BBC: Pixar’s Up wins first award at Cannes

A talking dog named Dug from animated Pixar film Up has won the Palm Dog, a comic alternative to the Cannes Film Festival's main prize, the Palme d'Or.

Voted by British film critics, it has been presented since 2001 to the best canine performance seen at the event.

Dug, given the power of speech by a human voice collar, was the runaway winner of the unofficial prize.

But it faced competition from a black poodle seen in Quentin Tarantino's war film Inglourious Basterds.

'Cone of shame'

The rules were bent this year to allow the talking fox who appears in Lars von Trier's horror film Antichrist to compete.

Moses, a dog represented by a chalk outline in Von Trier's drama Dogville, won the prize when it was presented at the 2003 festival.

The makers of Up will receive the traditional trophy - a leather collar bearing the name of the quirky award in silver letters.

Last year's collar went to Lucy, the dog who went missing in US film Wendy and Lucy.

This year's jury also handed out a "cone of shame" to Filipino thriller Kinatay, in which a dog is seen being hit by a car.

Up is out in the US on 29 May but does not open in the UK until 16 October.

eyeon Fusion used extensively on Dragonball: Evolution

Fusion, the award- winning compositing application from eyeon Software, played a key role in creating the visual effects for Twentieth Century Fox’s Dragonball: Evolution, directed by James Wong.

Winnipeg-based Frantic Films VFX contributed 334 visual effects shots to the film, with VFX supervisors Chad Wiebe and Mike Shand overseeing the work from the company’s Vancouver and Winnipeg facilities, respectively.

According to Wiebe, "Frantic has had a working relationship with eyeon Software for nearly 10 years. I've been here nearly that long and have used Fusion almost exclusively. Fusion works really well from a production standpoint. It enables artists to share tools and ideas among multiple offices. Tools from within a Fusion comp can be copied out in an XML format, and sent through email to quickly share ideas."

Dragonball: Evolution is based on the　popular Japanese comic book series created by Akira Toriyama, whose work spawned best-selling graphic novels, video games, and a phenomenally successful television series.　 The　live-action adventure centers on a team of warriors, each of who possesses special abilities. Together, they protect Earth from a force bent on　dominating the Universe and controlling the mystical objects from which the film takes its name.

Wiebe explained that one scene in particular – a battle scene around a lake of lava – became one of the biggest challenges. The characters – Goku and the Fulum Assassins – had to be able to interact fully with the environment.

"The lava lake sequence as a whole presented significant challenges for the Vancouver team, as it was an integration of a number of different visual effects with varying degrees of complexity," said Wiebe. "Shots where we had creatures interacting with the lava lake proved to be especially challenging in terms of compositing."

For the sequence, Frantic provided on-set VFX supervision in Durango, Mexico. Artists at Frantic’s Vancouver facility designed a digital environment, including mountainscapes and a molten lava lake complete with lava falls and crust, with rocks and debris swirling about.

"In addition to the degree of realism required, the shots also needed to maintain continuity with the practical elements, while holding up to a significant degree of color correction," he continued. "The original practical lava lake set did not meet with studio approval, so in order to save the sequence from being cut, it underwent a significant transformation, from a physical plywood and sprayfoam set, built out in the Mexican desert, into a digital labyrinth of smoke and ash that was ultimately used in the theatrical release."

"The reward for developing visual effects technology is seeing the spectacular results created by talented artists. This big screen magic drives visual effects companies, and consequently eyeon to create the necessary tools," said Joanne Dicaire, Director of Sales and Marketing at eyeon Software. "We congratulate the team at Frantic for their outstanding work on Dragonball: Evolution."

eyeon Fusion offers a full 2D and 3D compositing environment, including a 3D particle system, comprehensive integration with 3D animation packages, non-destructive floating-point color correction, paint tools, keying, roto-scoping, advanced look-up tables, character generation, and more. Fusion 6.0 is scheduled for release in early June 2009.For more information, visit www.eyeonline.com.




