The Visual Effects Society (VES) have introduced a new category, Outstanding Effects in an Animated Motion Picture, to their lineup of awards scheduled to be given out at the 6th Annual VES Awards on February 10, 2008.

I think this is a good move. There’s a whole bunch of effects work in animated movies which, up to now, have been totally ignored as far as VES awards eligibility goes - the only animated movie category has been the very unrelated Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Motion Picture.

Submissions for the new category are accepted (along with all of the others) as of today and will run until early december.

Read more about it at the VES Awards site.

Toronto based Mr X Inc. currently have an opening for a compositing supervisor.

Here’s their press release:

Mr. X is currently looking for a Compositing Supervisor to join our team.

Responsibilities:

* Responsible for internal pipeline, communication and efficiency within the Compositing department.
* Manage the compositing department, which consists of 20 compositing artists.
* Provide artistic and creative leadership to a dynamic team of artists.
* Work closely with Visual Effects Supervisors, Producers and the department heads to design, develop and produce large and/or small-scale digital composites for use in feature films.
* Determine best approach to solve compositing challenges and develop final overall look that far exceeds client expectations.

Qualifications:

* Must have 5+ years experience in compositing digital visual effects for feature film,
* Experience in a management/supervisor role,
* Must have thorough knowledge of node-based compositing systems (i.e. Nuke),
* Must present a show reel highlighting candidate’s eye for colour, lighting, attention to detail and composition,
* Must have a clear vision with solid leadership skills and an approachable attitude,
* Strong communication skills are critical.

All interested applicants should email their resumes to recruiting@mrxfx.com with the subject reading “Compositing Supervisor”. Please include the address of your web portfolio in your resume or send your demo reel to:

Attention: Recruiting/Compositing Supervisor
Mr. X Inc.
35 McCaul Street, Suite 100
Toronto, ON
M5T 1V7

Demo materials will not be returned. No phone calls please.

Visit their site here.

Source: VFXTalk.com

Whew, it’s been a while since I updated, but life and stuff tends to intrude when you least expect it.

Anyway, here’s the trailer to Aliens vs Predator: Requiem:

There’s a HD version right here, which I heartily recommend

The most interesting thing about this new movie (besides the fact that it has an R-rated trailer, quite a rarity), is that it will be directed by the sibling duo of Colin and Greg Strause, acclaimed visual effects artists and owners of Hydraulx.

The movie itself doesn’t look all that promising to me from the trailer, but I have no doubt they’ll wipe the floor with the prequel (a typical Paul WS Anderson movie, quality-wise. Pure and utter garbage).

For confirmation of the news and a list of other credits, check out their website

We here at Visual FX Blog have been fans of Todd Vaziri ever since he created one of the first VFX-oriented sites on the net, VFXHQ, back in the early days of the web. It was way ahead of its time, an excellent repository of effects-related information and well-written reviews. His current blog, FXRant, continues that tradition.

So, given all that, we jumped at the opportunity to talk with the by-now sequence supervisor at industry-leading VFX provider Industrial Light and Magic about the work he did on Transformers.

Considering Todd’s job description and background, the main topic at hand was compositing, but we also discussed some of the model-work featured in the movie, as well as more general subjects like the current state of the visual effects industry or what a typical day at ILM is like.

It’s a very informative read, so check it out from the sidebar on the right or click here.

Boy, Autodesk sure loves SIGGRAPH! The press releases are coming hard and fast.

They have just announced that they will buy Skymatter, the company behind the 3D modeling package Mudbox.

I don’t know what to think of this. On one hand, it’s easy to see this as another way of eliminating competition and furthering Autodesk’s monopoly of the 3D creative market.

But then again, they really don’t have an organic modeling package in their lineup yet and as long as they don’t buy Pixologic as well, I guess ZBrush will still give customers a choice.

Autodesk’s marketing budget should get Mudbox out there a lot better than Skymatter ever could, too.

Official press release link

Autodesk apparently isn’t content with just one application bearing the “2008″ version suffix, because they announced Maya 2008 as well.

The new features here are:

New and Enhanced Modeling Tools and Workflows

Maya 2008 introduces considerable performance improvements and a number of new features that will make modeling workflows significantly more efficient. The Maya Mesh Smooth workflow, for instance, has been dramatically streamlined: You can now preview a smoothed mesh while editing the mesh cage—with superb performance, particularly on multiprocessor workstations. Other much-requested workflow enhancements include the ability to position objects along a curve, replace objects within a scene, and convert instances to objects.

