Visual Effects

Hoax Co-Founder Alexis Nelson to Speak at Careers in Digital Media Forum

Thu, 01/09/2014 - 14:46 -- Nick Dager

Alexis Nelson, co-founder and executive producer of Hoax Films, will take part in a panel discussion focused on careers in digital media in an event hosted by the Los Angeles chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH and Otis College of Art and Design. “Careers in Digital Media 2014” will feature managers and recruiters from some of the visual effects industry’s leading companies. They will offer insights into the career outlook in games, broadcast, television, film and other media, and provide the inside scoop into where the jobs are and where they aren’t.

A Conversation with VFX Producer Richard Thwaites

Tue, 12/17/2013 - 16:54 -- Nick Dager

Producers are the unsung heroes of the visual effects industry. Working on the periphery, their contributions aren’t always acknowledged, but their role as project manager, budget overseer, client advocate and cheerleader to the visual effects team is essential to the success of the project. If artists are the gears that drive the visual effects engine, producers are the grease that allows the gears to turn smoothly.

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Rising Sun Pictures
Richard Thwaites
The Wolverine
The Great Gatsby

Thinkbox Software Announces Krakatoa for Maxon Cinema 4D

Tue, 12/17/2013 - 16:34 -- Nick Dager

Thinkbox Software has acquired code to bring its particle renderer, Krakatoa, into Maxon’s Cinema 4D modeling and animation software. Initial efforts to link the plug-in with Cinema 4D were led by Ugly Kids artist Daniel Hennies, who collaborated with a developer to program a bridge to the stand-alone version of Krakatoa. Leveraging the C++ API of Krakatoa SR, Hennies and a small team were able to fully integrate the particle renderer with Cinema 4D and first demoed the technology at SIGGRAPH 2013.

Luma Pictures Breathes Life into Thor’s Stone Man

Fri, 12/13/2013 - 15:08 -- Nick Dager

The challenge of bringing Marvel's Thor: The Dark World to life involved many creative people working simultaneously in The United States and Australia. Many of the film’s signature creatures were realized by the teams at Luma Pictures in offices in Santa Monica, California and Melbourne, Australia. One particular highlight for this movie was the Stone Man.

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Thor: The Dark World
Luma Pictures
Autodesk Maya

Thinkbox Releases XMesh MY Geometry Caching Tool for Maya

Sun, 12/08/2013 - 12:05 -- Nick Dager

Thinkbox Software has released XMesh MY, a geometry caching plug-in for Autodesk Maya. Designed to streamline animation and visual effects production pipelines, XMesh is a set of tools for saving animated scene geometry in a condensed format that yields smaller files for faster loading, manipulation and sharing across facilities and applications. Also compatible with Autodesk 3ds Max, the robust and scalable multi-threaded solution allows artists to quickly open, share or receive computer generated assets from internal studio departments or external facilities.

Canon “Witness Cameras” Helped Create Iron Man 3

Tue, 12/03/2013 - 12:49 -- Nick Dager

Marvel’s Iron Man 3 thrilled audiences with astonishing visuals, many of which were created by superimposing computer graphic imagery on to live-action stunt footage. Challenged by the precise matching those visual elements required, the Iron Man 3 effects team relied on six Canon EOS C300 Cinema cameras as “witness cameras” for accurate close-up tracking of stunt actors’ movements. The footage captured using Canon EOS C300 cameras was then used by visual effects facilities as a reference to convincingly overlay photorealistic CGI of Iron Man armor and other imagery on to main-camera footage.

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Canon EOS C300 camera
Canon CN-E Series Cinema Prime lens
Canon’s CN-E Series Cinema Zoom lens

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