Hasta La Motion!

Ross

VFXWar on CGTantra – Starts 1st August. Deadline – 15th September.

The Attacks begin on 1st August 2010 and the ravaged footage will have to be submitted on 15th September 2010. You have 45 days. The Contest allows an individual member or a team of 4 people to participate. It is open to students and professionals. The proceedings of the Battle have to be reported at base camp.

Follow the link and join the VFX War – http://vfxwar.cgtantra.com

Southpaw to Unveil New Asset Management Solution, TACTIC 3.0, at SIGGRAPH 2010

Southpaw Technology cures production chaos with more customizable reporting and scheduling, a more flexible interface, and a handful of new 3rd party integrations

Toronto, Canada – July 21, 2010 – Southpaw Technology, a leading developer of production digital asset management (DAM) technology for digital entertainment and enterprise companies, announced today that it will unveil TACTIC 3.0 at SIGGRAPH 2010. The brand new version will provide studios with a more open, flexible solution for speeding the creation of digital assets across highly complex digital productions, like those found in feature film, visual effects, animation, and cinematics studios.

TACTIC is four solutions in one. It combines asset management, workflow management, project management and communication tools into one dynamic Web-based, cross-platform solution. Battled-tested in some of the most demanding environments, TACTIC enables vast teams of artists and animators to work with terabytes of digital assets the way they want to, rather than forcing them into a specific workflow.

“TACTIC is the bedrock of our pipeline,” said Todd Jahnke, head of production at March Entertainment. “We use it for our production management, asset management, and overall pipeline solution. TACTIC also manages our communications with production partners spread across four countries. For March Entertainment, TACTIC is our solution to redefining what can be achieved in the production triangle of time, money, and quality.”

TACTIC 3.0 Highlights:
The main focus of TACTIC 3.0 is flexibility. Its highlights include:
–More intuitive and flexible interfaces that allow users to develop personalized screens to meet their unique workflow
–A powerful expression language that enables studios to mine and track production information from any internal system or application
–New and completely customizable reporting, scheduling and workflow features that transform mined data into useful, user friendly production information
–New integrations with the compositing application NUKE, the Adobe suite of creative tools, the Rush render queue system (beta) and IRIDAS FrameCycler (beta).

“As veterans of numerous digital productions, we recognize that no two productions environments are the same,” said Gary Mundell, CEO of Southpaw Technology. “Digital asset management systems that have any hope of managing the vast complexities inherent in so many disparate processes must use a solution that is flexible enough to adapt to any workflow, mine data from any application, creating any type of report, and be accessible from any location. That, in a nutshell, is TACTIC 3.0.”

Availability
TACTIC 3.0 will be on display at Southpaw’s SIGGRAPH 2010 booth, #205. It is available immediately for licensing. For additional information, please visit www.southpawtech.com, or contact Mary Jane Mundell at maryjane@southpawtech.com.

About Southpaw Technology Inc.
Southpaw Technology provides production asset management solutions to the media & entertainment and enterprise markets. Available as a web-based solution for Mac OSX, Windows and Linux, TACTIC combines all the functionality teams, departments and companies need to keep digital productions on track and on budget, including asset management, project management, workflow management and communication tools. For more information, please visit www.southpawtech.com.

© 2010. Southpaw Technology Inc. All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

‘Lock Out’ is written and directed by talented Irish filmmaking duo Stephen St Ledger and James Mather, the team behind the 2004 short ‘Prey Alone’. Their first foray into feature films is made with the backing of French Studio Europacorp headed by the acclaimed Luc Besson (I Love You Philip Morris, From Paris with Love) who will also produce the film.

‘Lock Out’ (previously entitled ‘Section 8’) takes place in a prison orbiting 50 miles above the earth. The prison houses 500 of the world’s most dangerous prisoners, who are kept asleep by sophisticated techniques until they suddenly awoken. The project boasts a $30 million budget.

