Even before I started my studies at Ostfalia, I had the idea of placing my painted pictures in an exhibition space that I could freely design myself. My fascination with 3D enabled me to realise exactly this vision: Blender became my playground for such ideas at no cost and with limitless possibilities. I developed a museum, which became one of the projects for my application portfolio for my current degree programme. However, at that time I still lacked the time and expertise to turn my Blender scene into an interactive museum.

DP: What was the aim of the project?
Noah Thiele: As part of the fourth and fifth semesters, I had the opportunity to give free rein to my own project idea in the so-called compulsory elective module. I was free to choose my project for this module and so I came back to the idea of combining my two passions, painting and computer graphics. However, this time I wanted to learn something new and set myself a challenge by choosing a medium that I had absolutely no prior knowledge of.
Virtual reality has always fascinated me, but I had never actually had the opportunity to put on a VR headset before my studies. What’s more, I wanted my virtual exhibition to be interactive.
I had either Unity or Unreal Engine at my disposal, neither of which I had ever even opened before. But true to the motto “There is nothing in this world that you can’t learn.” i threw myself in at the deep end and pursued my vision of a virtual reality exhibition.

DP: Did you have any recommended sources?
Noah Thiele: I thought the tutorials I found on VR for beginners in Unreal Engine were rather poor. A lot of things didn’t work for me, so I was able to get most of the functions to work through trial and error and my own findings.

DP: What data was there?
Noah Thiele: I take photos of all the pictures I have painted and document everything on my website www.noahthiele.de/art. These images are the foundation of the project and not only serve as a key to the different worlds depicted on the canvases. They were also my reference for designing and modelling these worlds.

DP: How did you pull the data into Unreal?
Noah Thiele: The photos I took of my works were edited a bit in Photoshop to place them in Blender as textures on 3D modelled canvases. These canvases stand on easels in the VR gallery and can be touched and held in the hand.

DP: The first alpha version: what worked “right away”?
Noah Thiele: Due to my non-existent knowledge of VR and Unreal Engine, the alpha version was a very important step for me to see if my ambitious project was even feasible. My goals for the alpha were extremely simple: connect a VR headset to Unreal Engine, load a custom asset to test out the right size dimensions. I also placed an image as an image plane in the scene, which was equipped with a collision box. If one of the controllers approaches the image plane, a new level is loaded.
This was the most rudimentary basis of the project. In addition, in the unlikely event that I failed to implement future features in Unreal Engine, I still had a simple but functioning application.

DP: What did the implementation time cost?
Noah Thiele: To bring more interactivity to the gallery, I decided to redesign how you enter the worlds. Instead of loading new worlds by touching the images, I created a kind of “lock and key” system. You take a picture of your choice from its place and place it on the gallery’s central computer. Once the canvas is placed on the desk, it appears in full size on the screen above it.
If you now reach for the lever next to it and pull it, you are teleported to a new environment and are now in the centre of the painted picture. Adding such interactive elements to Unreal Engine took me a long time, as the programme was very new to me and I couldn’t find any really good tutorials on VR in Unreal Engine that met my specific needs for my ideas of the functions. I had to cut a few corners and came up with new ideas and features that fit well with the project.

DP: The “animated” elements within the virtual gallery: How did you realise them?
Noah Thiele: To make the worlds appear even more alive, I incorporated some animations. I exported the VR modelled meshes from Gravity Sketch and added a rig in Blender, animated them and exported them as Alembic in Unreal Engine.

I modelled the plants and vegetation individually for the “amazonia” image and created my own foliage set in Unreal Engine and then placed it in the environment and let it blow in the wind.
In another picture, the “flower field”, I simply painted or modelled without thinking about it. Exporting individual plants and creating a foliage set was virtually impossible because the entire field was connected. The whole field of flowers consists of coarse and large strokes that are further away and detailed meshes in the foreground, which are very intermingled.

That’s why I created a material for the entire mesh in Unreal Engine, which transfers noise-induced wave-like movements to the mesh (is.gd/youtube_unreal_materials). This means that all the plants move slightly differently but still together when they are next to each other. Like a field in reality when the wind blows through it.

DP: If you could start all over again: What would you do differently?
Noah Thiele: If I could start all over again, I would change the modelling software. Unfortunately, I only found out about the VR software Quill far too late. At that point, 90% of the modelling tasks had already been completed. Quill makes it possible to animate in VR. I used it to create test animations for effects that should appear as soon as you enter a world. Individual colour particles and brushstrokes should fly out of the selected image and blur in front of your eyes until you find yourself in the newly loaded environment. Unfortunately, I had to cancel this feature due to time constraints.
There are also a large number of images that I would have liked to integrate into the gallery. However, when I presented my project during the annual media design exhibition at my university, it turned out that the number of images in the gallery was sufficient.
Some visitors to the exhibition spent less time with the VR headset than would have been necessary to explore all the worlds. This is because wearing VR glasses is still uncomfortable and unpleasant for many people, in rare cases even causing slight balance problems and dizziness.

DP: What “lab equipment” was provided by the university?
Noah Thiele: Throughout the project work, I was provided with various VR headsets by my university.
I worked a lot with the Meta Quest 2, which I was able to borrow from the university – and I did a lot of the modelling tasks with it. Later on in the project, my university ordered two Meta Quest 3 models, one of which I was allowed to borrow and use for the rest of my work. During this phase, I almost exclusively created and finalised the worlds in Unreal Engine and modelled the last assets.
Switching from Meta Quest 2 to 3 made my work much easier and much more enjoyable thanks to the improved comfort and higher frame rate and resolution.
After one or two hours, it became very uncomfortable to continue using the VR headset, so my work was often interrupted by headaches and continued the next day. The higher resolution and frame rate that I was able to enjoy by upgrading to the Quest 3 gave me a little more freedom.

