Hasta La Motion!

Wed 30th Jul 2014 | News

MAXON Computer, leading developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions, is excited to announce it will demonstrate its digital content creation technology at SIGGRAPH 2014 – the annual convention for computer graphics and interactive technology professionals, taking place August 12–14, at the Vancouver Convention Center.

SIGGRAPH 2014 Booth Highlights (Booth #1422)

During Siggraph, MAXON will provide attendees with the opportunity to see the latest Cinema 4D technology and the creative role the 3D software plays in broadcast motion graphics, feature film visual effects, video games, and multimedia projects. MAXON will also provide technology overviews of the company’s recent collaborations with Adobe (a light version of Cinema 4D is now available in Adobe After Effects CC), Side Effects Software, Vizrt, Thinkbox Software, and others, which bring MAXON customers new levels of integration and improve workflow productivity with access to other leading digital content creation toolsets.

A range of Cinema 4D motion designers, filmmakers, and programmers — ‘rock stars of digital innovation’ — from leading studios including Imaginary Forces, Zoic and Aixsponza will present in the MAXON exhibitor booth (#1422) and showcase high profile projects created with Cinema 4D software and reveal tips, techniques and workflow successes.

Guest artists scheduled to present at time of writing include:

Nick Campbell is the highly acclaimed 3D animator, photographer and motion graphics designer and force behind the super popular Greyscalegorilla site, an active community and resource providing Cinema 4D motion graphics tools and training. At Siggraph, Campbell will show attendees how to make multi-layered, photoreal textures in Cinema 4D.

Casey Hupke is an LA-based Art Director for the Commercial and Games Department at Zoic. At Siggraph, Hupke will bring his enthusiastic presentation style to show less common techniques in the Cinema 4D MoGraph toolset and also show how to add animations and style with X-particles, the blazingly fast, full-featured particle and fluid effects plugin for Cinema 4D users.

Tim Clapham, Director at Luxx in Sydney, Australia, will explore various projects created in Cinema 4D for clients such as HBO and Ubisoft, to demonstrate production proven techniques that facilitate creative workflow uninhibited by technical limitations

Josh Johnson is a freelance VFX Supervisor/Artist and founder of VFX Daily, a resource for VFX with an emphasis on Cinema 4D. Johnson has worked on a variety of projects including award winning feature films, commercials, music videos and the short film late for meeting and will share techniques with Siggraph attendees for creating VFX with Cinema 4D.

M dot Strange is an award-winning indie 3D animated feature film filmmaker and head of Mysterious Dolls Studios. He will demonstrate the techniques he used in Cinema 4D to streamline the 3D filmmaking process in his latest solo animated feature film project, I am Nightmare, including storyboarding, character animation, set building, lighting, rendering, and more.

Live Streaming from the MAXON Booth

MAXON will host a live stream from its SIGGRAPH booth on C4DLive (www.c4dlive.com) for live broadcasts and expanded information on guest presenters, presentation schedules, news from the show floor, and more. During live guest artist presentations, online attendees can send questions to artists in real-time.

MAXON Booth Location and Hours

The MAXON exhibit booth #1422 at SIGGRAPH 2014 is located in the West Building, Exhibit Hall B&C as follows:
Vancouver Convention Centre
1055 Canada Pl, Vancouver, BC V6C 0C3, Canada

Related links

MAXON

Discuss this on CGTalk

Speed 3D Inc. which was established in January 2014 in Taipei, Taiwan has released its first mobile app Insta3D, the world’s first app that can turn a single photo into a person’s identical and animated 3D avatar.

App users can also customise their own 3D avatars with different outfits, accessories, facial expressions, and animated body motions, allowing people to express their creativity and share their animated 3D avatars on social networks.

“Insta3D uses face detection and cloud computing technology to analyse the facial features in the photo to generate a 3D head model on the cloud. The 3D model then is quickly sent back to the end-user’s phone for further customisation. The whole 3D modelling process takes only 10 seconds under 3G or Wi-Fi connection,” said Speed 3D CEO, Marvin Chiu in a statement.

Along with this Insta3D also provides the app users hundreds of accessories, including glasses, hair styles, and outfits. The user can further improve the avatar’s personality by changing its mood – laughing, angry, sad, or surprised, and applying different animated body languages, such us cheering, dancing, and fainting movements to the avatar. The tailored 3D avatar then can be saved and shared as photo or video to impress friends and family on social networks.

“In the future, Insta3D will regularly release new contents with more accessories and body motions through In-App purchase to our users,” added Chiu.

In order to provide high quality contents in Insta3D app, Speed 3D has joined hands with the Next Media Animation, one of the largest animation studios in the world.

“Next Media has been producing 3D animation for many years and has accumulated a great variety of 3D models and actions. We look forward to witnessing Insta3D’s utilization of these contents in a whole new direction,” said Next Media Animation CEO, Kith Ng.

Speed 3D partners up with one of the top 3D printing service providers in Japan in order to deliver the 3D-printed personalized avatars for the customers. Insta3D users will soon be able to print out their own 8-inch avatars using the highest quality 3D printing technology.

Marvin Chiu said, “We have researched many 3D printing companies in Asia, and we were amazed by the impeccable quality delivered by iJet.”

“We truly believe Insta3D’s 2D-to-3D technology for people will become a huge trend in the future,” added President of iJet, Masaru Kumehara.

All the selfie freaks can download this app on iPhone, iPad and Android Phones.

