J.J. Abrams Building Star Wars Post Facility in LA →

Jennifer Wolfe: 

Now it appears the director is building a work-around designed to keep at least a portion of the movie's production closer to home. According to THR, Abrams -- who has shot all of his films in Los Angeles (he even personally covered some of Star Trek Into Darkness' costs in order to keep production local)

 

I think the directors are going to play a huge part in fixing the film industry. Its not just post artists that are feeling the outsourcing. Many of my friends that work in production haven't worked on anything large in Los Angeles in a long time. Traveling to go shoot somewhere that the studios get free money. Many of them have family that they leave for months.

The directors that can pull on the studios should start. It didn't take long for Disney to have second thoughts about pushing JJ around.

To be a fly on the wall.

Change Knobs →

Nukepedia: 

A tool used to change the same knob in all selected nodes

 

I do this all the time. Thanks Ryan for putting this script together.

VFX job interview coming up? Be sure to ask these questions. →

Animation Communication: 

I've had many a conversation with people in the industry about jobs they've had and studios they've worked at. There is always a point where we talk about how this studio did this well but this not so well and so on. And I always ask 'well, what do you look for in a job?' which is followed by 'well, perhaps you should ask more questions at the interview stage.' And although at this early stage it is impossible to predict all the challenges you may come across, you can ask some basic questions to get a feel of what's to come.

 

Asking questions is always a good idea.

Real blue gloop: The World’s End →

Churchill:

“So I thought if we’ve got to do 3D renders every time we see that it’s going to be beyond the budget. Nuke has really matured into a tool that has such good 3D capabilities within a 2D environment – so we went with that approach.”

 

Mark would sometimes explain how he would do it on an optical printer. That would make the process much more simple[not easier, just easier to problem solve]. There is nothing “not cool” with doing it 2d. The second smartest compositor I know does most techniques 2d. This makes him a very confident artist. You get a lot of information for free from a tracked camera and geometry, but just like a calculator. If you don't know it's wrong who cares that you can do it in 3d.

Winners of the Red Bull Illume Photo Contest 2013 →

The Atlantic.com: 

The winners have just been announced in the 3rd edition of the Red Bull Illume Image Quest photo competition. The overall winner, top 10 category winners and top 50 finalists were unveiled at a ceremony in Hong Kong earlier today.

 

Have a great Laybor Day.

Atmosphere →

The Rim Fire while tragic makes for a very good lesson in atmosphere. You don't need a depth channel to do it either. Try a simple grade.

Roto handle in nuke 7 →

Sam Smith: 

This is probably because the default 2D handle pick size increased from 10 to 20 in 7.0v1

 

Moving Footage of Saturn Created Using Thousands of High-Res Photos →

Eric Calouro: 

Vimeo user Fabio di Donato has uploaded a video titled “Around Saturn,” which features more than 200,000 images snapped by Cassini from 2004 to 2012. These RAW images were converted to PNG and set to a Waltz.

 

The most amazing thing about this video is the scale. Remember, space is huge, and so are the objects moving thru it.