DP: Which courses/seminars were particularly helpful for the project?
Noah Thiele: I didn’t take any courses or seminars on VR, but had very helpful discussions and assistance from my professor Melanie Beisswenger, other professors and staff at the university.

DP: Where can we see the finished product?
Noah Thiele: At the annual end-of-semester presentation, my project was exhibited in the university’s media design exhibition. You can also see videos and more about the project on my website at noahthiele.de/v-art/.

DP: What are your next steps?
Noah Thiele: I’m currently doing my internship at Woodblock in Berlin and starting to prepare for my Bachelor film. I’m planning a 3D animated music video and am considering integrating one or two VR workflows or styles into my bachelor’s thesis. I’ve also discovered Gravity Sketch as a helpful pre-visualisation tool for me, as it allows me to quickly capture interesting perspectives in 3D scenes and gives me new ideas in the conception phase.’ ei

The Ostfalia

With around 12,500 students, Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences is one of the largest universities of applied sciences in Lower Saxony. It offers more than 90 degree programmes in the fields of law, business, social and health care as well as engineering and computer science at 4 locations. Practical relevance and interdisciplinarity take centre stage here. The Faculty of Transport, Sport, Tourism and Media in Salzgitter has around 2000 students. Ostfalia University is a state university, so there are no tuition fees (except for long-term tuition fees if the student account is exhausted). A re-registration fee of currently approx. 330 euros is payable per semester, which also includes the semester ticket for local public transport.

The Media Design degree programme in Salzgitter is offered with a Bachelor’s (6 semesters) or Master’s degree (4 semesters). Students can specialise in animation, VFX, games, interactive media, film or communication design.

In the field of animation, students are taught to work with a variety of techniques, starting with stop motion and 2D animation through to motion design, 3D animation and character animation. In addition to technical skills, the focus is on conception and visual development, and in particular working on your own ideas, projects and films. Excursions to conferences and festivals such as the ITFS, the Festival of Animation Berlin, Gamescom and DOK Leipzig bring our students into contact with the industry.

Ostfalia is equipped with all kinds of state-of-the-art technology: Motion capture system from Rokoko, large film studio with blue/green screen, professional camera and lighting equipment, 3D printer, VR & AR headsets (Quest 3, Apple Vision Pro, Hololens, HTC Vive Pro), several computer pools that can also be used for rendering, photo studio and a games club with corresponding community and equipment.

What are the requirements for the programme? The application with the artistic portfolio and passing the aptitude test are the prerequisites for admission to the Media Design (BA) programme. Prospective Master’s students with BA degrees in design do not need a portfolio to apply.

The post VR gallery at the Ostfalia first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

by Florian Werzinski, Paula Gorczyca and Natalie Berg

Paula and Natalie developed a fictional title design for a dark Netflix series at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences. Their VFX project “Falling Apart” demonstrates their skills in Blender and After Effects and offers an insight into the production of complex 3D scenes with a horror twist.

From title design to series: a semester project

Flensburg University of Applied Sciences may not be known to many as the first place for creative media projects. But it is precisely here, far away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities, that students like Paula and Natalie concentrate on their projects in the field of media informatics. They wanted to utilise the potential of their degree course to create a fictional title design for a Netflix series. The result is “Falling Apart”, a dark and atmospheric mystery series that shows not only technical sophistication but also creative ambition.

The idea behind “Falling Apart”

“Falling Apart” was created as part of the fifth semester post-production course. The task: to create a title design for a fictional mystery series. They were inspired by atmospheric series intros such as “The Haunting of Hill House” and the dark opening of “Resident Evil 7”. The aim was to integrate elements of thriller and mystery into a forest scene with a dilapidated hut and skull – classic motifs that create an oppressive and mysterious mood.
The project was realised in Blender and After Effects. Paula was responsible for modelling the 3D objects and Natalie for post-processing and colour correction. The combination of these programmes made it possible to create realistic scenes that impress with careful lighting and textures.

The technical realisation: Blender and After Effects

The decision in favour of the 3D implementation was made quickly. Both already had experience with Blender, the preferred 3D programme at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences. The aim was to make the scenes as realistic as possible and to test their limits in 3D modelling. A storyboard was created that clearly set the scene for the main motifs of the story – a forest hut, a skull and an arm. The next step was “blocking”, i.e. the placement of the most important 3D elements in the scene. Low-poly models were used here to test the proportions and compositions without putting too much strain on the computer capacities. The actual modelling of the hut and the skull only began afterwards. The skull was sculpted and texturised in Blender, while the hut was created using references. Using an HDRI environment and a sunlight source, the scenery was further refined to create depth and realism. For the typographic elements of the title design, the “Ivy Generator” was used, with tendrils growing out of the font. This symbolises the passing of time and reinforces the gloomy atmosphere of the series.

Music and post-production: the finishing touches

Once the 3D scenes had been created, Paula and Natalie focussed on post-production in After Effects. Colour correction played a central role here. To make the mood even darker, a transition from warm to cold colours was added to reinforce the thriller atmosphere. All scenes received the same colour correction, adapted to the lighting conditions of the raw files. The addition of volume light and spotlight effects to give the image more depth was particularly complex. The effects were animated by hand, which took a lot of time, but ultimately achieved the desired effect. Although the college had licences for plugins, they decided not to use them in order to test their skills without additional tools.

Challenges and learning experiences

As with many projects, there were technical challenges. In the beginning, Paula and Natalie were not careful to keep file sizes small, which unnecessarily increased render times and caused the computers to crash regularly. From the middle of the project onwards, they used the university’s more powerful computers, which helped them to deliver the project on time. Another stumbling block was the compatibility of the After Effects versions. As they were working on different computers, they repeatedly encountered problems with file interchangeability. This experience taught them to make sure they use standardised software versions right from the start.

