Ninja Assassin - Trixter VFX Breakdown

http://www.awntv.com/videos/ninja-assassin-trixter-vfx-breakdown

Site of the Week - Aviator Visual Effects

In 2005, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator made it to the annual visual effects Academy Awards Bake-Off. In conjunction with the film's Bake-Off presentation, some of the key effects practitioners put together Aviator Visual Effects (http://aviatorvfx.com), an amazing behind the scenes website showcasing the digital, practical and miniature effects used in the film. 

The site, which has been kept up and running since 2005, features written info from overall vfx supe Rob Legato, Sony Pictures Imageworks' Peter Travers, New Deal Studios' Matthew Gratzner and physical effects supe R. Bruce Steinheimer. On top of that, there's a bunch of behind the scenes imagery showing how each type of effect was used to create the various plane sequences and info on the 2 strip and 3 strip Technicolor look of the film. Finally, and probably the most exciting aspect of the website, there's a Screening Room containing QuickTime breakdowns of specific shots and effects work.

Coupled with coverage of The Aviator in Cinefex #101, Aviator Visual Effects is an amazing resource. If only every production had a site 

VFX Fall Preview: 10 Movies to Watch

Between the summer blockbusters and the holiday movie tentpoles, comes the films of the fall. While many studios focus on vfx light Oscar nominees, it does not mean there is a lack of visual effects spectacle coming to theaters between September and Thanksgiving. So without further ado, here are our top 10 fall picks:

10) The Box (Warner Bros., Nov. 6)
Richard Kelly's horror thriller finds Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a couple presented with a twisted gift. Inside a box is a button, if they choose to push it they will receive $1 million, but as a result a stranger will die somewhere in the world. Providing vfx for this Twilight Zone-like tale are Pixel Liberation Front, Gradient Effects and Quantum Creation FX. Thomas Tannenberger, who worked on Kelly's previous film Southland Tales, is returning to work with the director as the visual effects supervisor. The trailer boasts some quick flashes of the gruesome scarring work done for the film's mysterious Mephistopheles character, played by last year's Oscar nominee Frank Langella.

9) Gamer (Lionsgate, Sept. 4)

Furious FX, LookFX and yU+co are among the vfx houses that worked on the sci-fi actioner Gamer. Set in a world where game players can control real humans, Gerard Butler plays the best fighter around who becomes hell bent on stopping the billionaire who pulls the strings, played by Michael C. Hall. Visual effects highlights include the technology of the players controlling the humans, along with lots of explosions and warfare. But, hey, it's all just a game, right?

8) Whiteout (Warner Bros., Sept. 11)

Antarctica is a prime location for visual effects work. Kate Beckinsale plays a U.S. marshal investigating the continent's first murder. Hybride Technologies, Mr. X, Invisible Pictures and Anibrain are among the visual effects houses providing blizzards, storms and additional snowy mayhem. VFX Supervisor Dennis Berardi of Mr. X will have a busy fall film lineup of his own, having supervised the effects on Love Happens and produced the vfx for Amelia.

7) The Road (Dimension Films, Oct. 16)

Fans of Cormac McCarthy's bleak post-apocalyptic tale have been waiting for a year. Australian director John Hillcoat's film version of the story follows a father and son trying to survive in a world where ash rains down from the skies. DIVE, Crazy House Effects and Invisible Pictures all had a part in creating this dreary world where cannibals haunt the countryside. Mark O. Forker, who supervised work on The Lord of Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring andPeter Pan, knows the demands of creating fantastic worlds.

6) The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Summit Ent., Nov. 20)

For the female teen crowd, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is like getting Thanksgiving a week early. Tippett Studio, Frantic Films, Prime Focus and MastersFX were part of the increase in werewolves for this popular franchise. Legendary Phil Tippett and Susan MacLeod (vfx producer on the Oscar-winning Golden Compass) supervised the vampire on lycan action, which of course is for the guys.