About eyeon Software

eyeon Software Inc. develops applications for the VFX and postproduction communities. eyeon products include Fusion™, an award-winning compositing application used on thousands of feature film and broadcast projects over the past 20 years; Rotation®, a rotoscoping system and Vision®, a suite of tools designed for broadcast. Recognizing the need for a comprehensive approach to postproduction workflows, eyeon Software introduced Generation® in 2008, providing an integrated facility-wide system for artist collaboration and visual shot management. Fusion artists have contributed significant work to recent box office successes such as Night At The Museum, G.I. Joe, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Twilight, Tropic Thunder, Iron Man, Hellboy II, Journey To The Center Of The Earth 3D, 300, Spiderman 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Happy Feet, Sin City, and many others. www.eyeonline.com

About Frantic Films VFX

Headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada, with offices in Vancouver and Los Angeles, Calif., Frantic Films VFX has been operating divisions that provide visual effects for film and television, and VFX software development since 1997. Frantic Films’ VFX award-winning visual effects teams have worked on films including G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Watchmen, Dragonball: Evolution, Red Cliff, W., Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, Grindhouse, Superman Returns, X-Men 3, Poseidon, and many others. The company’s software tools were developed to solve complex production challenges on in-house feature effects projects, and are also in use at many leading 3D animation and effects facilities worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.franticfilms.com.

Release of Terragen 2 with XfrogPlants Bundles and Sidegrades

Spring has sprung – at least virtually – with Terragen 2 and XfrogPlants' bundles! Planetside Software and Xfrog, Inc. have united in support of a common goal: to create the most highly realistic virtual ecosystem software available. Today, with a variety of bundles to pick from, the user can tailor the software to fit their specific needs.

Additionally, new users who own competitive software* will receive $100 off the list price of the new Mega-Bundle: Terragen 2, Xfrog 3.5, and 1,300 XfrogPlants (in XFR and TGO). This special sidegrade price is only $899, or $100 off.

New users can also take advantage of the sidegrade offer to purchase the standard Terragen 2 with 1,300 XfrogPlants Bundle (in TGO format only) also for $100 less, at $599.

As a show of appreciation, Planetside is offering current Terragen 2 users the opportunity to upgrade to one of the bundles at extremely competitive prices. See the pricing grid, below, for details.

Now, with the different levels of bundled packages any user – from production house to personal designer – can have access to the most sophisticated virtual plant-enhanced ecosystem creation and visualization tool on the market today.

"Terragen has enjoyed a successful history of photorealistic skies, terrains, water and even whole planets, but for a long time vegetation was our weakest link," noted Matt Fairclough of Planetside Software, "With Terragen 2 we're delivering tools to render billions of polygons via instancing. XfrogPlants models are great with Terragen 2 because of their high quality and botanical accuracy."

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"Mountain Lake Storm Arriving, courtesy of Mr. Ryan Archer



Terragen 2 with XfrogPlants Price GridTerragen 2 with Xfrog Plants Megabundle$999Terragen 2 with animation, 1,300 XfrogPlants (in both TGO and XFR formats) and Xfrog 3.5 full modeling and editing softwareTerragen 2 with XfrogPlants Megabundle Sidegrade!$899Terragen 2 with animation, 1,300 XfrogPlants (in both TGO and XFR formats) and Xfrog 3.5 full modeling and editing software; for exisiting users of Vue, Carrara, Bryce and Mojo (non-free versions)Terragen 2 with XfrogPlants$699Current owners of Terragen 2 can now upgrade to Terragen 2 with animation and 1,300 XfrogPlants (in both TGO and XFR formats) and Xfrog 3.5 full modeling and editing softwareTerragen 2 with XfrogPlants$699Basic bundle includes newest version of Terragen 2 with animation and all 1,300 XfrogPlants (in TGO format only)Terragen 2 with XfrogPlants Sidegrade!$599Terragen 2 with animation and 1,300 XfrogPlants; for exisiting users of Vue, Carrara, Bryce and Mojo (non-free versions)Terragen 2 with XfrogPlants Upgrade$499Current owners of Terragen 2 without animation can now upgrade to Terragen 2 with animation and 1,300 XfrogPlantsTerragen 2 with XfrogPlants Upgrade$399Current owners of Terragen 2 with animation can now upgrade to Terragen 2 with animation and 1,300 XfrogPlants

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Buy Now !