Additionally, a new Slide Edge feature—as well as significant enhancements to Booleans, Bevel, Bridge, Reduce, and other tools—can let you model more efficiently. Maya 2008 also delivers two new selection management features: X-Ray selection highlighting and the ability to “pick walk” edge loops.

Faster, More Accurate Viewport / Hardware Rendering

Truly WYSIWYG interactive previews are several steps closer now that the Maya hardware rendering engine supports layered textures, multiple UV sets, negative lighting, and object space normal maps. Not only does this improve preview fidelity when using the High Quality renderer in the interactive viewport, it allows a greater range of effects to be rendered to final output using the Maya hardware renderer. Moreover, accelerated draw and selection performance, together with more efficient updating of UI elements, facilitates level editing and speeds overall workflows.
Support for DirectX HLSL Shaders

Maya 2008 can let you effectively create and display sophisticated looks for content destined for the next-generation game consoles. In particular, native support for DirectX® HLSL shaders (in addition to the existing CgFX support), lets you work with assets in the viewport and see them as they will be seen on the target console.
Nondestructive Skin Editing

Animators and animation technical directors usually find it necessary to work iteratively on their rigged characters. Maya 2008 now streamlines iterative skinning workflows by enabling you to modify the skeleton of a bound character, without having to rebind it after, thus preserving any work done after the skeleton was bound. This process is supported through new tools for inserting, moving, deleting, connecting, and disconnecting joints on a bound skeleton, as well as support for multiple bind poses.
API Enhancements

Game developers can now more easily write high-performance hardware shading plug-ins for Maya using the new API for hardware shaders. This API includes native support for OpenGL and DirectX shaders, built-in support for shader parameters, and direct access to the Maya rendering cache. Also, a new constraints API can let plug-in developers write their own animation constraint nodes and commands derived from the underlying Maya constraint node and command architecture. This makes it easier to write custom constraints and have them interact with the rest of Maya in a manner similar to built-in constraints.
mental ray 3.6 Core

Maya 2008 uses the latest mental ray 3.6 core, a release that boasts dramatic performance improvements in the translation of polygon meshes and instances for rendering, as well as for IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Rendering) startup. Additionally, particle types previously supported only in the Maya hardware renderer can now be rendered in mental ray, eliminating the need to combine outputs from multiple renderers.
Expanded Platform Support

Support for Windows Vista™ operating system has been added, that enables you to take advantage of the performance capabilities of this recent technology.

Like 3DS MAX, nothing too earth shattering new here, although the Mental Ray support for hardware particles is pretty nice, and I’m pretty curious about the modeling enhancements in this version (never one of Maya’s strong points).

For more information and pricing / availability information, check out Autodesk’s official press release.

Just in time for SIGGRAPH, Autodesk has announced 3DStudio MAX 2008.

Here are the key new features:

Accelerated Performance
The integration of new technology into the software’s Adaptive Degradation System improves interactive performance by automatically simplifying scene display to meet a user-defined target frame rate. You control how 3ds Max adjusts scene display—whether the smallest objects are hidden, or distant objects have less detail, etc.—and 3ds Max calculates how best to achieve it. When combined with the new Direct3D® mesh caching that groups objects by materials, the result is that tens of thousands of objects can be just as interactive as ten objects. In addition, loading, arrays, Autodesk® FBX® and OBJ export, and other areas of the software perform significantly faster.

Scene Explorer Scene Management
3ds Max 2008 delivers Scene Explorer, a robust new tool that provides you with a hierarchical view of scene data and fast scene analysis, along with editing tools that facilitate working with even the most complex, object-heavy scenes. Scene Explorer gives you the ability to sort, filter, and search a scene by any object type or property (including metadata), with stackable filtering, sorting, and searching criteria. This new tool also enables you to save and store multiple Explorer instances and to link, unlink, rename, hide, freeze, and delete objects, regardless of what objects are currently selected in the scene. You can also configure columns to display and edit any object property, and because this feature is scriptable and SDK extendable, you can use callbacks to add custom column definitions.

