Houdini 'First Steps' Course

spherevfx was delighted to have taught artist from both Storm Studios and Stripe (both based in Oslo, Norway) Side Effects Houdini. The short course, 'Maya to Houdin: First Steps' was designed to take artist already familiar with Maya into Houdini and cover the main areas of the software, including:

• The Language of Houdini
• An introduction to Houdini and the UI
• An Introduction to Modeling
• An Introduction to Animation
• An introduction to Shaders and Textures
• An introduction to Camera and Lighting
• An introduction to Rendering with Mantra
• An introduction to Particles
• An introduction to Dynamics

The course was run as part of the Digital Storytelling conference which took place in Oslo, Norway. For more information of the conference, click here...

Nuke - 'New Features' Workshop

spherevfx was very pleased to have run a Nuke course for a number of visual effects Nordic companies including Cinematic Pictures, Storm Studios, NRK, FilmNonGrata and Postmenn. During the course we covered a number of new features from the 6.3 including:

• Alembic
• Deep Image Compositing
• Particles
• Displacement Shader
• OpenColorIO
• Planar Tracking
• Spline and Grid Warping
• ToolSets

This workshop was run as part of the Digital Storytelling conference which took place in Oslo, Norway. For more information of the conference, click here...

spherevfx at fmx 2012 - The Highlights...

Head of Training Matt Leonard attended this years FMX conference held in Stuttgart, Germany. Over the four day conference Matt attended numerous workshops and seasons including:

• Gollum to Tintin: Building Creatures at Weta
• The Making of 'Arthur Christmas' from Bristol to L.A.
• Pixar's RenderMan - From 'Toy Story' to 'La Luna', Illuminating Treads in CGI
• Side Effects: Houdini 12 Workshop
• Retrospective: How Digital Technologies Changed VFX
• Defining Passion in the Entertainment Industry
• 'Men in Black III' Exclusive Behind the Senses
• The Stereoscopic Visual Effects of 'Hugo'
• The Virtual Production of 'Real Steal'
• 'The Avengers' Special: Creating the Hulk and New York City

The conference was a great opportunity to meet new friends and catch up with old one. During the week Matt was delighted to have spent time with Alex McDowell (Creative Director: 5D Institute), Eric Roth (Executive Director: VES), Wayne Stables (VFX Supervisor: Weta Digital), Dylan Sisson (Technical Marketing Specialist), Ray Feeney, Doug Trumbull, Jay Redd (VFX Supervisor: Sony Pictures Imageworks), Ben Grossmann (VFX Supervisor, Pixomondo), John Montgomery & Ian Failes (fxguide) and Jeff White (VFX Supervisor: Industrial Light and Magic). FMX was also a great place to chat with various clients along with time to hang out with fxphd members over a beer in the evenings.

Of course many notes where taken during the sessions and workshops and this information will filter down into spherevfx courses over the coming months so people unable to attend will still get some of the benefits through our courses. Below we've added a small sample showing the week at FMX:

Click one image for 2k version

Advanced Post Production - Maya | RenderMan | Nuke

spherevfx was delighted to have trained artist from across South Wales at a Nuke course for Skillset Academic Plus. The 3 day intermediate to advanced course was hosted by Swansea Metropolitan University and covered:

• Advanced 2D Compositing
• Multipass openEXR Pipeline
• Advanced 3D Compositing for Cleanup, Projection and Coverage Mapping
• Deep Compositing (Maya, Renderman and Nuke)
• Particles
• Gizmos and Python

For more information on our Nuke courses, click here...

Maya Course Upgraded for 2013 New Features

spherevfx has updated it's Maya courses to cover the new features found in the latest version, Maya 2013. New features cover such areas as:

• Workflow / General
• Animation
• Character Rigging
• Modeling
• Dynamics
• Rendering

For more information on our Maya courses, click here...

Nuke Training and Consultancy

spherevfx has just returned from training Nuke at Recom Farmhouse. The main focus of the course was professional workflow, pipeline integration and multipass EXR compositing for Automotive design.

Some of the topics covered were:

• mental ray multipass compositing
• File structure and referencing
• Detailed gizmo creation for automated multipass compositing
  
• Introduction to rotoscoping
  
• Introduction to Nuke’s 3D environment including: Cameras, lights, geometry, shaders, projection mapping and the scan-line renderer.

Speaker at The VFX Day, London

Matt Leonard, head of training at spherevfx was honoured to be speaking on behalf of The Foundry alongside the likes of Double Negative and Cinesite at the VFX Day held at The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Matt talked about the various Foundry products before focusing in on Nuke and it's capabilities. The event was attended by 150 people from across the UK and talks included topics on John Carter, Harry Potter and much more.

April 2012

fxguide have three great articles covering all the news from this years FMX.

• FMX 2012: Day Three
• FMX 2012: Day Two
• FMX 2012: Day One

April 2012

Cinesite Announces Sale to UK Private Investment Firm Endless LLP. New investors will enable world-class digital visual effects house to expand its footprint in the media and entertainment industry.

Cinesite, one of the world’s leading digital visual effects houses, and Endless LLP, an independent UK-based private equity house, today announced that Endless LLP has acquired Cinesite from Kodak for an undisclosed amount. The deal involves Cinesite’s existing management team, supported by its new investment backer.

The new deal will give Cinesite the resources and stability to fulfil a long-standing desire to expand the company into new territories, diversify its services and expand its global position in the media and entertainment industry. Cinesite is the visual effects force behind some of the world’s most successful films and television series – including the Harry Potter films, John Carter, X-Men: First Class, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Band of Brothers, Rome and Generation Kill. It is currently working on the 23rd installment in the James Bond franchise, Skyfall, and Paramount Picture’s zombie epic starring Brad Pitt, World War Z.

April 2012

Stereoid made my Pretend is a next-gen stereo toolset that automatically enhances 3D footage and lets you adjust depth with just a couple of sliders. Stereoid is simple, fast, powerful, and affordable. The idea is you load the shots (L&R), analyze it to produce a disparity map, then it will automatically correct for the lens, the color differences and allow animated control of convergence and interaxial.

This first version is aimed at multiple seats doing stereo prep, and will be in public beta in a few months and on release will cost just $995.

For more information, click here...

April 2012

The Foundry is pleased to announce that Reliance MediaWorks has purchased a site licence of KATANA.

The licences will be utilized at Reliance MediaWorks’ UK and Mumbai facilities. Working across geographies in this way requires a robust, flexible VFX pipeline and Reliance MediaWorks looked to The Foundry’s NUKE and KATANA to provide the key building blocks.

KATANA allows artists to define and control look and lighting whilst maintaining performance with very large datasets. KATANA operates non-destructively using a rule-based approach that allows modelling, look development, animation and lighting teams to work in parallel.

16th May 2012

fxguide talks with in depth Angus Bickerton about the new Tim Burton / Johnny Depp film Dark Shadows, and Angus's views on the industry.

15th May 2012

Matt Wallin and Matt Leonard join Mike Seymour to review the visual effects of the year's biggest film to date: The Avengers.

15th May 2012

This week John and Ian are at FMX and we talk to Chris Edwards, CEO & creative director of The Third Floor and Gustavo Sanchez-Perez, RealFlow product manager, at Next Limit.

14th May 2012

This week Tom Gleeson steps in for Jason Wingrove who is flat out on assignment. Tom and Mike discuss and test the FS-700 high speed Sony Camcorder and probe the 5DMkIII.

13th April 2012

American Cinematographer's Iain Stasukevich goes on location to speak with Fred Murphy about lighting the television series The Good Wife, about becoming comfortable with digital capture and about what makes a good cinematographer.