#2.131 - Take Note, VFXers | Juan-Luis →

sent from: Esher, Surrey, UK. destination: Roanoke, Virginia, USA

At Rhythm and Hues, the company where I started my VFX career, they had a company meeting every Friday. This meeting was run, without fail, by the President of the company, John Hughes. He would go into detail about the company financials and cash flow in a way that I've never seen before or since. He'd take the opportunity to explain the low, low profit margins, how to pay off debts, what depreciation of equipment meant. He showed you exactly how close to going under we were constantly and in a good year you got 2-5% profits. When I told my father about this he said that surely John must have had other motives than mere education and besides, no good business can run on such low profits, surely the real numbers are different. I was too young at the time to counter him but 16 years later I can say confidently that John was (and remains) a unique and wonderfully unusual company president, truly concerned with his employees, and his numbers were correct. So, when the inevitable layoffs would occur from time to time, it was all well understood.

 

Sounds like someone else I know. Good people don't need reminding how to be good they just are. Nobody is perfect, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying doing the right thing isn't something you should contemplate you should just do it.

VES Announces the 2013 Board of Directors →

By Jeff Heusser:

“To be elected the Chair of the VES is not only an honor but a responsibility to our artists to insure they are recognized for what they do,” said Okun. “The VES represents members in twenty-nine countries. These members are the artists that drive the industry to new heights, increase the ability to tell compelling stories, imagine new horizons and deliver the unimaginable. I will continue to shine the light and to look for new and better ways to have them recognized,” Okun added.

 

KATANA wins Academy Sci-Tech award | The Foundry →

The Foundry:

Sony Pictures Imageworks engineers Steve LaVietes, Brian Hall and Jeremy Selan created the software as an in-house lighting and scene management solution for Sony Pictures Imageworks almost ten years ago.

 

Life Lessons « VFX Law →

VFX Law:

After the day was done I went over to Mike and asked him, “So, who was that guy, some big wig from the construction company?”  Mike laughed, “Son, that man owns everything you see, and you would do wise to listen to what he says…you don’t want to end up like me, stuck out here, right?”

 

Sounds like the set lighting guys I used to work with.

Octane Render: realtime ray tracing →

By Mike Seymour:

“If you wanted a 1000 GPUs on a single process, Octane scales linearly with each GPU you added,” explains Jules Urbach, OTOY chief executive officer. “We are looking at thousands and down the line tens of thousands of GPUs for offline rendering – that will be one way that it will work. There will also be a live version, there are iterations we have shown with Autodesk of Max already running Octane without any local GPU and that is one of our core competencies,” he adds.

 

Not a Nuke thing but worth a read.

9 things they never taught you at VFX school - Features - Digital Arts →

By Michael Burns :

“When you are a digital artist, it’s hard to listen to feedback on your work, especially when the clients ask for changes at the last minute. My advice would be to try not to take it personally. It’s best to just listen to the feedback, process the information and do your creative best to give them what they want.”