Nuke ‘n’ Jam

12:58 hours
Art Director eats sticky jam donut.

13:00 hours
Art Director notices some compositing work on a nearby screen requiring some of his indispensable noodling attention.

13:01 hours
Art Director jabs at offending item on the screen with jam covered finger.

13:02 – 13:23 hours
Hapless Nuke compositor spends 21 minutes painstakingly removing jam from £1,000 Eizo CG241 to preserve the precious delicate antiglare coating.

Jam Removal Cost: £10.85

Digital Domain Plans $115 Million IPO

Quote:

Visual-effects giant Digital Domain (DD) is looking to raise up to $115 million in an IPO this summer. The company plans to use the money to help fund an ambitious expansion in scope of Digital Domain’s operations, including an aggressive move into production and marketing of feature films and an educational partnership with Florida State University (FSU).


Continued:
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news…nes/13177.html

Dendelion Blu celebrates its first birthday. Did it release a film you like??

Guys!

Check out this news announcement!

My little company Dendelion Blu became 1 year old today

It made a film called I Hate which you’re more than welcome to check out & comment – both harshly & favourably, depending on you

Maybe one day my company will be able to add vfx to its process, which I’d really like!

Happy there’s a new film making company working & making films??

Why is Steven Spielberg fixated with aliens??

This is a blog entry where I try to answer a question that’s been ringing in my mind for a long time:

Why is Steven Spielberg fixated with aliens??

I actually came up with an answer even I wasn’t expecting!

What do you think?

Edoardo
Movie Producer
Dendelion Blu

Are small films defeating big films?

In my blog I talk about why I think The Hurt Locker is more relevant than Avatar

I loved both movies

Given the nature of this forum, do you guys agree / disagree?

Best

Edoardo
Movie Producer
Dendelion Blu

cmiVFX Releases SideFX Houdini Hip Tricks Volume 3 Training Video

cmiVFX Releases SideFX Houdini Hip Tricks Volume 3 Training Video
High Definition Training Videos for the Visual Effects Industry

Princeton, NJ (May 12, 2011) – cmiVFX launches its latest training for the SideFX Houdini premiere digital visual effects animation software package. If two were not enough, we come back with the highly anticipated third, killer sibling, for the series! Following the amazing success of the first two titles from cmiVFX Hip Tricks, we bring another blockbuster release for you to master! Everything you want to know, delivered fast and furious, (as usual) through our ground breaking, ever evolving web based delivery player system. In this video, you’ll learn how to make production ready user friendly tools that will captivate your audience, time and time again. We are turning the Houdini world upside down, bringing a fresh look into its amazing tool set. As a testament to the power and flexibility of Houdini, we’ll try to keep it simple and comprehensible by encapsulating some of the higher end film techniques Houdini is famous for. If your dream is to do the impossible, Houdini is the software for you to achieve your objectives and cmiVFX is the trainer for you to achieve your inner greatness.

Our trainers are our customers, and our customers are our trainers. We supply training to the worlds top facilities, as well as educational and government institutions. Our staff members are cleared by the FBI for advanced training in fluid dynamics for homeland security. Our client list includes Pixar, Disney, ILM, Lucas, Tippet, Blur, Ubisfoft, Microsoft, Apple, JUST TO NAME A FEW). We train more international trainers for more software then any other online conglomerate.

Here at cmiVFX we maintain a current training library for the latest versions of popular software titles. When it comes to high end CG and VFX training, there is only once choice… cmiVFX!

Don’t forget about the cmiSubscription plan! Get one today. cmiVFX launched the most affordable subscription plan in Visual FX Training History for only $299 USD, and if you were a subscriber, this New Training Release would already be in your account. This video is also available a-la-cart in our brand new HTML5 player system.

Short Description
Welcome to the highly anticipated "HIP Tricks" Volume 3 video, created by CMIVFX and Varomix. A partnership like no other, this joint venture shows the true camaraderie that builds a solid CG pipeline. There is a reason that cmiVFX stands alone in the high end market…. IT’S NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART! We will work with ANYONE that has some fantastic techniques to offer… wether it is a student half way around the world, or another training company that wants to work with us on a video title. We hand pick together the brightest, most exciting people to make the best training the world has to offer. This time we get deeper and deeper into Houdini combining different techniques to get awesome results. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the show!

||||||||||||||||||||| Houdini HIP Tricks Volume 3 ||||||||||||||||||||||
http://store.cmivfx.com/tutorials/vi…ricks+Volume+3

Alien Crop Field Designs
Play the role of the young Alien Graffiti artist and create outstanding designs on crop fields! We`ll emulate crop field designs right within Houdini, in a simple, easy to understand lesson that any level of artist can follow. The technique we`ll learn allows you to quickly apply a lot of different effects, such as foot prints to your custom shots. You`ll be able to start using a basic text file as guide or a complex image file directly in your crop field system. This project open up doors, (or should we say celestial gateways?), to other effects related to our source material.


