Added $144 million for a global start of $301 million.

The Heist, a Thinkingbox-owned company focused on branded storytelling through animation, motion graphics and live-action campaigns, is kicking off a major expansion with roughly 30 key hires from The Mill, which folding last month following the implosion of parent company Technicolor.

...

Thinkingbox is currently in discussions with additional former talent from The Mill, both in North America and in Europe. It also aims to open a Europe-based studio.

I have a crazy question for any old-school Nuke compers on here....does anyone have any kind of promo item related to Nuke from the Digital Domain, D2 Software or early Foundry days, that they might be prepared to sell and send to me? Like, a promo item they might have got at a SIGGRAPH or NAB or anywhere....keyring, mousepad, hat...anything....

Hi so this is something i made in blender with a hdri but It was rally hard to get the strengheid perfect because i was just guessing it... what would be a better way to do it? Okay anyways this it what i made(animation is not finished) https://youtu.be/Y9m3Bh_SXn8

Heyyy I just sarted learning blender and as everyone ( i guess everyone) i started with the blender guru's donut , here it is ( attached below).. but now i am like what next, how should i move ahead and develop myself as an artist, my goal is to litrally be good at vfx and 3D stuff and land a good job, so please guide me around as i am new how should i go ahead? What should i do next ??

Will vfx/animation work done overseas get hit? It seems to only be goods instead of work.

The work in Australia shouldn't be affected unless they have any retaliatory action on tax subsidies against Trump?

Edit : thanks all for the replies.

Hi,

I am a beginner, I was always interested to learn about lighting cinematography, how scene lighting is done for animation and CG films.

I have started learning Maya and Arnold/Vray. Trying to wrap my head around Solaris/USD.

My question is, for a student lighting demo reel, am I required to also model everything myself? I am learning how to texture models, but modeling is not something I enjoy at all. Very much interested in the lookdev and lighting part.

Can I use paid assets or paid 3D sets for lighting, to use in my demo reel? ( as long as I give credit and mention they are paid assets)

Thanks, would appreciate your suggestions please.

Hello all. I have a scene in my film where the character walks into the pub and we follow him from behind. Another character (white shirt) exits the bathroom and walks past our first character. First guy turns back as second guy passes. We can see lots of empty space behind him and I’m wondering if it’s possible to add extra people, either sat down at a table or stood up. The camera is constantly moving, albeit slowly. Is this achievable for most VFX artists?

I'm wondering if anyone is aware of any modern caching formats other than Alembic or USD?

Alembics are getting old and a bit slugging compared to their USD counterpart. But USD comes with all its own complications and often tedious workflows.

I was wondering if anyone is actively working on something that's essentially a faster alembic?

As someone who absolutely cannot justify the price of Nuke, I've used Fusion for the last couple of years and mostly really liked it. But having to rely on a third party script to just rebuild a beauty pass with multiple loader nodes has been a constant pain in the ass.

BMD have just released Resolve and fusion studio 20 in beta and the workflow, while very different to Nuke, is pretty damned cool. We think any smaller shops might retool if they continue down this road?

Ever dealt with someone so brilliant you're torn between giving them a raise or shoving them out a window? Me, multiple times.

I had this French comp sup on my team once. Absolute wizard at his craft, consistently exceptional work. Also? Complete nightmare for my department.

Dude used "French directness" as an excuse to push his vision on everyone, treating anyone who disagreed like they were ignorant and dumb. The most infuriating part? He was usually right, and he KNEW it. Bast*rd!

After watching him terrorize my entire department, I realized that the most creative people often need boundaries more than anyone else.

So I tried what I now call my "Sandbox Method":
Gave him his own carefully selected team who could handle his attitude, then worked with producers to assign him projects with plenty of creative control (AND clear boundaries), finally kept him away from everyone else :-)

Not the perfect solution, but practical. Client got brilliant work, department stopped plotting his murder, and he got to feel like the creative genius he actually was.

Curious if you had to deal with the same kind of situation or "characters" and if yes, how did you handle it?

Just disappointing

https://youtu.be/7l5Os83i5_k

I have been learning more and more about houdini VFX and came up with this effect. how would i improve on this ? I'd appreciate criticism.

Ok optical fx experts- Not sure where or how I gleaned this information, but I remember reading an odd tidbit about the optical effects for Obi-Wan’s ghost in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. According to the text- the thin, shimmering aura around Obi-Wan (pictured here) was achieved from footage of the sunlit Pacific ocean, with the film negative hand-airbrushed around Alec Guinness’ performance in post. Can anyone confirm? I’ve tried searching but could find no evidence of this. Always found this detail fascinating IF TRUE. Could be totally misled/ wrong. Thank you!

ik this might sound weird but i think it was from some type of a old video editing software but i don't a recreation i NEED the exact same result

Hello everyone

I’m trying to create something similar, i don’t know where or what to search. I’m looking specifically on how to mimic the rectangular hud from GTA on the right side.

Obviously yes it’s Ai but I mean technically like what are the programs I can use to replicate this?