5) A Christmas Carol (Buena Vista, Nov. 6)

Robert Zemeckis and his ImageMovers (with some help from Gentle Giant Studios and Plowman Craven & Associates) have crafted another performance capture epic. This time Jim Carrey takes on Scrooge of all ages as well as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future in this stylized version of Charles Dickens' classic. With each film, Zemeckis fine-tunes the process, so we eagerly await where he takes performance capture this time around.

4) Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (Universal, Oct. 23)

Based on Darren Shan's young adult book series, this film has a host of various freaks, creatures and fantastic events provided by Rhythm & Hues Cube Effects and others. Vampires, a bearded woman (played by Selma Hayek, no less), a snake boy, a giant, a skeleton man, and more haunt the corners of this scary movie. For vfx fans, this one looks like some nice eye candy just in time for Halloween.

3) Surrogates (Buena Vista, Sept. 25)

Industrial Light & Magic, The Moving Picture Co., The Layersmith Digital, Lidar Services, Sandbox F/X and Synthespian Studios are all involved in this sci-fi offering, starring Bruce Willis. The film is set in a future where humans live in isolation while robotic surrogates roam the world in their place. Lots of impressive digital humans and robot work in this thriller. Graphic novels always serve as wonderful source material for some amazing vfx work

2) 2012 (Columbia, Oct. 13)

Sony Pictures Imageworks, Double Negative, Digital Domain, Gradient Effects, Hydraulx, Scanline VFX, Evil Eye, Pixomondo and many more help Roland Emmerich destroy the world. Based on the conspiracy theory that the end of the world will come when the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, this thriller brings floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, you name the natural disaster and this one's got it. When it comes to the fall flick with the most visual effects, this one has all the rest beat, for sure.

1) Where the Wild Things Are (Warner Bros., Oct. 16)

But the visual effects that are usually the most beloved each year are the ones that move us. Framestore, Digital Rain, Iloura and Quantum Creation FX are all part of bringing Spike Jonze's version of Maurice Sendak's classic children's tale to the big screen. Judging from the trailer, the combination of digital faces and detailed costumes forWild Things make this one of the most effective uses of visual effects this year. Did you get chills when you first saw them? Did they make you want to go see the movie? If your answer is yes, like us, then the visual effects are engaging an audience already.

Rick DeMott is the director of content for Animation World Network, VFXWorld and AWNtv. Additionally, he's the creator of the movie review site, Rick's Flicks Picks. He has written for TV series, such as Discovery Kids' Growing Up Creepie and Cartoon Network's Pet Alien, the animation history book Animation Art, and the humor, absurdist and surrealist website Unloosen. Previously, he held various production and management positions in the entertainment industry.

Avatar Dominates Visual Effects Society Nominations

The week keeps on getting better for James Cameron's 'Avatar.'

The sci-fi epic, which just passed the $500 million mark at the box-office, picked up a whopping 11 nominations from the Visual Effects Society on Monday, according to theHollywood Reporter.

Among the nominations it received included Best Visual Effects in an Effects-Driven Motion Picture, where it will square off against '2012,' 'District 9,' 'Star Trek' and 'Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.'

Nominated for Supporting Visual Effects in a Movie were 'Angels & Demons,' 'The Box,' 'The Road,' 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'Invictus' (apparently, they love airplanes).

On the animated side, nominations were handed out to '9,' 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,' 'Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,' 'Up' and 'Coraline,' which earned the second-most nods, with four.

Last night, 'Avatar' also scored big at the 67h annual Golden Globes, where it won Best Picture Drama and Best Director.