The next project has already been finalised

Following the successful completion of “Falling Apart”, Paula and Natalie are now working on their final projects. Paula is planning a 3D animated film with mixed media elements, which may be submitted to a film festival. Natalie, on the other hand, is creating the design and website for the university’s comic magazine.

Conclusion

Flensburg University of Applied Sciences offers its students on the Media Informatics and Film & Media Arts degree programmes opportunities to express themselves creatively and technically through practical projects and good technical equipment.
“Falling Apart” is an example of how much potential there is in the combination of Blender and AE. Media Informatics with a focus on film not only teaches technical know-how, but also the ability to implement creative ideas – exactly what the VFX industry needs.

At Flensburg University of Applied Sciences, you can learn the basics of VFX, 3D animation and post-production in practical degree programmes such as Media Informatics and Film & Media Arts – without an entrance exam. When it comes to practical degree programmes in the field of digital production, Flensburg University of Applied Sciences has a lot to offer. The Media Informatics and Film & Media Arts (FMA) degree programmes in particular offer in-depth training with a focus on VFX, 3D animation and post-production. And the best thing about it? There are no entrance exams or strict entry requirements. Here you can get an insight into what to expect at this university and why it’s worth thinking about starting your studies here.

Media informatics with a focus on film: a versatile degree programme

The Media Informatics degree programme with a focus on film offers a balanced mix of theory and practice. You not only learn the basics of image design and programming, but can also delve deep into the world of 3D animation, modelling and rendering. Particularly interesting: in addition to traditional subjects such as drawing and film shooting, you can expect modules such as 3D rendering in the fourth semester and post-production in the fifth semester. This will optimally prepare you for working in the VFX industry.
The combination of creative work and programming could be a particular challenge for some, but this makes this degree programme all the more versatile. As around 100 students are accepted each semester, this is a comparatively large degree programme – so you have the opportunity to network in a lively and diverse student community. The university offers a special bonus with its regular excursions to FMX. Invited guests who work as artists in the VFX industry also provide practical insights into the industry.
Film & Media Arts: a focus on creative film design

The Film & Media Arts (FMA) degree programme is newer and offers a slightly more artistic focus than Media Informatics. It is less about programming and more about the creative design of film formats such as short films, genre films and social media content. You will learn how to use cameras and lighting equipment and get a solid introduction to VFX, 2D & 3D animation and post-production. Even though this degree programme accepts fewer students – only 15 to 30 per semester – demand is high. An entrance exam in the form of a portfolio is being planned, which could make the selection process a little more selective in future. In addition to excursions to the Berlinale and the Hamburg Short Film Festival, this degree programme offers practice-oriented training opportunities to help you establish yourself as a film artist.

Equipment and technology: high-end equipment for students

When it comes to technical equipment, Flensburg University of Applied Sciences leaves nothing to be desired. As a student, you have access to: 75 cameras from brands such as Arri Amira, Sony FX6 and Canon C300, including various light sources such as Arri Skypanels, Astera Tubes and Dedolights and, of course, a wide range of software, including Maya, Blender, Adobe Premiere, Nuke and Resolve. The university has four PC labs, each with 20 workstations. Two of these labs are equipped with the latest GTX4090 graphics cards – a boon for anyone wanting to work in 3D rendering or VFX. There are also three Mac labs where you can work on Wacom Cintiqs to realise your creative visions.

Cooperations and exchange programmes

Another advantage of studying at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences is the international cooperation opportunities. The university has partnerships with universities in countries such as Sweden, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand and South Africa. It is also close to the Animation Workshop in Denmark. This means you can study abroad for a semester and expand your knowledge of VFX and post-production at the same time.

Application process and costs

The application process at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences is simple and straightforward. There are no special entry requirements other than a general higher education entrance qualification. You can easily apply online. Every winter semester, 100 students are accepted for Media Informatics and 15 to 30 for Film & Media Arts. It is currently not possible to apply for the summer semester. There are no tuition fees for the degree programme. The semester fee is 269 euros, which includes the costs for the student union, a Deutschlandticket and the AStA fee. This also gives you access to discounted lunch and public transport.

Conclusion: A future-oriented degree programme with many opportunities

Flensburg University of Applied Sciences offers a solid foundation for anyone who wants to gain a foothold in the VFX industry or in creative film production. The Film & Media Arts degree programme is particularly popular and in demand, while Media Informatics has a strong technical focus. With well-equipped laboratories, international collaborations and practical modules, nothing stands in the way of your career in digital production. Whether you want to become a filmmaker, animator or post-production artist – you will find the right training programme at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences.

Flensburg University of Applied Sciences – hs-flensburg.de
Film & Media Arts | Flensburg University of Applied Sciences – is.gd/flensburg_film_media_arts
Application information – hs-flensburg.de/study-interested/application
Co-operation partners of Flensburg University of Applied Sciences – hs-flensburg.de/hochschule/international-office/partnerhochschulen
Results of the degree programme – artstation.com/vfxflensburg

The post University up north! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

When you unpack the Xencelabs Quick Keys Remote, you immediately notice its compact design. It’s small, handy and offers an easy way to control many functions directly at the workstation without constantly switching back and forth between keyboard and graphics tablet. The idea is not new – many manufacturers offer such remote controls for artists – but Xencelabs is trying to fill a niche with its version. The question is: does it work in practice?

Hapitics and design

Xencelabs has opted for a solid finish. The device feels robust and comfortable in the hand, especially in combination with the Xencelabs graphics tablet, which demonstrates the well thought-out product portfolio. The connection is made via a USB dongle, which is uncomplicated and keeps the connection stable – alternatively, Bluetooth or a cable can be used. There are two OLED screen-labelled rows with a total of eight buttons and a non-clicking rotary wheel (e.g. for adjusting the brush size). The switch is located on the edge and the USB-C charging port on the opposite side. The rubber coating ensures that the remote rests securely on the table without slipping. The pressure points of the buttons respond reliably, and there are not so many that you don’t build up “muscle memory” within a short time.