Learn more about Terragen 2

Learn About Xfrog, Inc. | Greenworks

Ask a Purchasing Question


* Ownership of any of the following non-free editions of software qualify: Vue, Bryce, Mojo, Carrara

About Planetside Software
Planetside Software was founded in 1999 to develop Terragen, a name that has become synonymous with photorealistic computer generated landscapes. Planetside Software believes that professionals, amateur artists and hobbyists share a common need for tools that deliver controllable realism and enable creativity, and strives to make those tools affordable to all.

About Xfrog, Inc.
Xfrog is a world leader in organic plant modeling and organic and ecosystem software research and development. XfrogPlants are currently 1,300 botanically accurate plant models created with Xfrog procedural software in 22 libraries and includes detailed documentation in 7 languages. Xfrog Modeling Software exists as Plugins for Maya, CINEMA 4D, and as standalone Windows Software (Xfrog 3.5)

Up Round-Up! (5/27/09)

We’re almost there, only two more days until Up premieres in US theatres. But for now, here are a bunch of Up-related stories (may contain spoilers… and squirrels) that may interest you:

The Life and Times of Pete Docter: Ok, so Pixar fans generally know that Pete Docter is the director of Up, Monsters, Inc. and Mike’s New Car and that he was also a crucial player in many Pixar productions. But what many people don’t know about Pixar’s 3rd ever animator is how he got to Pixar and what this Minnesota native’s life was like before. Find out all that and more with this fantastic 5-page extended biography featuring quotes from family and friends by The Star Tribune.

Bay Area References: As you probably know, Pixar Animation Studios is located right outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. SFGate is reporting that some references in this Pete Docter flick are in fact real life Bay Area locations. They include some of Pete and Jonas’ favorite places in the area. Read about the Fenton’s Creamery (a 114 year old ice cream parlor) and Merritt Bakery (home of the burger cake) in-jokes at their respective links.

Balloon Tech: One of the biggest technical challenges in the making of Up was simulating the thousands of overlapping balloons tethered to Carl’s house. Think about it, each balloon is on it’s own string and they all move randomly, sounds like a challenge to me! Want to learn more on how this technical and artistic marvel was tackled, then head on over to CNET where supervising technical director Steve May explains Up’s balloons in great detail!

Interviews, Interviews, Interviews: We know you like interviews. If more interviews is what you want, more interviews is what you’ll get! First off here’s About.com’s 3 page interview. Screen Crave and Cinematical also got in on the interview madness. NPR Radio has got a little under 30 minutes of audio with Pete Docter, listen in here. For more interviews, check out this earlier post. Interviews, interviews, interviews; I’ll be saying that A LOT more these next few days!

Fun Fact: Pete Docter animated Luxo, Jr. in the Pixar opening sequence!

Enjoy this continuation of the UP Round-Up series, a collection of Up related stories that didn’t quite make it into one post! May 29th, here we come!

Pixar "UP": How to animate lots of baloons

If you want to consider a difficult computational problem, try thinking of the algorithms required to animate more than 10,000 helium balloons, each with its own string, but each also interdependent on the rest, which are collectively hoisting aloft a small house................

Read More At:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-1...2547-1040_3-0-5

EXPOSE 7 Shipping now!

Hello all,

EXPOS? 7 is now shipping! The new edition fits in more art than ever before, and the quality of entries was truly outstanding this year. The judging panel were also unanimous in praising the quality of entries this year:

“There is some fantastic work in there and it was extremely hard to choose what to omit. On the whole the quality of entries was brilliant and the complexity of ideas was astonishing—better than last year I believe!”
Max Dennison, founder of Matte Painting UK

“OH MY GOD! WOW! Some scary good work going on out there. Exciting to see.”
Lorne Lanning, co-founder Oddworld Inhabitants

EXPOS? 7 Preview
You can flip through EXPOS? 7's pages here to see the amazing work featured in the book.




