Interview with Freiderich Munch

Freiderich Munch:

I think the geometry system needs a bit of an overhaul; it's starting to show its age, would love to see a ForEach node like in Houdini, and am pretty convinced the Luxology merger will bring a new renderer which will be a wonderful addition. I'd also like the price to come down a bit. I work at a lot of smaller studios and Nuke can be a bit out of reach for them and then I’m [sadly] back in AE land. I always thought adding some focus into motion-graphics would be smart, possibly allowing them to sell more licenses and hopeful a way to bring the price down.

Love the new Geometry Tools plugins. Everyone always says "So what, why would you do that in Nuke". Answer: I'm a Nuke artist, not a Maya artist.

Thanks Freiderich for the tools.

Race To Finish ‘The Hobbit’

The Deadline Team :

Peter Jackson says he and his team are working ’round the clock to finish post-production on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in time for its world premiere Wednesday November 28 in Wellington, New Zealand.

Comment by Peter:

It worries me when films are rushed to be finished in order to screen on a certain date. I have no doubts the film(s) will be just as enjoyable as the LOTR trilogy but it makes me wonder if we’ll be seeing the final product on Dec. 14th or will we have to wait for the extended editions again on discs?

I think Peter has something here.

Interview with Action-Sport Photographer Tim Kemple

Michael Zhang:

Tim Kemple: Sure. I’m a photographer and film maker based in Utah. I grew up on the East Coast and spent my weekends as a kid climbing, skiing and wandering. I started carrying a camera to document my adventures.

Funny Canon Commercial Shows What Photogs Will Do for the Perfect Shot

Michael Zhang:

If you were watching the Thanksgiving Day NFL football games on TV today, you may have seen the above commercial promoting the Canon Rebel T4i entry-level DSLR. It’s a humorous ad that asks “When was the last time something inspired you to be creative?” and shows a number of photographers putting themselves in uncomfortable (and unsafe) situations in order to capture the photograph they have in their minds eye.

If your looking for some humor this Thanksgiving weekend.

Skyfall

Paul Hellard writing for cgsociety.org:

Neill reveals that Cinesite has their own inhouse photographer and they had access to two komodos at the London Zoo. They were able to get right up close to the komodos, as there was a special room where the artists could set up lights and get some really close-up high resolution texture images of the skin of the komodo for reference. Eyes, teeth, flaky skin and mouth. Using this truly reference material, Cinesite’s character animation team modeled the creature in Maya and textured it using Mudbox and Mari, before compositing it into the live-action plate using Nuke. “One of the komodos was ‘friendlier’ because it was hand-reared and the keeper was in the room with it,” adds Neill. “That dragon was great for textures, but there was another one, younger and feistier. We used that one to study the movement with three synched video cameras, as it jumped around catching mice and anything else it wanted.”

NUKE 7.0 DepthGenerator Particles

TheFoundryChannel:

In the final installment of our NUKE 7.0 new feature and upgrade videos we take you through the major improvements in our DepthGenerator and Particle nodes. We show you new options in the DepthGenerator for creating cleaner, more accurate depth maps, and how to use new features in the Particle system to create more complex simulations easily.

If your needing some away time.

How to Quickly Resize Multiple Photos in Mac OS X Using a Terminal Command

Michael Zhang:

If you use a Mac and regularly need to resize batches of photos, there’s actually a tool built into your operating system that lets you do just that without having to open any image editing program. It’s called “sips”, which stands for scriptable image processing system. It’s extremely easy to use, but you’ll need to know how to use Terminal to take advantage of it.

Fast and Easy, Happy Thanksgiving.

Bryce Bayer RIP (Bayer Filter/sensor Kodak scientist).

By Mike Seymour:

Bryce Bayer, the Eastman Kodak scientist who invented a now pivotal color filter for digital photography that bears his name, has passed away. Bayer, 83, died on November 13th in Bath, Maine.

Petapixel Article:

RIP: Bayer Filter Inventor Bryce Bayer Has Passed Away

Michael Zhang:

Here’s an example showing what a digital camera’s sensor “sees” through a Bayer filter, and the resulting photo that emerges after demosaicing algorithms are used to interpolate the data (i.e. using math to figure out the actual color that should be at each pixel based on purely red, green, and blue readings)

The Camera Versus the Human Eye

Roger Cicala writing for Petapixel.com:

Basically in doing all this research about how the human eye is like a camera, what I really learned is how human vision is not like a photograph. In a way, it explained to me why I so often find a photograph much more beautiful and interesting than I found the actual scene itself.

NUKE 7.0v1 Release Candidate now available

We're pleased to announce that an update to the NUKE 7.0v1 beta is now available to download. This is the release candidate (woo!), so please do take the time to check it out and send us your valuable feedback.

Getting closer. Here are the Release Notes