however is perfect. It highlights your syntax for debugging, suggests code based on the file extension of your project file, pretty much everything you need when coding. And you know what the best part about it is? It’s free!

LINK: Notepad++

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Now I know what you’re thinking. Only 5? Certainly you use more than just 5 tools! Well you’d be right!

And in next week’s ‘Do You Have The Tools’ post I’ll do another top 5 list of essential tools for every VFX artist out there. So stay tuned!

But in the mean time if you have any tools you use that I haven’t included please leave a comment! I’ll check it out and add it to one of the coming week’s lists!

Until then, remember…hugs not drugs.

do you have the tools?

Good flow chart skills is a necessity for VFX artists out there who design pipelines like myself. Usually people just think of us using high-end 3D or compositing software. But that’s just not the case.

Excel, Word, etc. All of these programs are indispensable when you work at a studio. They help everyone stay on the same page of a project at any given moment. But there has always been a gap when it comes to flow charts. I’ve never  come across any software out there for this task that’s both easy to use and cheap when it comes to making charts. That is until this online flow chart software Lovely Charts debuted!

It’s a great example of a new online trend called server side software. An offshoot of cloud computing. And I really think we’re going to be seeing more and more of this type of software in the future. The benefits of having access to tools like these anywhere in the world, and on any medium is just too powerful to ignore. Another favorite software of mine is a online Photoshop alternative called Pixlr. It’s not nearly as versatile as Adobe’s software, but just give it some more development time and I think everyone will be surprised with the capabilities of this free online sister tool.

Now that’s all well and good but back to the main question at hand. “How are flow charts useful to a VFX artist?” Well quite simply, it allows an artist to map out the whole CG pipeline from previs to finaled shot. While at the same time brainstorming solutions to problems that will likely come up along the way. And simultaneously organize all the sub-tasks that get you from A to B. You can then spread this pipeline diagram out to the whole studio and allow everyone to adopt this new approved process. However, this isn’t a end all be all solution by any means. And Murphy’s Law will always rear it’s ugly head. So you need to keep your pipeline flexible. But it saves a ton of time rather than going to each and every person and explaining the who, what, why, and how.

Wanna see an example? Well here’s a flow chart I made this morning in honor of the new Ghostbusters video game coming out on June 19th.

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So if you want to speed up your pipeline, flow chart that sucker out! And that’s my little VFX insider tip of the day. If you have any questions about my ramblings, leave me a comment below!

the foundry speaks, and we listen

The Foundry gave some more details about the new versions of Nuke coming up, v5.2 and of course v6. What I’m personally the most excited about are the changes coming to paint and roto. For years the biggest thing Nuke was lacking was a reliable and easy to use paint node. Now it looks like we’ll have it towards the end of the year!

There’s also going to be a brand spanking new 3D Tracker. Which will allow us Nuker’s out there to actually matchmove shots! Something that the Nuke community has been wanting for a while. Now I’m sure it won’t be replacing tried and true applications like Boujou, Syntheyes, or PFTrack anytime soon. But the fact the Foundry is continuing to live up to it’s promise to carry on Digital Domain’s original mission to build a Compositor that’s made by artists FOR artists. Well that just makes me love Nuke and The Foundry all the more.

Can’t wait to get my hands on the beta!

LINK: The Foundry announces Nuke 5.2 and 6/6x

Nuke 6.0’s direction has been led by artist feedback and incorporates a completely new shape rotoscope and paint toolset based on a rewritten core curve library and new RotoPaint node. This release introduces a flexible, non-destructive, layer based paint hierarchy integrated with Nuke’s animation and tracking capabilities and supporting per-object attributes such as blending modes and motion blur.

carousel

What do you get when you mix cops, clowns, and bullet time? Well we get this great short from director Adam Berg, Phillips, and the London based VFX house Stink Digital.

LINK: Carousel – A Cinema 21:9 Production

Created entirely by Stink Digital, this new interactive campaign promotes Philips latest entrant into the television market, the CINEMA 21:9. Since the televisions 21:9 frame lends itself so readily to film, our friends at Tribal DDB, Amsterdam commissioned us to create a piece of filmed content that could hold its own with Hollywoods best. Director Adam Berg responded with an idea for an epic frozen moment cops and robbers shootout sequence that included clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, and plenty of broken glass and bullet casings.

This epic film is the centrepiece of the project. On its own, it clocks in at a (totally coincidental) two minutes and 19 seconds, but Berg conceived it to work as an endless loop. Visitors to the microsite therefore have the option to spin through the films single take shot repeatedly, to stop on a specific frame, or to watch it at the preordained speed. The film also contains embedded hotspots, which, when triggered, transport the viewer seamlessly from the heavily posted film to a behind-the-scenes version of the same shot. This constant moving between two layers of reality proved one of the projects biggest and most ambitious production challenges. Other details of the online execution play off the cinematic theme; the microsites loader doubles as a credit sequence, while rich media takeover banners drive traffic to the site by teasing viewers with an original Carousel trailer. All aspects of the production, from the film shoot to web design and development, were conducted by Stink Digital.

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a manhattan project

DigitalContentProducer.com posted a lengthy article talking about the effects work done for Dr. Manhattan in the upcoming ‘Watchmen’.

LINK: Dr. Manhattan Project

To create the Dr. Manhattan character for Watchmen, Director Zack Snyder and Visual Effects Supervisor John “D.J.” Des Jardin opted to build actor Billy Crudup a motion-capture suit that incorporated a densely packed mesh of blue LEDs in order to provide an interactive light source on set consistent with the character’s nature. They then used Crudup’s live-action performance as reference for a largely hand-crafted CG character, which was built at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

This just further solidifies how cool LEDs are. And how cool Imageworks is as well!

the mirrors edge

Ok, this completely blew my mind this morning. Andrew Hicks, Professor of Mathematics at Drexel University in Philadelphia, has invented a new kind of mirror. Now that really doesn’t sound like a big task, until you see his mirror that DOESN’T reflect a mirror image.

Non-reversing mirror

This mirror does not produce a “mirror” image, making it possible to read reflected text normally.

Hicks, a mathematician at Drexel University, Philadelphia, used computer algorithms to generate the mirror’s bizarre surface, which curves and bends in different directions. The curves direct rays from an object across the mirror’s face before sending them back to the viewer, flipping the conventional mirror image.

As well as neat tricks like this, Hicks’ models make it possible to design mirrors that provide wide angled-views or eliminate distortion.

How crazy is that?! It’s hard to even imagine how big of an impact such a relatively simple concept could have on our daily lives. Let alone the VFX industry.

For example, one thing that we use and make every day at Speedshape are panoramic images used for image mapping, HDR lighting, photogrammetry, and other environment creation techniques. This is done by using a pan head that pivots around the focal center of your camera, and then taking a series of photographs that we later assemble onto panels and clean up using specialized software like Adobe’s Photoshop or Autodesk’s Stitcher.

But if Andrew Hicks has his way, we’ll be using his new Parabolic mirror that reflects a full 360° panoramic along the horizon view without any distortion. Check it out…

Parabolic mirror

Any shiny convex surface, like a Christmas tree bauble, can reflect a wide panoramic image. But objects are distorted so that they change size as they move across the reflection, even if their distance from the reflecting surface is constant.

This panoramic mirror reflects a full 360° along the horizon view without any distortion. As long as an object is at the same distance from the mirror, it appears the same size wherever it is reflected.

And that’s just plain freaking cool if you ask me.

LINK: Reflecting on a new generation of mirrors

Mathematician Andrew Hicks designs unusual mirrors that reflect wide panoramas or even show text the right way round