A Worth Blog Site

It was a drizzling day when I meet Mr. Hans P Bacher in Manila, Philippines, We had a great discussion about  animation industry and trends, His vision and way of working is really interesting, His advises to boost Indian training industry to the world stag was  marvelous . He is maintaining and updating a Blog Site, I like to share his blog address with our visitors to get updates from his site. It’s really a significance blog, so guys don’t miss it.

http://one1more2time3.wordpress.com/

Happy Blogging

San

Autodesk NAB 2010 Best of the Best Show Reel

In anticipation of NAB 2010, Autodesk has issued a call for submissions for the Autodesk 2010 Best of the Best Show Reel. The reel will be unveiled on the exhibition floor at NAB 2010 in Las Vegas, NV and will also be posted to both the Autodesk website and YouTube Channel.

If you’re seeking exposure for your latest project work, don’t miss out on this opportunity to broadcast your talent, and fill out a submission form today! Any film, commercial, broadcast, music video and episodic projects created with qualifying Autodesk software are eligible for entry.

What to put on your showreel? the rules!

Don’t show everything

I think the most important thing is not to do everything and just target your strengths. I’ve seen many showreels where the VFX artist has been a really good modeller but rubbish at texturing. If your texturing skills arn’t up to scratch then don’t texture your models. Just have a couple of really good models which you can show off. The same goes with compositors especially if you want to get into the industry. If your going to be a junior you will be rotoscoping or maybe camera tracking/motion capture, so make sure you have some really good roto work and really show off your roto skills.

Put the best work at the start of your showreel

Companies get A LOT of showreels and those that watch them if they don’t see anything they like very quickly its just straight onto the next showreel. So put your best work at the start. You don’t need to do fancy DVD menus or fancy intro credits to your showreel they just want to see what you can do and how good you are.

Not too long

A general rule of thumb is don’t make your showreel longer than 5minutes, to be honest 3 minutes should be plenty of time.

People wanting to get into Compositing:

As mentioned before the key things for those wanting to get into compositing to show on your showreel are rotoscoping and camera tracking, as companies use a lot of people to do these jobs. Now they maybe not that glamous to start off with but it gets you through the door. Escape have just launched an online camera tracking course to try and get more people into camera tracking in London due to the upcoming need for artists (a couple of big budget films are going to start doing VFX in March in London).



Its important when showing of your roto skills that you show how good your roto is. That there is no bubbling of the roto splines etc. So overlay the roto splines on top of the object/character you have rotoscoped and provide a good shot breakdown so you can see exactly what you have aproached the work.

People wanting to get into Games:

If your a junior working on a game you won’t be creating characters for games you’ll be creating barrells, trees, walls, all the little items which crop up in games so make sure your show real has examples of these objects.

Project Natal Milo demo

Clusters Launching - Advanced Diploma in Visual Effects for Film

Our Story 

Welcome to Clusters School of Digital Arts, an environment where committed individuals can develop their creative and technical skills in order to participate in, and contribute to, a viable film and production industry around the globe.

Clusters specialize in teaching on Visual effects for film and entertainment.

Learning to be a visual effects artist isn't something that we can be taught from a book. Here at clusters you learn-by-doing, through a combination of hands-on experience and guest tutors who are experts in their fields, and sufficient behind theory to backup the practical applications. You gain experience in film theories, in digital composting, Rotoscopy, Tracking, Camera Match moves, in lighting, camerawork and Green Screen shots.

We welcome people with flair and dedication and a passionate commitment to Visual effects and entertainment industry, people who are the future of the film industry in India and beyond. We know the industry is impulsive, creative and challenging, so we provide you with the training and support to fulfill your aspirations

The Curriculum

The curriculum is designed for 12 modules, each of which covers a specific aspect of visual effects in film production. These modules are taught in an integrated way where several modules may be under way at any one time. This allows mentors to better mirror the process and pipeline of visual effects and also allows the flexibility to accommodate availability of visiting lectures and the ability to take advantage of production opportunities as they arise.

The course is delivered through both Studio Learning and project-based learning. Students have the opening to analysis theory on a range of handy projects. During the year students will work together to make a number of VFX short films including at least one Special effect shot and one short visual effects film. These films are generally screened at the course commencement ceremony.