Functionality and areas of application

Quick Keys offers a total of 10 keys, 8 of which can be freely assigned. A button above the name lettering switches between 5 key sets, each of which allows different key assignments. In the centre of the scroll wheel is a button that switches between 4 modes (scroll, zoom, rotate, brush size) – or whatever you want to set it to. A coloured illuminated ring indicates the current mode and the colour can be individually adjusted (white, pink, blue, light blue, green, yellow, orange, red). The brightness can also be adjusted or switched off completely.
The software, which allows you to create different profiles for programmes such as Photoshop, Zbrush or Resolve, is particularly practical. These profiles are automatically activated as soon as the respective programme is running. The option of using 40 programmable functions per application via 5 sets saves time and simplifies the workflow considerably – if you remember that you have set it and don’t reach for the keyboard again out of habit.

The OLED display clearly shows the stored shortcuts, which can be exported, named and imported as required. The remote is suitable for both left-handed and right-handed users. The adaptability of the functions to various software applications is one of the device’s strengths. The rotary wheel is particularly useful for video editing, as it enables smooth scrolling through timelines. Although high-end editors may prefer more professional jog wheels, the Quick Keys Remote is a useful tool for most users.

Battery, brightness and performance

The battery life of the Quick Keys Remote is very good – at maximum brightness the device lasts around eight days, with reduced brightness and occasional standby mode up to four weeks. A “sleep timer” sends the device to bed after an adjustable period of time – not all devices draw for 24 hours. The device also works without interruption during the charging process, which does not disrupt the workflow.

Speaking of brightness: This can be adjusted in four levels, from Off to “Maximum” – and Maximum is – in our opinion – too bright for everyday use. So there really is the right level for every situation – even if you are working on a glacier at midday in the Arctic summer, the labelling brightness will still keep up.

Use in practice

In practice, the Quick Keys Remote proves to be a useful tool, especially in combination with the Xencelabs graphics tablet. It makes workflows easier, especially when it comes to precise control of media. You can easily execute play, pause and other media commands, which often saves time in video production. However, the question remains as to whether the device is indispensable. If you already have other solutions, it is not necessarily a “must-have”. But for artists looking for a compact and well-made additional device, it could be a useful addition.

The only weak point is the software – although it can manage any number of Xencelabs products, the creation of macros – especially complex ones – is reduced to key input and shortcuts – of course, you can also use the Resolve shortcuts, but mouse positioning, scripts and the like would be a real help with a device that is not particularly cheap – you can only record key clicks or choose something from a selection of commands. But you have to be honest: As a drawing tablet helper, all the important features are included, even within the application-specific software packages, and not everyone wants to outsource their transcoding and mastering pipeline to a button.

Price and conclusion

The Quick Keys Remote is priced at around one hundred euros. In combination with a Xencelabs tablet, it is often already included. The price is justified in view of the functions, even if the software still has room for improvement, e.g. through an interface to other tools such as Autohotkey, Macroworks, the Logitech suite or similar.

All in all, the Xencelabs Quick Keys Remote is a useful but not revolutionary tool. The hardware is solid, the battery life is excellent and the connection works smoothly. The adaptability to different programs in particular makes it a good tool for artists who want to optimise their workflows. Those who are patient or frugal when it comes to configuring macros will find the device a valuable tool

The post Xencelabs Quick Keys Remote first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In the case of Linux, this is done by the Linux Foundation. Some VFX-relevant open-source projects, such as OpenEXR or OpenVDB, are now under the umbrella of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), which in turn is under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

Anyone working with VFX will inevitably also directly or indirectly use open-source technologies, such as OpenEXR for exchanging images with high bit depth in the scene-referenced colour space, OpenColorIO for colour management, or OpenImageIO for reading and writing numerous image formats. These components are usually invisible to the user as parts of larger software, such as The Foundry Nuke, Autodesk Maya, or Blender. Although these open-source projects are used by many companies, the development of the projects was mostly in the hands of individual companies. For example, OpenEXR was under the control of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Open Shading Language (OSL) was managed by Sony Pictures Imageworks, and OpenVDB was overseen by DreamWorks.

A Question of Trust

This situation was unsatisfactory for other market participants, as they did not trust each other. This is also one of the reasons why all these projects are open-source and subject to extremely permissive licenses. Disney, for instance, would never use proprietary software from DreamWorks, but it would use OpenVDB as open-source software under the Mozilla Public License. However, trust would be further strengthened if the projects were managed by a neutral third party. This would also address the issue of projects becoming orphaned when a central developer changes jobs.

Enter the ASWF

The Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) has taken on this role, and under the auspices of the experienced Linux Foundation, it has successfully persuaded competitors such as NVIDIA and AMD, DreamWorks and Weta Digital, as well as The Foundry and Adobe, to work together. Jean-Francois Panisset explains how this was achieved in an interview.

