spherevfx is a highend international training company specializing in 3D, Compositing and Visual Effects courses. We offer state-of-the-art professional training in the worlds best visual effects software, designed for artist working in the film, broadcast and corporate industries. With over 20 years visual effects experience, spherevfx offers production driven courses aimed at both beginners and experienced users. Choose from one of our pre-designed courses or customize the training to suit your needs. spherevfx offers on-site training and if required on or alongside a live project. We can also help transfer your skills between applications. We have trained artists from some of the top visual effects companies i the world, including: Training Overview spherevfx offers the most flexible training program available, we put you in control. Just let us know: What software/technique you want to be trained in. When you want to train, the dates the work best for you. Where you want to train, at spherevfx or your studio. For more information, watch the video on the right, then have a look at the software and techniques we offer via the left hand menu. Finally give us call or drop us an eMail. You won't find a more flexible and personal training program anywhere else. VES Members spherevfx offers a 15% discount on all our training courses for VES members. Please let us know your VES membership number when you book a course or order a training video.       LATEST SPHEREVFX NEWS Demoing for Solid Angle at FMX Ben Greasley (Senior Training) at spherevfx was delighted to have demonstrated Arnold for Maya on behalf of Solid Angle at this years FMX. Working along side Marcos Fajardo (Founder, Software Architect) and Szabolcs Horvátth, Ben showed off many of the main features of Arnold for Maya including: Shading Lighting Fur Volumetrics and Render Settings FMX 2013 Matt Leonard (Head of Training) and Ben Greasley (Senior Training) at spherevfx were delighted to have attended this years FMX is Germany. Among the presentations we attended were: Cloud Atlas with RISE The Art of MPC – 9 Years of Movie Visual Effects Design Le Big Shift in VFX An Interview with Kim Libreri The "unfilmable" Life of Pi with Rhythm & Hues Panel Discussion on the Future of the VFX Industry The Evolution of Katana Hair Rendering in Tomb Raider Physically Based Shading in Game Engines Art & Design of Pacific Rim Skyfall Title Sequence: The journey from Concept Art to Final Picture VFX: What Is Broken, And What Can Games Do to Fix It? Iron Man 3 at Trixter Weta Digital: VFX for Iron Man 3 The Blue Umbrella During the week we where able to catch up with a number of friends in the industry including Rob Bredow and Steve LeVietes (Sony Picture Imageworks), Don Parker (Shotgun Software) and Kim Libreri (Lucasfilm). Also Ben was delighted to have demonstrated Arnold for Maya on behalf of Solid Angle alongside Founder, Software Architect Marcos Fajardo. Finally Matt was also able to contribute to a number of fxguide stories during the week which can be read here: Day 1 at FMX 2013 – Pixar, Cloud Atlas, Life of Pi, Katana, V-Ray Day 2 at FMX 2013 – Lara Croft’s hair, Arnold, MPC’s FX tools, OpenSubdiv New Katana 200 Level Course at fxphd.com Matt Leonard (Head of Training) at spherevfx is delighted to be running the second Katana course for fxphd. In this ‘Intermediate Katana’ course we'll take everything we learnt in KAT101 and put it into practice by adding a CG character into two live action plates. During the term we'll be working with 3D tracking data and building stand-in geometry for the environments using MAYA. We'll be completing look development within KATANA for an entire character along with various environment assets as required. When it comes to lighting the scenes we'll be utilizing 'localized HDR lighting' with KATANA using RenderMan's Global Illumination technology and then setting up various render-passes. Finally we'll move into NUKE to complete the final compositing. This course is a natural progression from our first 100 level KATANA course and fantastic for anyone interested in state-of-the-art Look Development and Lighting techniques. For more information on the course, click here... or to learn more about Katana, click here... Nuke 7 Course Updated to 7.0v6 spherevfx has updated it's Nuke course to version 7.0v6. This covers NukeX, Nuke and the new Nuke Assist program. For more information on our Nuke course, click here... Spring 2013 Wall Paper Released A new spherevfx wallpaper has been released with images from Iron Man 3, Oblivion, The Fast and the Furious 6, World War Z, Man of Steel, After Earth, The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim, The Great Gatsby, Elysium, The Wolverine, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Jack the Giant Slayer To download, click here... INDUSTRY NEWS May 2013 Visual effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, who has died at the age of 92. Read the fxguide story here... May 2013 The first one is looking at ‘Realtime Facial Animation With On-the-Fly Correctives’ based on the Siggraph paper by Hao Li, Jihun Yu, Yuting Ye and Chris Bregler. The video link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7y2RZdyZK0 and the Siggraph paper link is: http://www.hao-li.com/publications/papers/siggraph2013RTFAOC.pdf The second video is a Faculty Interview from the Department of Computer Science, Columbia University earlier this year. It’s title is ‘Geometric Capture of Human Performances’ and the link can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQfiGUhMaeQ The final video is entitled ‘Structure-Aware Hair Capture’ and is again based on a Siggraph paper coming this year. The link for the final video is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCgWMIYGbV8 April 2013 e-on software, maker of the leading solutions for Digital Nature, announced today the immediate availability of Vue 11.5 xStream and Infinite, the latest production-driven version of its professional solutions for the creation, animation and rendering of natural 3D environments. New features include: EcoCollision Improvements Render Stack Improvements Improved Material Management Color Input/Ouput Function in the Post Render Options World Browser Improvements Camera Management Improvements RenderNode GI Prepass-only Rendering For more information, click here... April 2013 The April fxphd term has been announce, new courses this term include: Pimp My Lenses The Freelance Editors Toolkit The Craft of Color Grading II Houdini 12.5 Bootcamp HIERO in Commercials Intermediate KATANA Real Mathematics for Visual Effects and 3D Production Quality Rendering in Maya with MentalRay Physically Plausible Shading in RenderMan Studio SynthEyes Tracking Challenges For more information, click here... April 2013 Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Weta Digital announce the release of OpenEXR 2.0, the major version update of the open source high dynamic range file format first introduced by ILM and maintained and expanded by a number of key industry leaders including Weta Digital, Pixar Animation Studios, Autodesk and others. The release includes a number of new features that align with the major version number increase. Amongst the major improvements are: Deep Data support Multi-part Image Files Optimized pixel reading Namespacing For more information, click here... LATEST INDUSTRY PODCASTS 6th May 2013 This week we talk to Digital Domain's visual effects supervisor Erik Nash about the blockbuster Iron Man 3 from director Shane Black. 3rd May 2013 Mike Seymour, Matt Wallin and TyRuben Ellingson talk about the Sci-Fi Tom Cruise film : "Oblivion" 22nd April 2013 This week we talk to Oblivion DOP Claudio Miranda, ASC and Digital Domain visual effects supervisor Eric Barba about in-camera projections, shooting in Iceland and realizing the world of Joseph Kosinski's film. 18th April This week Mike and Jason celebrate 5 years of the rc podcast and wrap-up from NAB 2013 with all the gear and tech they saw at the show. 17th April 2013 American Cinematographer's Jim Hemphill talks with cinematographer Russell Carpenter, ASC and director Joshua Michael Stern about the film, Jobs, which explores the life and career of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Working with the budget of an independent film, they created three unique looks to capture the feel of different eras in Job's life, but were careful never to go 'over the top.' 18th December 2012 This month we talk about new trailers, eyeon Generation AM, NUKE 7, OpenColorIO for After Effects and interview Mariana Acuña (The Foundry), Sean Devereaux (ZYNC) and Pieter Van Houte (Sony Pictures Imageworks). SOCIAL MEDIA