Hi, i have an issue where i exported a cryptomatte from Blender that cannot be read by the cryptomatte node in Fusion Studio or Standalone. I tried exporting ZIP instead of uncompressed, uninstalling/reinstalling reactor, installing the cryptomatte node manually instead of via reactor. Nothing worked and i can't find anything online that points to that issue, except that the node doesn't work with EXR multiparts files which i believe it isn't (Blender doesn't support EXR 2.0 afaik).

Here is what the console says after failing to read the cryptomatte node :

[Cryptomatte][Cryptomatte1][ERROR] no cryptomatte metadata found

...ion/Reactor/Deploy/Modules/Lua/cryptomatte_utilities.lua:615: ERROR

stack traceback:

[C]: in function 'error'

...ion/Reactor/Deploy/Modules/Lua/cryptomatte_utilities.lua:615: in function 'log_error'

...ion/Reactor/Deploy/Modules/Lua/cryptomatte_utilities.lua:695: in function 'get_cryptomatte_metadata'

...esign/Fusion/Reactor/Deploy/Fuses/Matte/cryptomatte.fuse:275: in function <...esign/Fusion/Reactor/Deploy/Fuses/Matte/cryptomatte.fuse:251>

Cryptomatte1 failed at time 0

Any ideas ?

MacOs 15.1.1
Blender 4.2.5 LTS

File is .exr 32b uncompressed

Resolve 19.1.2

Fusion 19 19.1.4

Hello everybody!

I am a 3D student, my university uses Maya and Renderman. During the last year we were supposed to learn how to use Renderman but our professor clearly doesn't know anything about it. I have read the documentation, it just seems that they are more focused on Llama ( we use pxrsurface ). I have looked for tutorials, but there are not many and they are usually very outdated. I've tried looking for specialized courses, etc but there doesn't seem to be anything.

Besides all this, the lookdev is very frustrating, I have an somewhat old but quite good laptop ( 5900HX and 3080 ), but lacking in ram (32 gb). IPR is slow and rendering in IRS takes ages. Maya tends to crash and generally changing any aspect of the textures often results in the screen freezing. But I'm not sure if it's maya's problem or Renderman's problem since I feel that arnold is much better overall.

I've been using Blender for many years and I wanted to know if I'm just biased and that's how it works in productions? With cycles I can change things with a lot of ease and without worrying about being patient.

I've been learning houdini for a little over six months, so I decided to go all in with Karma which has turned out much better. I have also tried Redshift and I like it much better than Renderman. Globally they are all similar, only Renderman seems to be particularly unstable and I have the impression of not being able to work in peace.

However, I think it is still standard in the industry? And is a good choice for studios it seems. I would like to know if I am doing something particularly wrong or as an individual Renderman is a headache. Should I install it for houdini for example?

I would like to know if anyone has any tips to make my experience with renderman more user friendly as I would like to be able to use it for my projects. Thank you :D

I am trying to create a piggyback witness camera that I can use primarily for gathering tracking data and then applying that tracking data to my main camera. I got the idea from the video "When Combining Two Cameras Together Actually Works." video posted on Youtube by MAKE. ART. NOW. Channel.

I'm running into issues - I can't get the two cameras to sync up!

Here is my workflow:

1.) I use a Panasonic Lumix S5II for my main camera, a Gopro Hero 11 for my witness camera.

2.) I attach my GoPro to the camera shoe of the Lumix. I use a micrometer to determine where the camera sensors are relative to each other in the X, Y, and Z axis.

3.) GoPro is set to record at 4K, 24fps, hypersmooth OFF.

4.) Lumix is set to record at 23.986 fps, onboard stabilization is turned OFF. Lens stabilization is switched OFF.

5.) I record a subject with both cameras rolling at the same time.

6.) In Davinci Resolve, I sync up both clips and export at the same frame rate.

7.) In Blender, I use motion tracking panel to create tracking data for the GoPro footage... this is my piggyback witness VIRTUAL camera data. Get a camera solve that is below 1 pixel error. I create a scene in Blender using this motion tracking data.

8.) In Blender, I create a second camera. I match the camera settings to the ones used for my Lumix (aperture, focal length, etc). I position this second virtual camera relative to the piggyback virtual camera using the measurements I took of the positions of my cameras in real life. I parent the second virtual camera to the piggyback virtual camera.

At this point, when I review the scene through the second virtual camera (representing my Lumix camera) the camera track does not sync up!

My best guesses for what the issue could be -

1.) The scaling of the blender scene is not corresponding to the real world scale which makes the relative distance of my two virtual cameras quite off. I have tried modifying the blender scene scale to match real world scale and it helped a little, but the track is still off in the second camera.

2.) Maybe there is still a difference in internal image stabilization between my GoPro and Lumix even with all stabilization features turned off that I can't account for.

3.) Maybe my real world cameras aren't starting to record at the EXACT same time so they can't be exactly synced up.

Is there anything I am missing?? Any guidance would be appreciated.

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some good news...?

I'm still out of work after 18+ months post SAG. Did anyone get their old jobs back and was it the same as before?