Review
This powerful new toolset gives you immediate feedback on various render settings, enabling you to iterate rapidly. This means you can now quickly hone in on your desired look without waiting for a software render—perfect for over-the-shoulder client/boss feedback sessions and other iterative workflows. Based on the latest game engine technology, Review delivers interactive viewport previews of shadows (including self-shadowing and up to 64 lights simultaneously), the 3ds Max sun/sky system, and mental ray® Architectural and Design material settings.

MAXScript ProEditor
3ds Max 2008 marks the debut of the new MAXScript ProEditor. This intuitive new interface for working with MAXScript includes multilevel undo functionality; fast, high-quality code colorization; rapid opening of large documents; line number display; regular expressions in search/replace; folding of sections of the script; support for user customization; and many other features.

Enhanced DWG Import
3ds Max 2008 delivers faster, more accurate importing of DWG™ files. Significantly improved memory management enables you to import large, complex scenes with multiple objects in considerably less time. Improved support for material assignment and naming, solid object import, and normals management facilitate working with software products such as Revit Architecture 2008. Plus, a new Select Similar feature identifies all objects in an imported DWG scene that contain characteristics similar to those of a selected object. This capability lets you select and edit multiple imported objects simultaneously—dramatically streamlining DWG-based workflows.

Artist-Friendly Modeling Options
3ds Max 2008 gives you a more streamlined, artist-friendly modeling workflow through a collection of hands-on modeling options that let you focus more on the creative process. These options include selection previewing and the ability to have existing modeling hotkeys and pivots become temporary overrides.

Biped Enhancements
This latest release provides you with new levels of flexibility with regard to your Biped rigs. A new Xtras tool lets you create and animate extraneous Biped features anywhere on your rig (for example, wings or additional facial bones) and save them as BIP files. These files are supported in Mixer and Motion Flow, as well as in Layers, where new layering functionality enables BIP files to be saved as offsets from each layer to isolate character motion. As a result, each layer can be saved as its own asset for export into a game.

Expanded Platform Support
3ds Max 2008 is the first full release of the software officially compatible with Microsoft® Windows Vista™ 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems and the Microsoft DirectX® 10 platform.

Check out Autodesk’s official PR for more info

Pixar seem to be going from strength to strength.

I recently saw Ratatouille and found it to be an absolutely delightful film, made by people who clearly love film as well as cooking.

And now these turn up. They’re posters and art from the next Pixar flick WALL•E, and they’re wonderful. And the premise of the movie is innovative and interesting too, of course.

I finally had the chance to watch the trailer to Robert Zemeckis’ motion captured mythical saga Beowulf.

While there are shots in there that look pretty stunning and - dare I say it - almost photo-real, there are also a whole bunch of ‘em that are less successful, like the one with Ray Winstone’s character rising out of the water. And there are a few that look very stilted and fake - the shot of the horses going over the bridge being one of the worst.

Also, this trailer hasn’t removed my doubts about the facial animation system. How could it, there’s hardly any facial animation in it at all.

The one overriding thought I’m having through all this is that I miss the “classic” Zemeckis. The days of the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump, Contact.
Yes, they were all technically groundbreaking movies, but the breakthroughs were just necessary steps in getting the stories told. These days, that situation seems reversed - the technology seems to be dictating which stories get turned into movies, as well as how they are made.
And I think it works both ways. I mean, Beowulf is primarily going to be judged by critics and audiences alike on the photo-realistic quality of its CG characters, and not so much on its story or character development. It could be the most wonderful film ever made, but if the characters are expression-less zombies people are going to hate the movie. Certainly since they are supposed to look like real people (unlike Monster House, where everything was done in a faux-stopmotion style).

And that puts the movie at a disadvantage already.

Eyeon has just announced the latest update to their flagship compositing package Fusion, which brings it to version 5.2.

Some of new features include:

• OFX plug-in support
• 3D LUTs, fully GPU accelerated with plug-in file formats - support for 3D LUTs in both the FileLUT tool and as a view LUT
• Expanded metadata handling for DPX, Cineon and OpenEXR formats
• Fusion’s scriptable plug-ins allow for the design and running of image processing tools created in the Fusion Lua scripting engine
• Python scripting has been added to control Fusion from web hosts and interfaces to Python-based film pipeline management systems
• Tracker’s new infinite sub pixel precision method is faster and more accurate over changing footage
• A new Vector Motion Blur tool
• Plus additional new tools, and hundreds of UI enhancements and workflow improvements

Pricing and availability will be announced at this year’s SIGGRAPH.

Read more at Eyeon’s site.