Exclusive offer
A specially-commissioned 30-minute Camtasia video walkthrough by EXPOS? 7 cover artist Bente Schlick will be freely downloadable to the first 300 customers who purchase either a Hardcover or Softcover edition of EXPOS? 7. The walkthrough cover's Bente's techniques in painting her fantasy character from her “Touch of Gold” cover artwork.




EXPOS? 7 Limited Edition
A collector's Limited Edition EXPOS? 7 is available to pre-order, featuring a black leather-bound cover with gold embossing, a numbered Certificate of Authenticity, and an additional 16 pages of Master artist profiles.




EXPOS? 7 Limited Edition: Bonus prints and Camtasia walkthrough
A stunning set of eight bonus prints are yours free when you purchase EXPOS? 7 Limited Edition. Customers will also receive the specially-created 30-minute Camtasia walkthrough by EXPOS? 7 cover artist Bente Schlick, showing how she created part of her ‘Touch of Gold’ fantasy character.



1. Bente Schlick ‘Touch of Gold’
2. Daniel Dociu ‘Guild Wars: Steam Demon’
3. Arthur Haas ‘Jungleman’
4. Simon Dominic ‘The Sculptor’
5. Kekai Kotaki ‘Slayer’
6. Liang Yue ‘Wielding a brush’
7. Marta Dahlig ‘Judith’
8. Alexandru Popescu ‘Sail City’

We're also making the announcement for the EXPOS? 7 Grand Master shortly and it's a big one.

Natural Selection 2 Trailer

Check out the trailer for Natural Selection 2.
http://kotaku.com/5271215/unknown-w...kyline=true&s=x

It doesn't look like there is going to be a high quality version online until tomorrow though.

E-on Software Ships Vue 7.5

Here is vue 7.5 with a lots of features with Vray support, XSI ECO painting, planetary rendering,...

Cheers,
Ben

"E-on Software Ships Vue 7.5 ADDS V-RAY COMPATIBILITY, PLANETARY RENDERING, CAMERA MAPPING, CLOUD ALPHA

May 27, 2009. Beaverton, Oregon: e-on software, maker of Vue, the leading solutions for natural 3D environments, today announced the immediate availability of Vue 7.5 xStream and Vue 7.5 Infinite, the company’s latest release of its professional solutions for the creation, animation and rendering of natural 3D environments.

E-on software also released a Vue 7.4 update for all Vue 7 products (including Esprit, Pro Studio and Complete, its products for artists). This update adds new functionality to Vue 7 and is available at no cost for all Vue 7 users (the complete list of improvements and new features is available at
www.e-onsoftware.com/update).


New features of Vue 7.5

Vue xStream and Vue Infinite are the company’s professional solutions for the creation, animation and rendering of natural 3D environments. While Vue Infinite is a standalone application, Vue xStream operates seamlessly inside of 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave, Cinema4D and Softimage|XSI. Specifically designed for graphics professionals, these products combine a multitude of cutting edge features that easily integrate into existing production pipelines.

Release 7.5 adds significant new functionality to Vue 7:

• Color and Alpha masks of single clouds and cloud layers in multi-pass renderer
• "Camera Mapping" to dramatically cut animation render times
• Spherical and planetary procedural terrains with infinite level of detail
• Spherical cloudscapes (procedural, or based on real-world/modified cloud maps)
• Material Painting and effect-driven material mapping in the Terrain Editor
• Enhanced Multi-Processor usage for procedural terrains, Dynamic EcoSystems and panoramic rendering
• EcoSystem populations that can evolve over time
• Support of the V-Ray renderer for 3ds Max (xStream)
• Support of EcoSystem painting in XSI (xStream)
• Cloud layers that cast and receive shadows from other cloud layers and objects in the scene
• Improved OpenGL sky and cloud preview, colored EcoSystem instance previewing
• Other productivity and feature enhancements.

More information on the new features of Vue 7.5 is available at:
www.e-onsoftware.com/professional

SIGGRAPH 2009 Technical Papers Focus on Technology and Advanced Techniques.

