Whiskytree looking for Matchmove Artist


MatchMover for Whiskytree

Whiskytree, located in the Bay Area of northern California, offers visual effects, art department, retouching, and location capture services for film, games, and advertising.

We are currently looking for a MatchMover for a long-term project position.

Responsibilities:
• Create motion files that match the original background plate photography and convert the plate into various formats for use with specific software
• Work with basic line up geometry and associated scene data in order to ensure a good match with the scene

Requirements:
• Minimum 3 years of feature film experience
• A discerning eye for detail
• Expert knowledge of PFTrack
• Ability to work in a self-directed manner and in a collaborative team environment
• Self-starter with excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Knowledge of Softimage is a plus
• The aptitude to participate in all aspects of creating final shots

To Apply:
Send email to ro@whiskytree.com that contains the following:
• Subject line “matchmove submission – your name"
• A signed and scanned Whiskytree Inc Content Submission Agreement – www.whiskytree.com/static/files/WTCSA.pdf
• Your resume and cover letter
• A link to your website or portfolio

Or

Send postal mail that contains the following:
• A printed and signed Whiskytree Inc Content Submission Agreement – www.whiskytree.com/static/files/WTCSA.pdf
• A good old-fashioned paper resume with cover letter
• Demo reel

Attention:
Recruitment Offices
Whiskytree Inc
914 Mission AVE, 2nd Floor
San Rafael, CA 94901

No phone calls please

Sean Freeman

Sean creates typography and illustrations that are visually tactile.

Romain Laurent Photography

Romain Laurent Photography. His personal work shines. His editorial work sings.

Event Review – Vancouver Visual Effects Society 2010 Celebration

On November 20th, 2010, the Vancouver Chapter of the Visual Effects Society hosted their 4th Annual Celebration of Animation and Visual Effects at the District 319 theatre and lounge in Vancouver, BC.

The evening began with a catered cocktail party, with guests flowing back and forth between the bar & lounge and the gallery room, which featured demos by sponsors Annex Pro and Lost Boys Learning: School of Visual Effects. After guests took their seats in the theatre, VES Vancouver Chair Nancy Mott welcomed everyone to celebrate yet another year of great achievements. The recently renovated heritage building, formerly an abandoned Asian movie house, features oversized chairs and spotlit sculptures of the Terracotta Army lining the walls.

Master of Ceremonies, Jon Cowley (Eclipse, District 9, Watchmen, Smallville) kicked off the evening with a positive commendation to all the artists and people involved in the Vancouver industry, noting that Vancouver has reached a "critical mass", with solid growth and first-run projects. He spoke of new companies coming to Vancouver in the past year, including Digital Domain, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Pixar and Microsoft Game Studios.

Jon also emphasized calibre and quality; as the Oscar nominations for District 9 confirmed what we already knew, there is no lack of talent in Vancouver. He welcomed artists, supervisors, producers, HR talent and more at every level from all over the world, thanking them for blending their knowledge with ours, and in return, we introduced them to snowboarding and apparently, the back room at the Morrissey Pub.

After watching the Houdini demo reel from event sponsor Side Effects Software, featuring shots from feature films, commercials, student projects and videogame cinematics, Jon introduced Harry Mukhopadhyay, Lead FX Technical Director at MPC Vancouver. Harry led us through the making of Hades, a giant 12 foot tall fire demon from Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

Once the concept work was translated into a 3D model, facial movement and expression became paramount. The team used the ‘Mova CONTOUR Reality Capture’ system and integrated the data into MPC’s in-house motion blending tools and motion clips manager. Harry explained that it was important to stay as true as possible to the performance of actor Steve Coogan.

He also demonstrated the making of the layers of high resolution photo-realistic fire simulations that envelop the character. The team used Scanline’s Flowline software to simulate the fire, and then plugged into MPC’s rendering system to generate accurate illumination onto the character.

Next at the podium were Tom Cowland & Nigel Denton-Howes from Image Engine, leading us through their research and development process for the propietary Fur and Hair systems that were developed for the wolves and the character Victoria in Twilight: Eclipse. As their timeline permitted, they decided to design their own fur system to maintain more control and ability for modifications in the pipeline at any stage during production.

Tom and Nigel introduced us to their Cortex Project, an open source set of high quality C++ libraries and Python modules tailored for software development in the visual effects industry, available at http://code.google.com/p/cortex-vfx/. Image Engine uses many open source projects as part of their research and development efforts and in return are pleased to be releasing key components of their internal toolset back to the community.

