Awesome new term listings are up at FXPHD.com for the July 08 term and man what a stellar listing of training you can take. Some of the highlights for me are the Stop motion /Miniatures , Afx 301 with Mark Coleran/Mark Christensen on screen UI , Tim Clapham back with C4D/AE goodness,RED ,Nuke, Matte painting and just way to many good ones to keep listing. All together there about 15 brand new classes with some popular classes being revisited for those new to FXPHD. Those of you worried about having access to some of the higher end software like Nuke and Maya do not worry FXPHD has VPN access for some of the classes on both Mac and PC.
I have said it many times that since joining FXPHD over a year ago that it has been a HUGE plus for me and have made a bunch of friends and contacts. The classes are beyond high end and no one is doing anything near the level that FXPHD does . Being able to have contact with other industry pro’s is tremendous bonus . People have asked to just have access to the forums alone , that says something for the community, professors and staff at FXPHD. Do yourself a favor and check out the info on the main page and keep and eye out for the 0 week class which will probably be up in a week or so .
Renowned providers of online training for VFX professionals - Fxphd – have teamed up with The Foundry to bring you ‘The Compositor’s Guide To Nuke’. fxphd.com professor, Sean Devereaux, takes you through the core elements of this powerful compositing application.
I have been a post grad at FXPHD since early 2007 and the level at which they do everything is at a higher caliber then anything out there for training in the visual effects,post production,3d and motion graphics field. The new summer term is coming up in about a week so check out the 0 or zero week sneak peek that will be up on the site(link below). FXPHD partners with so many great professionals in so many mediums from Stu Machwitz(Prolost),Mark Christensen(Flowseeker) and way to many heavy hitters in the post ,vfx and 3d industry.The training on Nuke has been especially good being that Shake has been left to wallow (even though still heavily used by me and alot of others). The Foundry has stepped it up nicely with Nuke 5 and a nice revamp to the UI and so many other features I will just let you be the judge . If you are into learning about editing,compositing,RED,Maya,Motion tracking ,3d, Color ,Cinema 4d(the list goes on) it would be in your best interest to check out FXPHD.COM
I have been waiting a few months for this to come out while keeping tabs on the development stages of this customizable playback software.Tweak Software is releasing RV, the company’s first commercially available software package, announced Seth Rosenthal, founder and president. RV is a highly customizable cross-platform image and sequence viewer that is capable of playing back uncompressed film resolution clips. Free downloadable trial versions of the software are available upon request at Tweaksoftware.com
RV is a real-time, film resolution, high-dynamic-range image and sequence viewer for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The application can play back uncompressed film resolution sequences, and includes native support for stereo 3D. RV combines a flexible architecture and a hardware accelerated compositing pipeline with a lean, polished design tailored to professional digital artists.
Key Features of RV:
Real-time playback for desktop, dailies and projection
Customizable, extensible architecture
Real-time hardware color correction
High dynamic range, floating point image pipeline
Advanced color management with support for OpenExr style linear-light scene-referred workflow
Native stereoscopic 3D support
RVIO—a stand alone batch image-processing tool to convert, conform, slate, color correct and composite image sequences
Comparison, tiling, compositing and playback of any number of sources
Multi-channel audio with real-time floating point re-sampling
Open source session file format (with Python/C++ tools)
RV is the first application to be commercially released from Tweak Software. It was developed by artists, for artists, to handle the company’s own high-end VFX projects. Founders Jim Hourihan and Seth Rosenthal spun off Tweak Software from Tweak Films in 2007. Tweak Films earned a VES Award for work on the memorable New York tidal wave sequence in The Day After Tomorrow and a Hong Kong Film award for VFX on Hero. The company established a reputation for tackling R&D intensive projects and has developed several proprietary VFX tools since it was founded in 2001.“High-end shops typically rely on home-grown playback tools that are hard to replace because they are deeply entwined in artist workflows,” explained Rosenthal.
“RV is very customizable and that makes it the first effective replacement for those proprietary viewers. But more importantly, if your work is all about images, you should have a great image viewer. Jim has a long history of creating refined tools for artists, and he designed RV from the ground up to be the kind of tool we wanted to use ourselves. RV has spread quite quickly in its pre-release form just through word of mouth, and based on feedback from our early adopters, we are taking the right approach.”RV is coming to market in a release version 3.4, having undergone multiple generations of development for internal use at Tweak Films. To date, RV has benefited Tweak’s projects as well as projects for a select group of major effects facilities, including WETA Digital, which adopted a pre-release version in 2006. RV is currently available directly through Tweak Software Tweaksoftware.com at the price of $299 per node locked license and $369 per floating license.