Making Hip Art
Hip Art is well known for its beautiful repetitions. The technique uses tons of repetition and the subtle changes to express the individual artists minds in a way that is perfect for Houdini. Taking all of this into consideration, it becomes a perfect subject for our studies. Using both Houdini geometry displacements and render time displacements, we will make some images that will open your mind to a brand new kind of experience and help add a phenomenal amount of details to your projects.

Simple Crowd System
This simple crowd system will get you started on creating complex shots for your animations in a heart beat. It has a solid, easy to understand base for you to add crowds to any scene you desire. We’ll learn how to create different levels of proxy geometry directly from the high resolution source without loosing the main shape of the character. Alongside that, you`ll learn how to add randomness to get away with having repeating actions on your characters and avoid having them looking all the same, which is a common problem with first timers when building crowd systems. We’ll also prepare our system to adopt any custom character you might want to use. You can also use instances for particles and/or delayed loading. Get your crowd shots working flawlessly with some expert tips from Varomix!

Alvaro Castañeda
Alvaro Castañeda, best known as "Varomix" is a 33 years old CG Generalist TD. He lost a little of his self back in 1993 at a Jurassic Park screening, and that totally changed his life. Toy Story finished the job in 1995 – there was no turning back!. He started his way in 3D back in 1998, first using 3ds Max, then Cinema4D and finally in 1999, he met Maya 2.0. Since then he has done CGI for print, web, TV, Film, DVD, I guess anything that has pixels in it!. He started using Houdini in 2002 shortly after Side Effects launched the Houdini Apprentice Program. He had also done on-set VFX Supervision and DOP Assisting.


Project Contents
All cmiVFX videos come with all the training materials you can need right from our website. No matter what time of day, your location, or how your feeling, cmiVFX will be there waiting for you!

This video is available today at the cmiVFX Store: http://store.cmivfx.com/

About cmiVFX
cmiVFX is the leader in High Definition Video Training for the Visual Effects Community. Register for FREE and receive hours of FREE content at the cmiVFX Video-on-Demand Player. ( http://store.cmivfx.com/login ) For additional information about cmiVFX, visit http://www.cmivfx.com. © 2010 cmiVFX | cmiStudios. All rights reserved.

How well do you see colour?

Found this neat little colour test.
The lower your score the better. I got 4!

http://www.xritephoto.com/ph_toolfra…action=coloriq

It seems that 1 out of 255 women and 1 out of 12 men have some form of colour vision deficiency.

Favorite 3d Modeling Poll

Autodesk 3dsmax
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Softimage
Newtek Lightwave
Maxon Cinema 4D
SideEffects Houdini

Outsource:Western talent & Entry Level positions

This was asked from here:
http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/western…es-t31600.html
Specifically:
http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/showpos…18&postcount=6

Feel you need to discuss this or see it get discussed ? Got solutions ? apprehensions ?
Well heave at it here.Get your buddies,colleagues,sups to chime in.

If at all this problem exists (or will in the future),and even if it’s more pertinent to Hollywood,we’re looking for solutions for that lil guy.

This ^could^ get hot so lilly prissy’s be warned…

i’ll bite.
Q: Do we have a situation ?

Looking from the outside(USA) i’m getting mixed signals.The pro’s seem to have their hands full and while they may acknowledge it’s tough to get those first few gigs, they’re not crying doom and gloom.

Q: If roto / paint gets outsourced (and lets assume it’s done satisfactorily) does that leave the junior holding the bag ?

Monologue:
A:If roto / paint is the bed-rock of compositing
and
B: it’s going to cost 1/6 to get it done(right) outside
Then yes, there could be a problem.
but can the comp profession still be called the same if magically Roto / Paint is not needed or made redundant by technology.If that happened(hypothetically) then where would the entry level start at ?
Are we so confident that Roto / Paint is not going to become a vestige any time in the future.
How many times this year have you written a Pen-n-ink letter to…anyone

Q:Got Solutions ?