Windmill Lane are thus commencing a recruitment drive for key VFX personnel. The drive is already attracting key UK industry interest and any individual interested in applying for any of the eight positions listed below should visit iftn.ie/jobs for further details and application instructions.

The positions Windmill are seeking to fill for ‘Lock Out’ are:

• Modellers
• Matchmover
• Texture Painter
• Lighting TDs
• TD Generalist
• CG Effects TD
• VFX Production Coordinator
• Compositors & Rotoscope Artists

More on this story at http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4283225&tpl=archnew s&force=1

Cinema 4D | Destruction Concepts
High Definition Training Videos for the Visual Effects Industry

Princeton, NJ (July 9th, 2010) – cmiVFX releases New Cinema 4D Destruction Concepts Training Video. This tutorial is designed to learn the basics of using image-based, projected textures with projection man, combined with creating a basic explosion and crumbling sequence that does not require a team of people, or weeks to put together.

cmiVFX breaks down each tool one by one with fast and easy chapter references designed for even faster muscle memory. cmiVFX continues to deliver the training and content you need, quickly, efficient and affordably.

When it comes to high end CG and VFX training, there is only once choice… cmiVFX! This video is available today at the cmiVFX store for a Special Introductory Price!

Cinema 4D – Destruction Concepts http://www.cmivfx.com/productpages/p…ction_Concepts

Introduction
This tutorial is a look into visual effects from a motion-graphics artists’ perspective. The goal is to learn the basics of using image-based, projected textures with projection man, combined with creating a basic explosion and crumbling sequence that does not require a team of people, or weeks to put together.

Image Setup and Projection
The beginning will go over the basics and implementation of the extremely easy-to-use "projection man" module built right into Cinema, that allows for mocking up, projecting, and baking images directly onto geometry. We will search for and pick an image with a very high resolution to allow for a high level of detail with our image-based materials. We will then learn how to prepare projection man, the camera, and the base material, so that we can continually add geometry without any additional setup. The benefits of using this method to texture objects are multifold; they are extremely fast to use in the viewport and renderer, are significantly easier to use than procedural textures built from layers, and can be taught to anyone even if your experience with materials is nil. The very best part about image-based textures is that if you use a high-resolution image, they are photorealistic automatically!

Baking Textures
We will begin by with creating a window and each of its parts, learn how to bake the texture into the geometry (convert the projected image to a UV map that can be applied to any object.) As our scene grows in size, we will apply layers for ease of organization and to allow us to "solo" certain objects or groups of objects for editing. Once we have created the main model with its projected textures, we will go on to mock up some of the surrounding objects, buildings, and the street to help flesh out the stylized scene and add contrast between the "main model" and the external scene.

Breaking Up
Once the geometry is all mocked up, we’ll have a look at breaking objects apart both by hand, and by using one of the many plug-ins available for the purpose that are popping up all over the place. There are benefits and downsides to both methods and both are important to use depending on the desired effect or outcome. For exacting precision, nothing beats the by-hand method. The main issue is that it is extremely time consuming. The plug-in method can be very quick to do, but may not yield the exact results needed, promoting a combination of the two methods for both speed and precision.

Explosion
We will then proceed to blow out the windows and the door in an initial explosion using the bullet dynamics built-in "glitch." Any time two objects are dynamically initiated but are overlapping (or inside one another) an explosion happens. Learn to begin harnessing this concept and make it work for you instead of the reverse. We will talk about density and rotational mass, and we will address how baking dynamics is extremely helpful, but can also be a pitfall if done too early on.

Crumble
After the blowout is complete, we will then break up the rest of the main building’s façade and crumble it to the ground in all its destructive glory! Using an on-collision setting in the dynamics tag, we will use the roof to trigger all the rest of the pieces crumbling and falling in a chain reaction. Everyone likes explosions and destruction, and with Modynamics, Cinema 4D has made it easier than ever before and faster than any equivalent 3d package. So strap on your safety goggles and prepare to be blown away!

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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. For additional information about cmiVFX, visit www.cmivfx.com . © 2010 cmiVFX | cmiStudios. All rights reserved.