As the course progresses students will be given assistance to select the areas of the industry in which they wish to seek out employment and will have opening to work in these specific areas on student productions. From the year’s work, students will be able to compile a show reel, which should showcase these areas.

Course structure

Clusters School aims to practice students in a realistic and handy way to take up a profession in the visual effects or Film industry. To that end, the guiding principles and practices of the School mirror existing industry standards, and aim to reproduce as strongly as possible the workplace environment.

Each Months student are issued with a call-sheet which outlines the Month’s programme and requirements. Students are expected to be in attendance at the School from 9.00 Am until 4.45pm each weekday and to attend for extended hours if required.

The course is hands-on and practical. Teaching is project-based. Students make a range of individual projects that may include music videos, documentaries and short digital dramatic films. The focus of the year is the production short films.

Application process

There are up to 50 seats available for Visual effects for film course. Once we receive your application we will review it and determine whether you would be on a shortlist. If you are, we will request that you attend an interview. If you are not selected for an interview we will inform you promptly.

We will be looking for a level of commitment and passion about the film industry and an understanding that hard work rather than glamour is at the heart of the business.

Students wishing to apply must complete an application form. This may be submitted by e-mail or in hard-copy.

International students will need to apply for a student visa. Details are available from the Indian Immigration Service, and can be viewed on their website at  http://www.immigrationindia.nic.in/

Location and Facilities

Clusters School of Digital art is now at Trivandrum, India, in a purpose-designed facility. It is close to the Asia Largest Technology Park and several local production companies. The building is spacious, with Several Labs and a large production office, and a studio and 30-seat cinema. There is also a library with essential resource material including an expanding DVD classics collection and many Indian and International short films.

Students have access to the premises on a 24-hour basis (with permission) in order to replicate the workplace atmosphere. This enables efficient use of the equipment and other resources, particularly during production.

The resources of the School, Includes studio space, equipment, archival and reference materials, post-production facilities and creative expertise are available to assist in meeting the demands of the curriculum.

Equipment

Clusters School of Digital Arts provides a range of technical equipment to facilitate production and post-production in both film and digital media. The school uses a range of digital cameras, both handicams and HD Cameras

Students edit on Final Cut Pro and also have the opportunity to use Green screen facility during the Film Intensive segment of the course. Sound post-production is carried out in the Pro Tools suite.

Our Objectives

Clusters School of Digital Arts objectives are

·         Meet the demand for visual effects artist by training those wishing to make a career in film and television

·         ensure that new entrants into the industry are adequately and realistically prepared to follow a career path

·         Ensure that industry-based standards are established and maintained.

We aim to turn out the Compositors, Visual effects artist, animators, VFX Supervisors and technical crews of the future; graduates who are well prepared to make a career in film and/or television.

NVIDIA Collaborates With Weta to Accelerate Visual Effects for Avatar

Challenge 

Avatar, the breakthrough stereoscopic 3D feature film from James Cameron and Twentieth Century Fox opened on December 18, 2009 with a record breaking opening weekend of over $77 million for any 3D movie, and grossing over $1 billion worldwide since then. The film features lushly detailed scenes and an extensive cast of virtual characters set in computer generated (CG) environments.

Wellington, NZ-based Weta Digital, the primary visual effects vendor on the film, is a longtime NVIDIA® customer and deploys both Quadro® professional graphics solutions and Tesla™ high performance computing solutions in its visual effects (VFX) production pipeline.

Weta was tasked with building sequences with as many as 800 fully CG characters in highly stylized digital settings. The computational power required to process the Avatar shots was higher than that required by any project Weta had faced to date, so they turned to NVIDIA, the inventor of the graphics processing unit (GPU).

“The complexity of Avatar motivated us to think about rendering differently,” explained Sebastian Sylwan, Weta’s head of research and development. “We do our final beauty-pass renders with RenderMan, but to optimize artistic iterations on Avatar’s huge data sets, we moved the bulk of the calculation to a pre-computation step. The issues we needed to solve weren’t as much about rendering as they were about high-performance computing, and we realized that using the massively parallel power of a GPU to solve problems is NVIDIA’s expertise.”

