CG Today - VFX News

VFX work on BBC's Wonders of the Solar System honoured.

Prime Focus LogoPrime Focus has won a Gold World Medal for Best Special Effects at the 2011 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards for its work on the BBC's 'Wonders of the Solar System' series.

The London-based Broadcast VFX team, led by Creative Director Simon Clarke, created over 30 minutes of original visual effects for the hit five-part series. VFX Supervisor Steve Waugh worked closely with a team of artists over a 12 month period to help visualise and bring the planets to life. This was inspired by photographic images taken from space probes such as the Cassini and Hubble telescopes.

Tweak Software's RVTweak Software, makers of RV, the next generation image and sequence viewer for VFX and animation artists, and ARRI, makers of the ALEXA digital camera,  announced their collaboration to integrate high dynamic range, uncompromised color support for ALEXA into Tweak's tools for playback, dailies and transcoding. The ALEXA RV workflow will be shown at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference (NAB) at the Las Vegas Convention Center, April 11-14, at booth SL9707.

Autodesk Smoke 2012 for MacAutodesk, Inc. is now shipping Autodesk Smoke 2012 for Mac OS X software, an all-in-one editorial finishing tool with a robust, integrated 3D visual effects toolset. Smoke for Mac has been used to create corporate videos for companies from Oakley to Land Rover; commercials for high-profile brands, including Adidas, ESPN, Volkswagen and Subway; and for unique multiscreen projects on display at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center and the California Science Center.

Creative Studio Perfectly Captures the Star Wars Lego World in 3D

Lego Star Wars III

Creative production company The Core’s stylized visual effects chops are on full display in a series of humorous spots for the latest Lego Star Wars III video game creation from Lucas Arts. Working with Los Angeles-based agency Goodness Mfg, Director Chris Hoffman incorporated his signature tongue-in-check visual style into this epic campaign set atop a mesmerizing golden sunset hillside.

RangoIn "Rango", the new Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon animated film directed by Gore Verbinski, visual effects facility Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) was able to overcome production demands and timeline challenges with the help of NVIDIA® Quadro® professional graphics solutions.

Approximately 450 ILM artists located in San Francisco and Singapore worked on Rango, each on a workstation equipped with NVIDIA Quadro solutions. The artists benefited from the speed of the graphics processing unit (GPU) when using animation tools such as Autodesk Maya, along with a range of ILM’s in-house applications.