One of the biggest changes in pipeline in visual effects over the past few years has been the re-emergence of stereoscopic presentation and the development of a number of different processes to work with live action and animation, on-set and in post. Project Manager for Stereoscopic Conversion Sean Konrad demonstrated the configurations for stereoscopic production used by Prime Focus on shows such as Clash of the Titans.

When Warner Brothers challenged Prime Focus to convert the feature to 3D in just eight weeks, they were quick to accept the challenge and set up a system using Fusion-io Drives and their propietary View-D process. Sean explained, “With typical VFX projects, we complete about 20-30 shots per day. The ioDrives scaled our data load capabilities by about twenty times. This improved our productivity about 2-4x."

In Vancouver there is a strong triad of the three sectors of visual effects, animation and videogames, and with such a tight community, many friends and associates across the board. Invited to join the Celebration from the animation sector was director Wilson Tang from Rainmaker Entertainment, presenting their short film for the Shanghai Expo, Cooper and Zinka. Although the project was produced with a commercial client (Teck) and various stakeholders from industry and government, Wilson succeeded in creating a visually stunning story using multiple animation techniques. He emphasized the creativity and teamwork in problem solving and look development, and demonstrated the use of practical elements such as cotton ball clouds and tin foil prairies to create a very Canadian landscape for the film.

Wrapping up the presentations was Paul Amer, Head of Art from BigPark (Microsoft Game Studios). Paul’s humorous presentation took us through the making of the interactive tiger character in Xbox 360’s new release Kinectimals. The game invites the player to build a friendship with some of the world’s most exotic creatures, such as the tiger cub in the demo. Paul showed a blooper reel of trial renders and their various errors to commands such as “jump,” “roll over” and “play dead”. Microsoft acquired Yaletown’s BigPark last year to focus on Xbox 360 and Kinect controller-free games.

More information about the Visual Effects Society and how to become a member is available on their website.

Sponsors for the 4th Annual Event included: Side Effects Software, Autodesk, Annex Pro, Compugen, Microsoft Game Studios, MPC, Image Engine, Prime Focus, Rainmaker, Digital Domain, Vidcom, Oceana, CIS Vancouver, Lost Boys Learning, DGC, EdgeCeptional Catering and BC Film Commission.

FIREBOMBS (Houdini Simulation)

Hi,
Here’s a shot I’ve realized with SideFX Houdini that I’ll put in my next VFX Reel.
The firebombs are on the style of 2012 movie,one of my favourite movie.
Hope you’ll like it,
Mirco

http://www.vimeo.com/17415668

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NukeX’s 3D tracker vs 3D Equalizer

For those who have used both, which one do you feel is better at 3D tracking?

Also what do you think of PfTrack in comparison?

Thanks in advance!

“Rotopaint got request for zero or negative-sized box” What it means?

Hi, I’ve an script that has lots of messages like this:

"CacheIop in PaintEngine in RotoPaint36 got request for zero or negative-sized box"

I think the cause of this message is causing lots of slowdowns in the script and I can’t figure out the problem.

Please, can anyone explain me what the message means and how to avoid it?

Thanks

file formats

why we use different types of file formats such as .tga, .jpeg, .sgi and so on not only that what is meant by cineon & .dpx why we uses these two formats. Finally what is YUV it gives richer colors than RGB

Sr. Lighting TD

A major Toronto based studio is accepting applications for:

– Sr. Lighting TD

Software: Renderman, Maya

Qualified applicants should have a minimum of 3-5 years Renderman experience.

This is a full-time position to commence on or about January 3, 2011.

To apply, please submit a cover letter and resume with a link to your online website/portfolio to:

toronto-resume@spinpro.com

Hard copy reel submissions to:

SPIN VFX TORONTO
ATTN: RECRUITMENT DEPT.
620 KING ST. WEST
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
M5V 1M6

www.spinpro.com

Due to the number of anticipated responses, only qualified applicants will be contacted.

NO PHONE CALLS OR DROP-INS PLEASE.

stretching on stabilizing

Sorry about the rather vague title. I’m new to Nuke (and here) and I’m trying to pick up a project that someone had halfway done. It’s a skin clean up shot 25 frames long but the shot is not editorially sequential i.e. 2 frames sequential, then skips about 10 frames, 2 frames so on…

Without going too far into the shot basically the previous person has stabilized the shot to minimise the animation of their fixes, and then matchmoved it down-stream. However, the stabilising process is causing the edges to stretch (much like when you wrap or tile something) where the tracking takes it out of frame. It’s not even the edge of the actual frame that’s being stretched.

I just need to know if there’s a way of stopping it doing that.

Thanks
Andrew