In March of 2009, Weta rendering research lead Luca Fascione, Weta CTO Paul Ryan and Jacopo Pantaleoni, an NVIDIA Research senior architect, discussed what Weta was up against. “Paul let me know that for the first time in the history of CG visual effects, the number of polygons required was going to be measured in billions rather than in millions,” said Pantaleoni. “Luca described their unique approach to lighting, and their need for a scalable solution to ray trace the entire, amazingly complex world they were about to create.”

Solution

Weta R&D and NVIDIA Research began their collaboration, with Pantaleoni traveling to New Zealand and residing there for several months to start development on a ray-tracing software solution that could handle the billions of polygons required in Avatar’s complex sequences.
Together, NVIDIA and Weta co-developed a new pre-computation engine, dubbed PantaRay, to bring high-performance computing power into Weta’s VFX pipeline. The name PantaRay is a clever twist on a Greek aphorism "panta rhei” which means “everything flows”. This powerful ray-tracing system was designed specifically to accelerate pre-computation of scene occlusion information used throughout Weta’s rendering pipeline, to allow quick and dynamic re-computation of image-based lighting.
The innovative approach enabled Weta to render more complex scenes in less time, while using less memory and fewer processors. The result gave artists the critical ability to iterate faster and make more changes, ultimately achieving higher quality photorealistic results. With NVIDIA’s co-development efforts, Weta was able to generate scenes that previously would have been time and cost prohibitive.
The benefits Weta achieved with the solution co-developed by NVIDIA Research’s Pantaleoni compelled them to further embrace GPU computing – the power of NVIDIA technology to perform massively parallel computing. NVIDIA ported Weta’s PantaRay engine to a CUDA-based GPU driven version that runs 25 times faster, utilizing an NVIDIA Tesla® S1070 GPU-based server instead of a CPU based server.

Impact 

A shot that exemplifies the advantages Weta achieved with PantaRay can be seen in the movie’s promotional trailer . The shot from a helicopter looking over a huge flock of hundreds of purple creatures flying over water, with a massive tree-covered mountain in the background was pre-computed in just a day and a half using PantaRay. “That shot would have taken a week with previous methods,” said Weta’s Fascione. “The fact that it was so much faster with PantaRay meant that we were able to create a much more beautiful shot – you can see fine detail on every bush, every leaf. The color separation between distances is clean and clear. The computational power of PantaRay made the difference.”

When running on GPUs, PantaRay’s ray tracing process has proven to be up to 25 times faster than on CPUs. “If we think about how long it would take to handle this much complexity with traditional methods, we’re probably close to 100 times faster,” said Sylwan.

Weta Digital plans to incorporate PantaRay running on NVIDIA Tesla GPUs into its pipeline for the upcoming Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson film, Tintin, as well as exploring new ways in which PantaRay and GPUs can further accelerate its overall visual effects pipeline.

According to Martin Hill, head of shading at Weta Digital, “Because the complexity continues to scale on each project we do, the amount we need to render continues to multiply.. And the more complex the rendering, the harder it is to light the scene. PantaRay makes the complicated scenes as easy to light as the simple scenes.”
“Partnerships with groups like Weta’s R&D team bring us to the absolute bleeding edge of production technology,” said Dominick Spina, digital film technology manager for NVIDIA. “Working with Weta on Avatar was an amazing collaboration. Nothing in the development of PantaRay was an abstraction. It was 100% production driven.” Spina added, “We’ll continue to collaborate extensively like this with top visual effects and animation companies to bring more and more of NVIDIA’s expertise to bear on solving the most complex production technology problems in order to free artists to create at higher levels.”

