Images courtesy of New Deal Studios. For more images from the making of The Aviator crash landing sequence discussed on the show, check out AviatorVFX.com.
This week we’ll talk with special guest Scott Schneider about his amazing career working in film FX and what it takes to be a digital set designer in today’s digital design world! Inspired by seeing Star Wars for the first time when he was a young-un’, Scott started in film FX the original way—creating models by hand. Listen in this week and we’ll talk to Scott about pre-computer FX processes and how he transitioned those skills into a digital FX powerhouse of today’s standards, plus more!
- Your custom HDRI dreams are about to get a lot more custom and powerful. HDR Light Studio has been released by Lightmap. The new version that comes as a stand-alone product and plugin for KeyShot, Maxwell and Deep Exploration brings Collada support, new light blending, custom fall-off curves. I tell ya, it’s a dream to set up an HDR in realtime. All the details are at HDRLightStudio.com.
- Indeed, the idea of CAD on the cloud keeps getting blasted down, but not so much in the Media and Entertainment industry. IKinema is leading the way with a new tool called WebAnimate. It’s a web-based platform bringing animation and rigging to your browser and letting you keep your assets where you want them. A model for CAD to come? I think so.
- And……how about some open-source software to bring realistic motion and explosion to your animated scenes? Bullet Physics simulation experiment is now running on the Chrome Browser. You can try it for yourself, toss some boxes and roll some balls. Hours of simulated fun coming to the web. very cool.
- The New York Times has an interesting piece on the production of the movie Hugo. A Martin Scorsese film about an orphan in 1930′s Paris who lives in the walls of a train station, based on Brian Selznick’s children’s book. The article delves into the large sets created for the film to recreate a modernist mechanical mash-up of machinery and materials coming at you in three dimensions. It’s truly a masterpiece of set design and, like any Scorsese film, a must-see.
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