DP: I‘m here at FMX with Jean-Francois Panisset (is.gd/jean_francois_panisset) from the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF). It‘s basically an umbrella foundation for a lot of open source projects that are currently used in visual effects. But why do you need an umbrella foundation for those projects at all?
Jean-Francois Panisset: Many foundational projects, like OpenEXR, OpenColorIO, and OpenVDB, were originally developed by major visual effects studios and later open-sourced. OpenEXR, for example, was open-sourced around 2003, and for a while, everything worked well — other studios could download the software, and vendors could integrate it into their products.
However, as time went on, the original creators moved on to new roles, left their companies, or even left the industry entirely. This led to a lack of active maintenance, and these projects began to stagnate. Bug reports went unaddressed, pull requests weren’t reviewed or merged, and in some cases, the projects couldn’t even be built anymore due to a lack of automated CI builds. It became an industry-wide problem. Recognizing this issue, discussions began on how to maintain these projects long-term and create a sustainable ecosystem. CTOs from major studios and software companies held meetings, conducted surveys, and explored solutions with organizations experienced in setting up foundations.
The Linux Foundation emerged as the best fit, having successfully created similar initiatives, like the Automotive Linux Foundation, which brought together competing car manufacturers to collaborate. This led to the decision to establish the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) as a sub-foundation of the Linux Foundation, providing a structured environment for professional open-source development, ensuring projects wouldn’t collapse when individual contributors moved on.
Since its formation, the ASWF has expanded from the original three projects to 14, all of which are now active and well-maintained. One key advantage of the foundation is its legal framework, which allows competing companies to collaborate on these projects without concerns about antitrust issues. This neutral, legally protected space enables a higher level of cooperation than a three friends developing together – competing companies need to have a neutral space to collaborate.

DP: How do you support developers looking to contribute?
Jean-Francois Panisset: The ASWF offers a range of resources to support project development. We provide collaboration tools like a paid Slack instance, Zoom, and scheduling platforms to keep teams connected. Our GitHub organization is at the enterprise level, giving projects higher build-time limits, and we also have technical support through the Linux Foundation’s release engineering team for any GitHub issues.
We cover paid infrastructure like Docker Hub to avoid throttling on container pulls and offer more powerful build systems for projects that need extra memory or CPU, like OpenVDB. Projects with GPU-enabled test suites can also access paid GPU runners, which aren‘t available for free on GitHub. While development still follows the open-source model, working publicly on GitHub, these resources help avoid roadblocks and make the process smoother. The way you develop software within ASWF is really still the open source way – you get access to all these extra features that just facilitate the development process and mean you don‘t get blocked because “oh we don‘t have access to this”.

DP: Let‘s say I found a bug in one of your projects and I want to file a report or maybe I even have a fix. Usually it can be quite daunting to approach a project. I think you have some on-boarding process?
Jean-Francois Panisset: It varies by project, but most follow a standard process since they’re all GitHub-based. If you find a bug, the first step is to create a GitHub issue. All projects monitor these, and their technical steering committees review and prioritize new issues. If you also know how to fix it, submitting a pull request (PR) is encouraged. Some projects require signing a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), which assigns ownership of the code to the project, preventing IP disputes. The Linux Foundation provides an easy process for this. Individual developers sign an ICLA, while companies can sign a corporate CLA, allowing their employees to contribute without additional approvals. Though it may seem like legal paperwork, it can simplify contributions, especially from large organizations.
Other projects have a simpler process, requiring a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO), where you certify that you wrote the code. Before submitting a PR, it‘s always good to engage with the project to confirm how they‘d like it implemented. Even if a PR needs adjustments, the steering committees ensure that issues and contributions are addressed.

DP: What if we’ve made a larger change, like customizing a library, and want to start small before submitting the bigger contribution?
Jean-Francois Panisset: The concept of a “good first issue” is key to project maturity. Projects are encouraged to flag these issues to attract new developers. While some projects require domain-specific knowledge—like contributing to OpenColorIO’s colour transform engine, which is suited for colour scientists—there are still many contributions that don‘t require specialized expertise. By tagging beginner-friendly tasks, newcomers can browse the backlog, find something they can tackle, and submit a pull request.
Last year, we introduced “Dev Days,” a 48-hour event, similar to a hackathon, where developers can get real-time help with setting up their environment or validating their approach. It’s a great way to onboard new contributors. Facilities are also participating by encouraging their engineers to work on open-source projects. This helps studios prevent knowledge loss — especially when only one developer knows certain systems like OpenEXR — by getting more developers familiar with key projects.
There‘s a tool called Clotributor, developed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), that aggregates “good first issues” across multiple projects. You can search for projects you‘re interested in, and it will suggest issues flagged for beginners. It‘s not limited to ASWF; several foundations use it. Some projects have received PRs from developers outside their field who found the issues interesting. It‘s in every project‘s best interest to attract new contributors, even if it‘s just for a one-off fix — you‘re still better off than before.

DP: The list of projects on your umbrella is pretty impressive and every artist in the industry is using them actively. What‘s the rationale for the organizations behind the projects to open source their technology in the first place?
Jean-Francois Panisset: So, obviously, I don‘t speak for any of those organizations, but there‘s multiple motivations. The first one is: don‘t underestimate people wanting to do the right thing, and realizing that in our industry being able to collaborate is important. Maybe there‘s that, but also almost a business reason, because today there‘s very few projects that are done at only one facility. So, if I as a facility have this great proprietary data format that no one else know, that‘s not really helpful. How am I going to exchange data with other facilities? So open sourcing my component and “hoping” it becomes the de facto industry standard is great because I don‘t have to rewrite all my internal software.
Also, I don‘t have to carry a hundred percent of the burden of maintaining that software, because other facilities have an incentive to help develop and maintain that software. That‘s partly why the list of projects in ASWF are interchange formats – which are handling how you move data around between projects and departments and facilities and vendors. There‘s also the idea that I would love software vendors to support that format – and the way to do that is to make sure that my format becomes a de facto standard and the implementation becomes the de facto implementation.

Also if they can easily adopt the implementation into their software, it becomes more likely – who wants extra work, right? And in turn this would attract and retain software development talent – which is always a challenge and providing the opportunity for your engineers to not just “work internally” but also to contribute to a greater community will demonstrate their value to the community. And that‘s good for the company in the long term, because you‘ll have happier engineers who will be more productive.

Because, as an engineer, if you‘re exposed to not just the way things are done in your company but the way things are done elsewhere,you learn more and you become better at what you do. Open Sourcing as a way to make your engineers more productive and attract talent. I wouldn’t want to work where all the work is just internal – and with an Open Source Development, you will show the fact that you‘re not just a great studio that makes great visual effects, but you also have a great technical culture. There‘s no better way to advertise to professionals that than through open sourcing some of your internal technologies.