This is about 10 months old but man every time I find the link in my bookmarks I just have to laugh and cry at the same time. Here is to the saviors of long VFX nights and even shorter deadlines. The life of a Digital Grunt so sad but so true.
Wired has a nice read on the Dark Knight filming and how Dir. Christopher Nolan likes to do 8k home movie tests with IMAX cameras. He mentions how he likes to shoot as much practical shots as he can without using CG. This should be another great movie coming out this summer. Wired Story
In partnership with the Executive Producer of OFFF NY, I’m pleased to announce F5, a two-day festival of creativity taking place in New York City. Although the event won’t be until the spring of 2009, I want to put it on your radars now and encourage you to subscribe for updates on the F5 site. In addition to getting F5 news before everyone else, subscribers will get advanced access to ticket sales, which will be limited.I’m not going to say anything more about the event right now, except that it’s going to be amazing. F5 goes beyond just motion graphics into the fields of filmmaking, photography, graphic design, art, music, interactive design, advertising and experience design. The goal of F5 is to change the way you look at creativity, and in so doing, change the way you look at your work and your life.
You bet your butt I will be there and AENY will be supporting Justin @ Motionographer on this venture . Mark those 2009 calendars now it will be here before you know it.
Stan Winston, an Oscar-winning visual effects artist, has died at age 62.
Winston died at home Sunday evening after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma, according to a rep from Stan Winston Studio.
“Stan died peacefully at home surrounded by family,” a spokeswoman said.
Winston won three visual effects Oscars and earned multiple nominations. His first Oscar was for James Cameron’s “Aliens” (1986). Winston later won for “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1992) and 1993’s “Jurassic Park.“
One book I can’t wait to get my hands on is Ron Brinkman’s Second edition mega book The Art and Science of Digital Compositing Amazon Link . Ron has been in the compositing software game for a while being part of original Sony Imageworks employees then co founding Nothing Real which if you have followed Apple and compositing software Nothing Real created Shake which was then bought by Apple .I was fortunate enough to finally meet Ron and NAB and he couldn’t have been a more pleasant guy to talk to . Ron left Apple little over a year ago(similar when Shake stopped getting updates) and he is now working with The Foundry on Nuke(amazing compositing software).If you need some summer reading I would have to say pick up this book as Ron describes it this is the book he had wished he could have made with Vol 1 because of the updates to high quality photo printing . So if you are serious or interested in getting into visual effects as a career and need some knowledge pick up this book when it comes out .(seems shipments have been pushed back a few weeks to 1st week of July )Oldie but goodie interview back from 2002 with Ron done by Mike Seymour at Fxguide.com Fxguide interviewRon’s Blog
Hmmm something new to try on Tuesday’s post some inspiration on to you guys/gals that I find around which gets the creative juices going. Refused.tv looks to be a kick ass collective of directors (one of my favs is Rob “Whitey” McConnaughy and Aggressive) who are doing amazing work on the music video, commercial and visual effects front. I must fan out a little on Whitey’s work since he has made some of the all time best snowboard videos under Kingpin production with Brad Kremer (now with Mack Dawg productions amazing snow/skate vids as well). Whitey took most of his snow stuff off his site (too bad ) except for this gem of the Chris Coulter intro Chris intro .
So take some time to check out Refused’s site and check out some really good work from all the talented directors and let’s hope one day Whitey, Brad and the OG M3/South Lake crew will get back together for another kick ass snow flick. PS Whitey always had the best soundtracks in his videos. Links- Whitey’s SiteAggressive’s Site.
Inspiration is a good thing and when something comes along that inspires me wether it is music , art , video etc I have to share it. Even though Justin posted this on his site in April Motionographer.I feel the need to post it and share the work of Carlos Lascano. Carlos has a work in progress that blows my fuc**n mind seriously this guy has so much talent. So take some time out of your busy day to watch A Short Love Story in Stop Motion.I think I broke Quicktime watching it so much again today and choosing Sigur Ros makes me think Carlos has a great taste in music as well. Enjoy. A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.
Wired has a nice read on the Dark Knight filming and how Dir. Christopher Nolan likes to do 8k home movie tests with IMAX cameras. He mentions how he likes to shoot as much practical shots as he can without using CG. This should be another great movie coming out this summer. 
One book I can’t wait to get my hands on is Ron Brinkman’s Second edition mega book The Art and Science of Digital Compositing 
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