When actors, chainsaws, and shark-filled tornadoes come together onscreen, it’s television magic. Such is the case with Sharknado 2: The Second One, which delivers even more excitement than the original Sharknado of 2013.

Behind the whirlwind accompanying the Sharknado phenomenon resides a group of talented artists at The Asylum in Burbank, California – all skilled at creating impressive visuals with LightWave 3D software.

“From the outset, the entire Sharknado 2 project was challenging but perhaps a little easier than ‘the first one,’” said Emile Smith, VFX supervisor on Sharknado 2. Smith credits LightWave 3D and its robust features to deliver final renders in a very short time. “We use LightWave for 99 per cent of everything. We used a lot of the new Dynamics tools as well as the TurbulenceFD plugin [from Jawset] to generate the actual Sharknado, which is exactly what you might think it is – a monster tornado, filled with amongst other things, hungry angry sharks.”

The opening teaser of Sharknado 2 takes place on an airplane in the middle of a storm. This presented the challenge of generating art-directable volumetric clouds that allowed the plane to fly through a ‘Sharknado’ before landing in New York. “This sequence brought in every effect we would use in the film, except for a water surface,” explains Smith. “There was a lot of digital double work for the latter part of the film and the volumetrics of the final Sharknado sequence will entertain for sure. Perhaps some people will even be impressed by how real the VFX looks. Of course, if it didn’t look real, it wouldn’t be funny.”

Placing debris (and the sharks) inside the cloud formation was where the crew started to have a lot of fun in LightWave. The creative brief called for the creation of an animatable 3D tornado; LightWave allowed the animators to animate the tornado before handing it over for simulation and rendering.

There’s a particular scene in the film where a single taxi completely surrounded by man-eating sharks is stuck on a flooded New York City street. Parts of the scene were shot on location, while other elements and environments were completely green screened. “The visuals tell the story of the two occupants climbing onto the roof of the cab while several sharks are swimming around and sizing them up,” says Smith. “With LightWave, the multiple elements in the passes and layers for this sequence came together quickly.”

“This project was on a very tight timeline. LightWave’s ease of use and really straightforward nature helped The Asylum crew hit the deadline we were presented with,” says Mark Hennessy-Barrett, VFX artist on Sharknado 2. “Because LightWave is a really forgiving piece of software to use, we were able to break the rules and take immense liberties in the rendering engine to get the job done and out the door.”

Prime Focus, the global media and entertainment industry services leader, is wooing audiences with its stunning visual effects in ‘Kick’, Salman Khan’s latest action thriller. The creative services provider has delivered around 1000 visual effects (VFX) shots, over a span of 90 days. Besides VFX, Prime Focus has also provided flawless Digital Intermediate (DI) services and supplied a wide range of equipment for the film’s production process.

Merzin Tavaria, Co-founder and Chief Creative Director, Prime Focus, said, “As a producer, we have worked on several projects with Sajid Nadiadwala in the past, but as a director it was an absolute delight to work with him on Kick. Having worked with Sajid before really helped us to understand his vision and recreate that on-screen; it was an extremely gratifying experience for the team.”

“One of the interesting sequences was of a camera pulling out backdrop of Poland city from Dr. Shaina Mehra’s window, Jacqueline Fernandez’s character in the movie. The sequences were shot against green screen considering the actual location in terms of lighting and camera movement, our challenge was to match seamlessly with this approach and create a backdrop of Poland that had consistency in each of the shots. With a variety of plates to work with, our team created a vast cityscape with buildings, street filled with traffic and people. And finally, the team had to match-move the live camera to achieve a realistic background movement that took care of various technical aspects such as depth of field and parallax. Another important shot includes the action packed robbery sequences which involved heavy custom layered compositing, the whole idea was to keep the VFX as seamless as possible, subtly blending in unnoticed – we wanted the VFX to be totally undetectable.” said Reupal Rawal, Prime Focus’ VFX Supervisor.

For the introduction shot of the character ‘Devil’, it was very important to create an impactful and power packed scene. To achieve this, the team did extensive compositing work on the shot and enhanced it with CG elements such as dust and shattering glass, for a real feel. In addition, extremely impactful CG was delivered to enhance the overall look of the scenes that included Salman Khan’s famous jump from the Palace of Culture and Science, a skyscraper in Warsaw, Poland.

Being a Salman Khan movie, it was very important that the film is a visual experience. To achieve that Prime Focus’ Sr. Colorist, Ashirwad Hadkar maintained consistency in the look to add that extra zing to the overall feel of the film. The movie has many catchy songs, each with a unique treatment. The team set a refreshing, upbeat, glossy and colorful tone that corresponds perfectly with the theme of the songs.

Vertex Volt is looking for skillful and enthusiastic artists for our Studio.

 We are well known for our visual effects and animation in Indian Television and Films.  Vertex Volt has made its mark as an innovator by filling its studio with masterful artists, cutting edge technicians and a dynamic management and support team. We are committed to creating an environment that nurtures creativity and rewards talent and determination. We are based in Andheri West suburb of Mumbai and have a friendly working environment.

Experience:

Roto artist : 0-1 year

Compositing: More than 1 year

Matte Painting: More than 1 year

Concept Artist: More than 1 year

Particle and Dynamics: more than 1 year

Modeling: more than 1 year

Texturing: 0- 1 year

Rigging: more than 1 year

Animation: : 0-1 year

Lighting & Rendering: more than 1 year

To Apply –

Email: career@vertexvolt.com / www.vertexvolt.com- career

Provide us with your Resume, Salary expectations and Showreel link.