The post How to Persuade Competing VFX Studios to Cooperate first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Gottfried Hofmann.

My first contact with a Quantel Henry was during my training as a media designer for image and sound at Voss TV Ateliers in Düsseldorf at the end of the nineties. In addition to three Avids, a Discreet Logik Inferno and two tape-based editing systems, there was one of these wickedly expensive effects systems from England. Of course, each of these systems was housed in its own suites designed for customer visits and the more expensive the respective suite was, the less likely it was that a young, pimply-faced apprentice like yours truly would be allowed anywhere near it. So I could only get an idea of what a Henry was and what you could do with it bit by bit. But as soon as I had formed a reasonably clear picture, I knew that I wanted to work on the Henry.

Of heavy boxes and rodents

So what was this machine that the young apprentice found so fascinating? The Henry was an online compositing and finishing system from the British company Quantel. The Henry had proprietary hardware designed and produced by Quantel, which was directly addressed by software from the same company. Anyone who thinks Apple’s approach of closely integrating hardware and software is restrictive did not experience Quantel back then. Every major function within the software was assigned to a dedicated board in the mainframe. The whole thing was supplemented by memory.

A considerable 30 minutes of memory for the time. In an incredible 720 × 576 pixels. But uncompressed. This memory was then distributed across two so-called Dylans. These were the Henry’s disc arrays and if you wanted to keep your discs in the right place, you’d better carry them in pairs. So, one mainframe, two Dylans and – bang – 24 units were occupied in the rack. Because you didn’t put a Henry under or on the table, but of course he sat in the cooled technical room. The artist was then given a keyboard in his suite, a – let’s say – generously sized tablet with a pen and a hardware accessory that is really hard to imagine today. A kind of thumbstick that you could hold in your hand, with four buttons arranged above it. Quantel officially called it the Hand Control Unit, everyone else called it a rat. And what did the future Henry Artist view his work on? On a class 1 Sony PAL monitor. The Henry was not familiar with a dual-monitor layout.

In keeping with the Henry’s minimalist design, the broadcast monitor also became a GUI monitor. The user interface could be shown and hidden by swiping to the side with the pen. So it was natural to spend eight, ten or sometimes even fourteen hours in front of these things clocked at fifty hertz. The fact that you went home afterwards with a bit of a headache probably needs no further explanation. What we should mention, however, is the price. As the Henry was available in various expansion stages, was later supplemented by the Editbox at the bottom and the Henry Infinity at the top, and price lists were well-kept trade secrets, it is very difficult to give a clear answer here.

But to give an order of magnitude: You could easily buy your own home with the money you wanted to invest in Quantel equipment. It is said that a fully equipped Henry Infinity could be bought for 1.4 million Deutschmarks in 1998. And Quantel knew how to collect this money: Important customers were flown to Newbury in the company’s own helicopter to convince themselves of the merits of their future Henry.

Welcome to Henry

The price and the proprietary hardware explain why it was so difficult for my younger self to get hold of and learn the Henry in the first place. This machine had to be well booked to amortise the enormous purchase and maintenance costs. Nobody wanted to risk a greenhorn accidentally deleting the current Persil campaign because he needed storage space for his first attempts. To make matters worse, YouTube and the like did not yet exist as a source for tutorials.

So without an experienced artist to take me under his wing, it wasn’t going to work. But with some negotiating skills, I managed to convince the two Henry artists in my training company. Now I was finally allowed to take my first steps on the legendary machine myself. Some time later, I finally got my hands on five training tapes, which I played on my VHS recorder until they were unrecognisable. This is what the granddaddy of online tutorials looked like.

The Henry’s interface was very special. The decision to turn the broadcast monitor into a GUI monitor at the same time required a number of decisions. The lower quarter of the screen was reserved for the menu, the rest consisted of either the content to be edited or the desk. Anyone who thinks of a PC desktop when they hear “desk” is unfortunately only partly right. This is because Henry used a completely different analogy to visualise the handling of data than pretty much every other software manufacturer.

While the classic PC is based on the analogy of a desk with folders and files stored in it, Henry used the analogy of a cutting table, which was widely used at the time. This desktop had three reels, i.e. film racks, on which clips could be stored. This was quite logical, as most of the artists who were to work with Henry came from the analogue film world and had had little or no contact with classic PCs. Henry was released in 1992, when digitalisation was still really new territory.

Clips could be sorted and edited in the centre and right-hand reels, while so-called packs could be created in the left-hand reel. Packs were several clips that could be layered on top of each other and then taken into the “Blender”, the compositing area of the Henry. And there you had transforms, blur, colour correction and keying at your disposal. That was it. No 3D environment. No node tree. Plug-ins? When I asked about plug-ins, a very self-confident Quantel employee simply said: “Mr Zapletal, a good artist doesn’t need plug-ins”. Fortunately, Quantel had integrated its then already famous Paintbox into the system and tracking took place in a module called “ALF” – Auto Lock Follow. The marketing team had once again gone all out for the christening.

At that time, the number of layers I could take into the Blender was limited to six. You can’t really imagine it today, but that was enough for a lot of comp tasks back then or you just worked in several steps. Nevertheless, I was absolutely thrilled when “my” Henry got an update. Suddenly I had a Henry V8 under my fingers, so eight layers in Blender.

But there were also two other features: Firstly, I now had a small audio mixer with eight motorised controls next to my tablet, which then moved according to the set level when the clip was played. This was pretty pointless when editing commercials, but it was a party trick favoured by many customers.

