The Academy Awards crowned Flow as Best Animated Feature, marking a significant win for Latvian animation. Directed by Gints Zilbalodis, the film follows a cat navigating a post-apocalyptic flood. Produced by Dream Well Studio with a solo-director approach, Flow was made using Blender and Unreal Engine, highlighting the increasing role of real-time tools in feature animation.

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Iran’s ‘In the Shadow of the Cypress’ Takes Best Animated Short

The Best Animated Short Oscar went to In the Shadow of the Cypress, directed by Reza Riahi. The film, which blends historical themes with painterly animation, adds to Iran’s growing presence in the international animation scene.

The post Oscars: ‘Flow’ and ‘In the Shadow of the Cypress’ Take the Spotlight first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Adobe has released After Effects 23.2 – and after seeing it in beta since last year, support for the OpenColorIO (OCIO) colour management standard and the ACEScg colour space is now fully integrated for everyone, which is also the only new feature for this release. After Effects 23.2 has preset configurations for ACES 1.2 and 1.3 and supports the ACEScg colour space.

More in the beta!

However, the separate beta build of After Effects has now added support for text layers to the new Properties panel, which was previously only available for shape layers. The plan is that the panel will reduce the time it takes to open layer hierarchies by providing quick access to the most important properties of layers selected in the timeline.

You can see a full list here: Adobe Release Notes AE

Substance Designer 12.4

Adobe has released Substance 3D Designer 12.4, the latest version of its material authoring software. According to Adobe, the “quality update” improves the workflow in the node graph, simple formulas can be typed directly in the parameter fields, and a quick access toolbar now adorns the 3D view.

The improvements in the Nodegraph include, for example, the automatic removal of non-connected nodes (at the touch of a button, not just in the middle of work), as well as the selection of all nodes behind a selected one. And: You can now use the context menu in the node to switch whether it is colour or GRau.

Formulas can now be entered in the basic arithmetic operations ( ,-, x and /) instead of parameters – already in the properties window. And the icing on the cake? The Python interface has been updated and now offers full access to the model graph!

You can find all the new features in Substance here: Adobe Release Notes

Substance receives an Oscar!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that Substance 3D Designer has been honoured with this year’s Scientific and Technical Award, which is given to products that have “demonstrably made a significant contribution to the production of motion pictures”.

The concept and realisation of Sébastien Deguy and Christophe Soum were highlighted, as were Sylvain Paris and Nicolas Wirrmann for the design and development – the Academy also recognises the power of procedural workflows.
And this is officially recognised: “Adobe Substance 3D Designer offers artists a flexible and efficient procedural workflow for designing complex textures. Its sophisticated and controllable pattern generators, intuitive design and renderer-independent architecture have led to its widespread use in the visual effects and animation industries”.
Well then, congratulations!

The post After Effects! Substance! Oscars! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In nuce: Two student Oscars in the Narrative category go to the HFF Munich this year. The graduation film Almost Home and the training film Eigenheim (Rooms) were able to secure the award trophies. Almost Home tells the story of a mother-son conflict in space and draws parallels to the pandemic, while Eigenheim deals with the topic of forced eviction. The two Student Academy Awards were won by the HFF Department of Feature Film Directing, headed by Prof Julia von Heinz and Prof Marcus H. Rosenmüller. A total of seven student short films from all over the world were among the finalists. A total of three winners were chosen in the Narrative category. The award ceremony will take place live for the first time since 2019: on 20 October at the David Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles. The winners of the Student Academy Awards in gold, silver and bronze will also be announced at this event. This year marks the 49th time that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has presented the Student Academy Awards to up-and-coming filmmakers.

Film plot synopsis for Almost Home: When space explorer Nico and her pubescent son Jakob learn of an outbreak of a highly contagious virus shortly before their arrival on Earth, they struggle with the decision to land or return to space indefinitely. HFF team: Nils Keller (director), Georg Nikolaus (cinematographer), Philip Hofmann, Jonas Lembeck, Robert Richarz, Carolina Oswald (production with lehof Media), Lukas Väth (VFX)

Short description of the film plot for Eigenheim: The elderly couple Monika and Werner Baland live in a small three-room flat on the outskirts of the city. One day, their new landlady hands them a notice of termination for personal use. The young mother wants to move in with her family. But the search for a flat proves to be extremely difficult for the elderly couple. HFF team: Welf Reinhart (director), Tünde Sautier (screenplay), Matthias Kofahl (camera), Louis Merki (production with Merki und Reinhart Film GbR), Giorgia Germeno (production manager)

Click to continue: Press release on hff-muenchen.de

The post Two student Oscars go to HFF film projects! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.