Top-Down:
Mentorship
Get involved and bring up deserving kids through the ranks.
Expect Much-More from student reels and reject 90% of stuff that comes from institutes.Tell them(institutes) their output(via students) stinks.
I’ve made a habit of this and off course don’t get invited to their parties…
Raise the bar to entry and offer assistance.

Recommend each other(segue into from point above):
There’s a some big schools and a few big wigs heading their programs but only a handful of senior talent from the industry to mentor kids.

It’s time the money goes into your pocket.Between gigs or even over weekends offer to help get some aspiring junior’s game up.
We can help set up an exchange right here on vfx talk.
Not a charity thing by the way.
who’d not want some IN time getting critique on a shot or a specific approach from these guys(just top of my head) Aruna,Andreas,Gentle-fury,Void,Hugh,Deke… man that list can go northwards but the list of students is magnitudes more.

Bottom-Up:
Meet n greet
Hey you google eyed Hollywood enamored kid !
Did you ever-consider making a genuine attempt with meeting up with artist(s) before you finished your course / reel.

Too scared,too ignorant,too poor ? Which ?
If you can pay the big bucks to some institute why not save some money in the piggy-bank and get a real artist on the line help get your stiff ass into gear.
Here’s a hint pay 1/3 that amount to some of the guys here and i dont know what they wont tell you.
Just dont expect everything to come free or delivered to your doorstep.
And no, all the free pirated DVD’s in the world wont help you either(we know who you are).

Up the game:
Why are kids trying to aim for the least common denominator i.e roto / paint.
Just because you want to get your name in the cred list of a big feature and want the path of least resistance ? or is that the only way into Comp land…so far.
Well maybe that’s how it always happened and will last a couple of years but perhaps you should be aiming a bit higher and deciding to invest in this career a bit longer.
If the biggest grossing movies require vast amounts of eye candy surely there’s palce for a few more CGI guys (lighter’s,TD’s,etc) than just roto guys correct.Why not look at doing the harder grey matter stuff ?

Too poor ?
orrly, where you reading this from then.Ethiopia !
Again, you want to do this vfx thing so badly and don’t wan to get ripped off.Perfectly acceptable.but don’t keep playing that cash strapped poor lil kid card.That’s a allaby for the outsource guys.
(Yes i said it and we can go mano-a-mano here or elsewhere if you want to )
Try finding out what interests you and research what you want to learn. Hit up imdb.Get e-mails and start sending out requests to mentor you.Only don’t lie and say you don’t have the money,time,resources.

I’ve always asked my self this hypothetical question.
If i really really wanted to say for e.g have Dennis-Muren ( http://www.facebook.com/DennisMuren ) or Todd vaziri ( http://fxrant.blogspot.com/ ) mentor me what would i have to do ?
i’d save money up for a flight and go meet them(or serendipitously run into them) and drop as much cash at their feet as i could have saved and said…Mentor me…please ! i stay at the other end of the ^un-privileged^ world but i’m crazy enough to take that chance if i burned enough with the desire to hack this vfx thing.

That’s sounds like extreme kow-towing hyperbole but are you sure you cant work a deal directly with the 1000’s of talented artists around the globe.
Think about it.

I hope everybody that reads this contributes in a positive way.
Looking back i might have made some weak arguments,been incoherent at places and made some false (unintended) insinuations.But it’s a start.
There’s no doubt it’s a global market and it would seem politically impolite to admit wanting to hold on doing what you love doing, where you already are.
So help yourselves here and suggest changes 😉

b

Realtime Skin Shading in iPhone!

Hi Friends !

Im currently doing a deep research in realtime human skin tones recognition.

Im testing my realtime shaders writen in OGLSL on family of products called Krommy running on the iPhone iOS.

Because openGL ES ( mobile ) does not support 3D textures on the iOS, i need to implement a way to wap a 3D lut trough a 2Dtexture to inject de 3D Lut data to openGL shaders via an standar 2D texture.

You cant watch some videos here>

http://www.youtube.com/user/KrommyTV?blend=1&ob=5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyV7MAvkaa4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWqhWNv9oXU

and of course download an app and give some feedback here>

http://itunes.apple.com/es/app/leopa…430226869?mt=8

Grettings !:D