Continue Reading "INTERVIEW: Thiago Porto"Thiago Porto is a VFX Supervisor, and Senior Flame & Nuke Artist for MPC Advertising in New York. He is also one of the leading forces behind researching Machine Learning for 2D-based applications in our industry.
When warping, I always use ST Maps as the base, as they provide so much extra control. Nuke’s built-in “MotionBlur” node, RSMB, and other nodes are available to generate motion blur from our warped input images, however, these nodes are generating new motion vectors, essentially making their best guess at where the pixels are travelling. Wouldn’t it be better to use our warp data to drive this instead?
Continue Reading "INTERVIEW: Pedro Andrade"My name’s Pedro Andrade and I’ve been working in VFX for around 10 years and out of a complete accident. I have a background in Mechanical Engineering and I effectively worked as one in different countries until I took a chance and left that field to pursue a career as a Music Producer in London – which I also did for a while. Then, in London in a sort of twist of fate, in a completely unplanned way, I came across with VFX, an industry in which I’ve been working as a 2D supervisor for some time now in companies like Milk VFX, Cinesite and more recently DNEG.
A couple of months ago, fuelled by the current pandemic situation, I’ve started a little project in the form of a live show on YouTube called ‘Comp Lair’.
Apart from that I love traveling (!!!), food, spending time with family and friends, playing and hearing music, holidays, etc.
Using TCL expressions in Nuke can help us to evaluate mathematical operations, as well as link values together to create something new. However, an often forgotten feature in Nuke is the ability to add expressions to RotoShapes and Paint strokes (which are also splines under the hood).
Nuke’s built-in “Tracker linking dialog” (pictured above), helps us to link individual vertices to various things in a Tracker node, and is doing so by automatically adding TCL expressions for us! However, what if we wanted to link things the other way around?
Continue Reading "A simple tutorial on using expressions with Paint Strokes."You might have seen gizmos with knobs that dynamically disable/enable, or hide/show, based on the value of another knob. This is achieved by accessing the knobChanged knob, which is hidden to users, and can be accessed via Python. You can disable a selected node’s mix knob with this line of code: Similarly, you can hide a selected node’s mix knob with this line of code: Super easy. Now to do hide/show and disable/enable some knobs dynamically, I’ll create a NoOp with some custom knobs. And…Continue Reading “Dynamic knobs in Nuke.”
We’ve all had one of those shots where our CG animates through frame and needs to change from one lighting condition to another. Perhaps this is a character travelling from indoors to outdoors, flashing lights in a scene, or an object passing through atmospheric haze; it can come in many forms.
Continue Reading "Quick Tip: Animate scene states, not knob values."
Continue Reading "INTERVIEW: Geoffroy Givry"Hi, my name is Geoffroy Givry, I’ve been in the VFX industry since 2001, first as a Generalist and I quickly became a full-time Compositor around 2003. I’m a proud and dedicated husband and father of 3 wonderful children. I love looking after my family, my garden, cooking BBQs, chopping wood and building AI Drones. But most of all, my two real passions are learning (I’m addicted to video tutorials!) and in developing pipelines and intelligent workflows for the VFX industry, especially everything concerning remote work.
I created my own company in August 2019 after being at ILM for 5 years as Senior Comp, Comp TD and Comp Technical Lead. Now, I’m working remotely in the gorgeous countryside of Surrey in the UK, as a Visual Effects Supervisor, pipeline architect and senior compositor. As well, I am an Art Director and VFX Supervisor for Ubisoft on their game cinematics.
Continue Reading "INTERVIEW: Bernie Kimbacher, VFX Supervisor & Founder of Hive VFX."After graduating from Vancouver Film School I started my VFX career in 2007 at Image Engine in Vancouver where I worked for 8 years, with my last project being VFX Supervisor on Straight Outta Compton. I then went to OATS Studios and Umedia before returning to Image Engine again as VFX Supervisor on Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. After wrapping that one up I started my own business under Hive VFX using AWS.
Outside of geeking out at a computer, I enjoy anything in the outdoors, hiking, running, biking and skiing among others.
Over the last two parts of this series, we’ve talked about how the Coronavirus pandemic has impacted the VFX industry globally, how VFX vendors are adapting, and the opportunities presented to us to manage our own time, increase productivity, and gain greater flexibility in our lives. In this third and final part, we’ll discuss some of the potential pitfalls that working from home brings, how you can make the most of the situation, and even find an opportunity for growth.
Continue Reading "COVID-19 — An Opportunity for the VFX Industry: Part 3."
Continue Reading "INTERVIEW: Gen Camilleri, VFX Supervisor."My name is Gen (Genevieve Camilleri) and I recently finished working on my first feature film as a VFX Supervisor for Mill Film, Adelaide. I started my career 11 years ago in Melbourne, Australia and have since worked as a Senior compositor, Lead Compositor, Compositing Supervisor and DFX Supervisor for various studios such as ILM Vancouver, Animal Logic Sydney and Method Studios Montreal.
Outside of work, I enjoy spending my time outdoors doing anything from hiking, climbing to snowboarding.