Secondly, clip history. The setup no longer had to be saved separately in the library, but was virtually “attached” to the clip. A rendered clip could now simply be inserted into an edit, cut, blended or used in any other way and then removed and edited again at any later point in time. This was an incredible time-saver and made my work on the Henry much faster.

Speed is everything.

And that brings us to the Henry’s real strength: speed. Because this resulted not only from the incredibly fast proprietary hardware at the time, but above all from a very well thought-out user interface. The menus were organised in a strict hierarchy from left to right, with no windows or nested menus. All in all, the Henry had an estimated three hundred different buttons. That’s what you call focussing on the essentials. The consistent use of the tablet was another reason for this speed. If you had the rat in one hand and the pen in the other, you could work incredibly quickly. The thumbstick and the four buttons were context-sensitive, so you didn’t need any shortcuts in Henry. The keyboard was only needed in the library for saving and searching. And the use of the pen was also miles ahead of its time. Swiping outside the tablet area was the way to switch between full-screen view and menu view or to retrieve a clip that had been thrown away. Because in the Henry there was neither a rubbish bin nor an undo function. A clip that was no longer needed was placed on the “CRF” – the cutting room floor. The analogy to the cutting table was also consistently applied here. And if you did need it, you simply swiped the pen outside the desktop – and it was back on the pen.

However, the functionality that I still miss today with my Wacom is the “dropping” of a clip. If you had a clip on the pen, for example to take it to another module such as the Paintbox, and you changed your mind, you simply lifted the pen a little further up from the tablet and the clip was put back in its original place – i.e. dropped.

And there was another area where Henry consistently lived out the speed – in editing. Just as there was no node tree, there was also no timeline. Clips were cut together on the desktop in the centre and right reel. This could either be done with “unfolded” clips, where you could see every single frame (realistically a maximum of four frames, more did not fit into the PAL resolution) or with “folded” clips, where every single cut image could be seen as a thumbnail. If you had attached two clips to each other, you could move the cut by dragging the pen up or down between the two clips using a yellow handle. quantel called this technique “gestural editing”. Operations such as fades or wipes (it was the nineties after all) were carried out directly in the Full Screen Viewer or via the menu on the desktop.

If you came from AVID, it was all very confusing, but once you got the hang of it and had a good logic of how to organise your rushes, your edit and your comps on the three reels, you could cut incredibly quickly. But where there was no timeline, there was also no multi-layer timeline. And so with graphics such as corner logos, URLs and the like, you were spoilt for choice – either you rendered the corresponding logo separately on each individual edit, which could get really out of hand, especially with cut speed ramps, or you committed all your edits and then overlaid the graphics completely. In this case, it was necessary to save everything properly in the library so that you could still see what had happened when afterwards.

Who needs folders..

The library – this was probably the slowest and toughest part of the Henry. While all the other components had their dedicated boards with incredibly fast processors, the library was managed by a 20 megahertz Motorola CPU. So just listing the entire library could give you time for a coffee break. More problematic was that the library had no folder structure or even the concept of a folder. You could either scroll through the library and manually search for the clip you wanted or use the search function – which again called the terribly slow Motorola CPU into action. If you consider that originally each pack, which was basically the setup for a comp, had to be stored separately without a folder, it becomes clear how important a proper naming convention was here. Unfortunately, among my colleagues at the time, the longer the session and the more nonsensical the customer feedback became, the more and more swear words crept into the names. I won’t reproduce them here for obvious reasons; no-one back then would speak to their mum in the way they called these set-ups. In the end, we knew that the wilder the name, the closer it was to the final version.

Clip History was perhaps not intended to help with the beauty of the language, but with the management of the many setups. Because – at least that’s the theory – if every clip that is blended in a timeline carries its setup with it, you would only have to save one timeline and thus have everything saved. And this worked well in many scenarios. But as soon as speed ramps, sandwich fades or the aforementioned graphics over several cuts came into play, it became difficult and you had to save individual steps again and the library grew again.
Under the bonnet, however, the library was really ahead of its time. I still remember two features very well: firstly, Frame Magic. The name sounds pompous, but in the end it simply meant that every frame in the library was well referenced, thus preventing frames from being loaded twice unnecessarily. With thirty minutes of PAL memory, this was a highly desirable feature. When copying clips, new media was never created, only referenced. When conforming or loading archives, Henry always checked whether this media was already in the system. This was a surprisingly good way to manage the limited memory.

Whoever writes archives, stay alive ..

Speaking of archives. Just like ingest and playout, these were tape-based. So not LTO or a similar data format, but based on D1 and later Digital Betacam. The media was written to the video tape and all meta and audio data to an MO – a magneto-optical disc with an incredible 640 MB of memory. Once a job was finished, the MO was placed in the Henry drive, a tape machine was connected and every single clip, including any handles in the timeline, was played onto the tape.

If there were comps with clip history in the timeline, the source clips used were also played. If the same job then had to be reloaded, all of this was loaded again. However, since Frame Magic also applied here, meaning that in case of doubt only things were archived that had not already been archived on this tape before, at some point Henry began to rewind and rewind the tape wildly, loading two minutes here, then shuttling to the other end of the tape to load another ten frames from here, and then back to the beginning again. Watching this dance was always a bit fascinating, because even after years of using the device, you could never quite believe that all this actually worked so smoothly and that you had actually loaded your entire project back cleanly at the end. Incidentally, there was no file-based archive solution – with 10 MBit, the Henry’s optional TCP/IP module was only suitable for exchanging stills, fonts and EDLs.

Incidentally, this tape-based archive feature was one of the reasons why Quantel was so popular with the Henry in advertising. It was extremely robust and customers had the security of knowing that they could still access all the data cleanly a year after completion, cut a twenty-second cutdown from the thirty-second, remove the new jammer and insert the next flavour. And if in doubt, you could quickly request tapes and take them to another vendor.