The SIGGRAPH 2009 Technical Papers program is the premier global forum presenting groundbreaking research from today's leading international organizations. Topics will feature the latest computer graphic innovations from a detailed simulation of intrusive surgical procedures to the development of infra-red flash photography. A total of 439 submissions were reviewed by a distinguished panel of 54 jurors, and 78 papers were selected for presentation at SIGGRAPH 2009.

Papers cover core topics of computer graphics, such as modeling, animation, rendering, imaging, and human-computer interaction, and also explore related fields of audio, robotics, visualization, and perception.

"These research papers provide a preview of the latest advances in computer graphics, and they highlight how important computer graphics are to art, science, medicine, and other fields," stated Tom Funkhouser, SIGGRAPH 2009 Technical Papers Chair from Princeton University. "SIGGRAPH papers have historically provided the most groundbreaking innovations in computer graphics. This content represents some of the greatest achievements in this field from across the globe and could very well lead to advancements that impact all of our lives."

Select highlights from the SIGGRAPH 2009 Papers Program include:

Interactive Simulation of Surgical Needle Insertion and Steering
This paper presents algorithms for simulating and visualizing the insertion and steering of needles through deformable tissues for surgical training and planning. Novel features include a fast mesh maintenance algorithm and physics-based methods for needle-tissue coupling.
Authors:
James F. O'Brien, University of California, Berkeley
Nuttapong Chentanez, University of California, Berkeley
Ron Alterovitz, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Daniel Ritchie, University of California, Berkeley
Lita Cho, University of California, Berkeley
Kris Hauser, University of California, Berkeley
Ken Goldberg, University of California, Berkeley
Jonathan Shewchuk, University of California, Berkeley

Bokode: Imperceptible Visual Tags for Camera-Based Interaction From a Distance
Detailed analysis of how to enable a commodity camera to photograph and capture a 3mm barcode from two meters away. The key is to exploit camera bokeh, which maps binary data encoded in directionally varying rays into a large disk. The next step is to decode ID as well as camera pose for augmented reality applications.
Authors:
Ankit Mohan, MIT
Grace Woo, MIT
Shinsaku Hiura, Osaka University
Quinn Smithwick, Media Lab MIT
Ramesh Raskar, Media Lab MIT

Dark Flash Photography
Camera flashes produce intrusive bursts of light that disturb or dazzle. In this paper, a "dark" camera flash is presented that uses infra-red and ultra-violet light just outside the visible range to capture pictures in low-light conditions while being two orders of magnitude dimmer than a conventional flash.
Authors:
Dilip Krishnan, New York University
Rob Fergus, New York University

Real-Time Hand-Tracking with a Color Glove
This research describes a system that can reconstruct the pose of the hand from a single image wearing a multi-colored glove and demonstrates a system as a user-input device for desktop virtual reality applications.
Authors:
Robert Y. Wang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jovan Popovic, Adobe Systems Incorporated, University of Washington, and MIT

Harmonic Fluids
This presentation proposes an algorithm for synthesizing familiar bubble-based fluid sounds such as splashing, pouring, and babbling. The researchers acoustically augment existing incompressible fluid solvers with particle-based models for acoustic bubble creation, vibration, advection, and radiation. Acoustic transfer functions are estimated using the fast dual-domain boundary integral Helmholtz solver.
Authors:
Changxi Zheng, Cornell University
Doug James, Cornell University

Directable, High-Resolution Simulation of Fire on the GPU
This presentation proposes a hybrid particle and grid simulation system which utilizes graphics hardware (GPU) to quickly simulate artist-directable, high-resolution fire. Simulation resolutions as high as 2048 are able to be computed in a few hours by parallelizing work among multiple GPUs.
Author:
Christopher Jon Horvath, Industrial Light & Magic

Based upon the popularity of the program at SIGGRAPH 2008, this year's Technical Papers program is once again expanding to include 19 conference presentations for each paper published this year in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG).


Related links:
SIGGRAPH 2009
Technical Papers
ACM

Grin Studios lets go of 160 people

Sad news today.

Not sure of the specifics but apparently Sweden has been taking a hammering.

This really sucks because I was hoping to work there one day. Seemed like a cool company.

Anyway I wanted to post this so headhunters could get ready.

Good luck in finding new positions guys. Talent always finds a way.