In nuce: The Visual Effects Society (VES) has announced its Board of Directors Officers for 2023. This is according to a press release published on vesglobal.org on 18 January this year. The members of the Board of Directors thus include Lisa Cooke as Chair, Susan O’Neal as First Vice Chair, David H. Tanaka as Second Vice Chair, Rita Cahill as VES Secretary and Jeffrey A. Okun as VES Treasurer. The previous Chair, Lisa Cooke, was therefore re-elected. The members were elected at the Board meeting in the current month of January, thus forming the so-called VES Board Executive Committee.

Chair Lisa Cooke: As a VFX producer at Tippett Studio ( e.g. The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and executive producer at Tippett Productions, Cooke has worked as an animation/VFX producer, story consultant, screenwriter and actress. Prior to joining Tippett, she founded Green Ray Media, where she produced animation and VFX and created scientific, medical and environmental media for a wide audience. In the past, Cooke has worked with Lucasfilm, Fox, Universal, Nickelodeon Films and Pixar.

Click to continue: To the press release on vesglobal.org- where background information on the careers of the respective board members is also available. Just last Wednesday, on 18 January 2023, Digital Production reported on the Visual Effects Society – at the time, filmmaker James Cameron broke his own record with a total of 14 nominations for his Avatar sequel; the creative minds behind film and series productions such as The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Jurassic World: Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick were also delighted to receive nominations.

Sources: awn.com ( news from Whitney Whitener), vesglobal.org ( press release)

The post Elected: Board members 2023 of the Visual Effects Society! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Epic Games and Autodesk have announced a strategic collaboration. The aim of this is to “accelerate immersive real-time experiences across all industries, starting with Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC)”. The first step in this direction is free access to Twinmotion for Revit customers. Autodesk Revit is software aimed at architects, building services engineers and structural engineers. Twinmotion is a real-time software for architectural visualisation (Digital Production reported on the release of Twinmotion 2021.1 on 12.07.2021).

Epic and Autodesk join forces to accelerate real-time experiences

In toto: The self-promotion also states that the recently released version of Twinmotion enables the rendering of (moving) images with resolutions of up to 64K. It also states that the latest version of Twinmotion includes a new integration with the Sketchfab modelling platform (Digital Production reported on this on 23.07.2021 , when Sketchfab was acquired by Epic Games). Thanks to the Twinmotion Importer plugin, it should be easy for users to transfer assets from Twinmotion to the Unreal Engine. The self-description goes on to say that the aim is to improve workflows for creative professionals by removing barriers between software solutions. In the future, it is planned to extend the strategic collaboration to the media and entertainment (M&E) sector.

Sources: Blog entry on unrealengine.com, announcement on epicgames.com, news on gamesmarkt.de

The post Epic Games and Autodesk move closer together first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The US company Otoy announces its collaboration with the German company UX3D. This is the result of a recent press release. UX3D is a German-based company that offers software solutions for interactive 3D real-time graphics. UX3D was also involved in the development of gITF, the JPEG equivalent for 3D (Digital Production reported on 10 August 2022). Otoy specialises in cloud graphics, which are increasingly being used in the visual effects industry.

In toto: As part of the collaboration, the UX3D glTF Scene Toolkit will be integrated into the Otoy marketplace. As a result, the Otoys ecosystem will offer 100 per cent native glTF support. The aim of the cooperating companies is to offer a toolkit that is a module for artists – for example, to support multi-engine and similar possibilities along the Octane and render roadmaps. The possibilities mentioned include gITF distillers from OrBX and ITMF. According to the same press release, the UX3D glTF Scene Toolkit will thus be integrated for over 200 Digital Content Creation Tool (DCC) – including: Cinema 4D, Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine and Unity3D. The Scene Tookit is made available via the Render Network.

Speeches: In the press release, UX3D founder and managing director Norbert Nopper describes the cooperation as an important building block for the Metaverse Gesamtkunstwerk. Jules Urbach, founder and chairman of Otoy, agrees with this assessment, describing the cooperation as an important breakthrough “in the development of the open metaverse.”

And what else? The support is intended to help artists on the path between working with DCCs and playing out their 3D scenes. The press release also states that individual assets can be viewed, checked, edited, optimised and merged via glTF. In addition, Otoy is active in the Khronos 3D Formats working group to expand the gITF specifications together with other members – including: UX3D, Cesium, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Adobe or Autodesk.

Click further: to the press release. To the websites of Otoy and UX3D.

The post The glTF Scene Toolkit on Otoys Marketplace? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: In the latest episode of his 21 Artist Show, Technical Director and host Alexander Richter talks to Victor Perez, who works as a freelance visual effects supervisor.

Who is Victor Perez? Victor Perez has worked as a freelancer for well-known visual effects companies such as Double Negative, Cinesite Studios and Union VFX. In the course of this, Perez has been involved in blockbuster gems such as Harry Potter, The Dark Knight Rises and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Is an international career worthwhile? In his interview with Alexander Richter, Victor Perez talks about the challenges and hardships of an international career in visual effects, how the careerists concerned manage to overcome language barriers, and how to succeed in the VFX industry – even though the odds are often stacked against you. We think so: If you want to see an intensely honest conversation with a talented visual effects supervisor with Spanish roots, who moved to England for the love of the profession and spent 20 years gaining professional experience there, you have to click on the video right here below.

Further information: For all other episodes of Alexander Richter’s podcast, which is well worth listening to, visit him on Spotify. If you prefer to see which heads are attached to the respective voices, you can watch the whole thingas a moving image on YouTube . And if you want to learn more about visual effects, we recommend Alexander Richter’s blog .

Visual Effects Artists without borders w/ Victor Perez

The post Leave your home country for a VFX career? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.