The Infinity Saga

In the meantime, I had completed my training and got a job as a “Junior Henry Artist” at “Das Werk” in Frankfurt. My jaw dropped at the interview when I was shown four Henry suites. Here I was also given my first Quantel pen, including a satin-lined box. This pen was even more important to me than the fancy new title of my first permanent position. For me, it was a kind of accolade: if you had your own pen, you were in the club. At least that’s how it felt back then. Speaking of the club: with four Henrys, there were of course a lot of artists from whom I could learn a lot. One of them, however, was very enthusiastic about performing the aforementioned swiping and swivelling movements on the tablet, so I was afraid more than once that I might pop his pen out of my eye next.

Incidentally, my new colleagues had a nice little trick for learning from each other. When they didn’t have customers, they simply patched the output of another Henry onto their own control monitor. This meant that they could keep an eye on what the colleague next door was up to with one eye – provided it survived the pen attack – and learn a thing or two. This was so easy, of course, as the Henry’s GUI landed directly on a video-out. So you only had to patch a normal video signal.
Most of the time, however, this was not possible because customers were present. Because with all this speed, Henry was designed to be used in customer sessions. It’s hard to imagine in the post-Covid era, but it was quite normal for customers to attend almost the entire production on site. Understandable, after all, they paid around 1,500 Deutschmarks for their Henry session – per hour. For this, not only should there be sushi on the table at lunchtime and the customer’s sofa be nice and comfortable, but the artist should also have a chat, listen to the briefing and, incidentally, finish the film. In this respect, the typical Henry Artist at this time was just as much an artist as an entertainer, sometimes also a shrink or hairdresser. Filigree tinkering was done on Flame and Inferno, later perhaps also on Shake, the Henry was stretched. It sounds like marketing speak, but the superior speed and fast user interface at the time – in addition to the extremely reliable archive solution – made Henry very popular. Conventional PCs of the time simply couldn’t keep up with the rendering power of a Henry.

But what kind of jobs were done at the Henry? Large cinema projects were not his profession, if only because of the SD resolution. However, Henry was at home in advertising. From classic adaptations and look development to complex new productions. The minimalist interface allowed the artists to always react very quickly to the wishes of the clients present. And so the rapid swishing on the oversized tablet sometimes had a bit of a shell game about it. You could quickly create a lot of effect for the customer with just a few movements – the rendering speed did the rest to give the customer the – quite justified – impression that they were getting a lot for their money. In addition to advertising, we produced an incredible number of music videos, trailers, station IDs, image films and the like.

What was also new for me at the plant: the four Henrys at the Frankfurt plant were in the highest expansion stage, “Henry Infinity”. Infinity stood for an infinite number of layers. However, I soon realised that it was not possible to simply add a ninth and tenth layer to the eight layers that I had previously known as the maximum from Herny – the entire architecture and the UI design did not allow more than eight layers to be managed simultaneously. This is why Quantel introduced so-called super layers. If you wanted to integrate even more layers into a comp, you could, for example, “push” layers three, four and five into a super layer. The three layers then became a new one, the content of which could then be accessed within the blender by double-clicking on the layer icon. However, these super layers had to be calculated separately by Henry. In the end, superlayers were a glorified prerender.

The Henry tries his hand as a team player

Quantel’s strategy of relying on proprietary hardware was slowly reaching its limits in other areas too. At the beginning of the 2000s, the pressure to open up the system grew. The plug-in manufacturer at the time, 5D, introduced the “Masher”. The Masher was a PC connected to the Henry via TCP-IP, on which 5D plug-ins could then be executed. The parameters could be set via the Quantel GUI. However, as everything had to be sent to the masher for updating via an extremely slow connection, the entire speed and interactivity of the Henry was reduced to absurdity.
Another approach was “Java on Quantel”, which used the aforementioned scripting language to introduce functions that were not possible by default. In its last major update, the Henry finally got something like a keyframe graph, a long-cherished wish of the Quantel community. Unfortunately, the same problem arose again: Java was never known for its speed and the diversions via a third-party interface created such a bottle neck that hardly any artists used the feature. The biggest problem, however, was that the hardware was not resolution-independent. You could choose between PAL and NTSC – but not just like that in the middle of the project: if you had to switch the resolution, all the material was deleted from the Dylans. Oversized files had to be broken up in Photoshop just to be reassembled in Henry. All of this was no longer up to date and the development of the Henry had come to an end.

The echo

With “generationQ”, Quantel launched a new product series that could work independently of resolution and whose proprietary hardware was controlled by a Windows PC. In theory, a “best-of-both-worlds” approach. In practice, the designers of the time unfortunately did not succeed in transferring the strengths of the Henry to the next generation. The user interface lost its speed and the successor eQ was never able to achieve the stability of the Henry. And so the Henry lasted longer than many would have thought. Although the Henry was no longer actively advertised by Quantel from 2002 onwards, in April 2003, when I joined the then newly founded ACHT Frankfurt, there were two brand new Henrys in the rack. The memory had been expanded to an unbelievable one hundred and twenty minutes and had found its way into the case, the rest was well known and should actually serve us well until 2005. However, the Henry became more and more of a conform and mastering tool, the effects were done on contemporary machines like the 5D Cyborg – but that’s a whole other story.

When you talk to artists who worked on the Henry back then, there’s always a bit of nostalgia. The Henry was so fast, the interface so straightforward and the functions not so overloaded. But you mustn’t forget that the Henry could be like that because it was the child of a different era. With only one resolution and just two relevant aspect ratios, without internet formats and without large teams working across several continents. Without workflow tools and shot management. The Henry was designed to allow a single artist to work on a film together with their clients. Long before approvals between two meetings took place on a smartphone. And to be honest, I don’t miss the rat on the table or the booming fifty-hertz monitors. But that swiping on the tablet was cool.

The post Once upon a time, there was a Henry first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Christoph Zapletal.