Blind Shows Multiple Personalities For Tara Promo

Blind Director Tom Koh is helping to ramp up the second season of the hit Steven Spielberg produced Showtime series United States of Tara with a :55 promo that cleverly portrays the multiple personality disorder of main character Tara Gregson (Emmy Award-winner Toni Collette).

Blind tapped into its own multiple personalities to produce the spot in a tight timeframe, handling all production, editorial and post/FX to create a flawless and riveting combination of live action and CG. Koh served as both director for all live action and creative directed for the entire post/FX process.

Out of the Box is a rapid-paced overview of Tara’s mind, told through scenes contained within a rotating cube. As the cube revolves, various environments are revealed, each one holding one of the Tara’s alters or representing a memory from her family life. Among the scenes, this colorful mix of live action and CG portrays Tara’s alters: “Buck” the tough alpha male, “Alice” a June Cleaver-like vixen, “T” a mischievous adolescent flirt, and, finally, “Shoshanna” a new alter who will be introduced in this upcoming season.

Koh worked closely with the creative team at Showtime to flesh out the cube concept, a metaphor for Tara’s own compartmentalization of her different personalities. “Showtime came to us with this idea and we figured out how to provide the concept with a story and bring it to life through animation,” noted Koh. “We created 3D models of the different rooms in pre-vis and worked closely with the network creatives to ensure that we were building something that suited their vision.”

The production process was a triumph of time and budget management. From the time Showtime approached Blind with the concept until the shoot date was a mere three weeks, a timeframe that had to include creative conception, pre-vis, and preparation for the technically complex sequence. Adding to the pressure, talent management mandated Koh would have only eight hours to shoot all 24 live-action sequences with nine total camera setups.

At the nexus of budget and creative challenges, the studio had to figure out how to do a motion-control shoot without the time to work with a motion-control rig, an obstacle surmounted with extensive pre-vis and detailed preparation with the DP, VFX Supervisor, 1st AD and Line Producer. The post and edit processes faced similar time constraints.

To facilitate the rapid shoot, Blind minimized the props - beds, tables, couches - on the set, shooting all of the live action against a green screen and adding the bulk and detail into the scenes in post with flawless CG. The rooms themselves were built entirely in CG, and Koh’s team lit, textured, and animated them through a combination of CINEMA 4D and Maya. All other post work was done in-house, including 3D animation, color correction, lighting and compositing with a combination of AfterEffects and Flame.

“This shoot was technically complex on many levels, and it is a great showcase of Tom’s leadership, problem-solving ability, technical proficiency, and comfort overseeing both a live-action team as well as designers, animators and compositors in post,” stated Blind EP David Kleinman. “Not only is Tom proficient in the technical realm, he’s also incredibly creative, and this is clearly evident in the way he provided a narrative core for each of the rotating visuals.”

The spot follows a recent package of DirecTV spots that Koh and the team at Blind similarly produced from concept to completion. “We received great feedback from the DirecTV campaigns and we’re hopeful there’s a similar reception this time,” continued Kleinman.


“From the initial pitch through final delivery, Tom and everyone at Blind were wonderful collaborators who did an incredible job of bringing our vision to life - we couldn’t be happier with the results,” noted Showtime Sr. Creative Director Erik Friedman. “Tom’s wonderful imagination and creativity combined with his complete understanding of the complexities of the shoot and all the post production details made him the perfect person to handle the difficult task of visually representing the complex nature of Tara’s multiple personalities in a bold, striking and visually unforgettable way. This was our first project with Blind, but hopefully just the first of many.”

Blind, a multi-disciplinary design, motion graphics, animation, visual effects, live-action, editorial, print and broadcast design studio taps into diverse intellectual and creative resources to come up with compelling results. Blind’s creative team has built an uncommon level of respect in the advertising and entertainment communities via cutting-edge campaigns for brands such as Xbox, Showtime, Bright House Networks, DirecTV, OppenheimerFunds, McDonald’s, Scion, and recording artists including Gnarls Barkley, The Raveonettes and Justin Timberlake to name a few.