Browsing Tag
post-production
289 posts
Mufasa heads to MPC
The Prequel of a remake of a animated movie, based on a Shakespeare play... and still worth watching! We got a Chance to talk to Audrey Ferrara, MPCs VFX Supervisor for Mufasa
Richard Rosenman Unveils IK Studio: Advanced Inverse Kinematics Plugin for After Effects
IK Studio introduces sophisticated inverse kinematics capabilities to After Effects, enhancing animation rigging and VFX workflows for professionals.
FilmLight sends your frames!
FilmLight’s Nara simplifies media workflows and improves collaboration. And you don't even need to have Baselight in your pipeline! The latest version enables seamless progress reviews, approvals, and compliance processes—all without proxies. Interested?
Flow’s Custom Blender Plug-In: Water Sim That Made a Splash
The Blender plug-in behind Flow’s water scenes is now public—get ready for technical precision in your water simulations!
OpenUSD 25.02: Technical Tweaks for the Speedy Frame Wrangler (Yes, Really)
OpenUSD 25.02 refines API calls, performance, and stability with a suite of focused technical improvements.
The Rise and Fall of Cyborg
When we think of compositing systems of the late nineties and early two thousands, Discreet and Quantel come to mind. But for a brief time, there was a real contender to those two powerhouses: 5D Cyborg!
FilmLight REMOTE: Next-Generation Remote Color Grading
FilmLight introduces a new remote grading solution with JPEG-XS, NICE DCV, and full control surface integration.
Hardware for CineMon (et. al.)
After looking at the software side of CineMon, it's time to take a look at the hardware - whats good and what's not?
“Node-It”: Organize Your Blender Shaders with (Almost) Zero Fuss
Blender add-on "Node-It" simplifies shader workflows with automated organization, color coding, and labeling tools. Designed to save time and frustration.
Twixtor Goes Solo
Revision Effects introduces Twixtor Standalone , combining standalone flexibility and machine learning-based retiming to elevate slow motion workflows.
ASUS ProArt Display 5K PA27JCV
Let's not faff about: 5K Screens? Really? I tested one, and here are the results - the Use Case is not what you might think it is.
Stretch Your Geometry: Relax Deformer for Houdini Promises Smooth Latex-Like Results
A new Houdini deformer makes geometry bend like latex, offering smoother results for VFX artists — check the details and usability here.
Adobe After Effects Beta: HDR Preview for Precision Workflows
The latest After Effects beta introduces HDR composition previews, supporting more accurate workflows for HDR-ready monitors.
Adobe Substance 3D Designer 14.1
The latest update to Adobe Substance 3D Designer brings new functionalities and fixes that streamline your creative process. Here’s everything you need to know.
ComfyUI + NVIDIA Cosmos: AI for Artists, Not Teenagers
ComfyUI now supports NVIDIA Cosmos, transforming AI video generation into a serious tool for VFX pros. Text-to-video meets production pipelines—but test first!
Free for All: Post Manager Adds Render Compositing to Photoshop
Post Manager, a Photoshop add-on for render compositing, is now free. Manage multi-pass workflows directly in Photoshop—simple, stable, and cost-effective.
Chaos Unleashes V-Ray 7 for Cinema 4D
V-Ray 7 for Cinema 4D introduces Gaussian splat rendering, OpenPBR support, and enhanced Sun & Sky model.
Unreal Engine Gets a Hair-Raising Tool
New free tool "Hair Cinematic Tool" for UE5 simplifies grooming workflows for realistic hair in real-time cinematics.
HDMI 2.2: 16K Support, 96Gbps Bandwidth, and a Side of 4K at 480Hz
HDMI 2.2 offers 96Gbps bandwidth, supports 16K, and introduces 4K at 480Hz. But is your pipeline ready for this tech leap?
Let’s Fix it in Pod 04 Industry Societies and Associations
In this episode, Bela and Christoph discuss means of staying connected - from informal groups and meetups to the Societies and Associations that define our industry.
Maxon Grows: Laubwerk Joins the Family
Maxon integrates Laubwerk’s 3D vegetation tools into its ecosystem, expanding possibilities for plant-based workflows!
Paint Your Blender: Free Add-On Brings Photoshop-Like Layers
A new free Blender add-on lets you paint directly on 3D objects using Photoshop-like layers. Precision meets simplicity for digital artists.
HDR Without Headaches: Dolby Vision Training by Matthias Bolliger
Matthias Bollinger’s Dolby Vision course "Advanced" simplifies HDR workflows, from color grading to light scripting. Certification prep included.
PFTrack 24.12.19: Scene Reconstruction Gets a Makeover
And to keep track (Höhö) of the New Years Resolution, The The Pixel Farm releases a new version of PFTrack! The Pixel Farm's Version 24.12.19 introduces AI-powered enhancements to its photogrammetry toolset.
Walk the Space Station—Virtually
Explore the International Space Station in a 3D Tour Built with Unreal Engine 5.
20 New Presets for Tiny Eye 1.3: Eyes Wide Open
Tiny Eye 1.3 receives 20 new presets, adding more versatility to this real-time graphics tool for VFX and CGI. Check the update before diving into production!
Blackmagic Camera 9.2 Update: Pyxis 6K Gets Remote Love
Control the Pyxis 6K remotely, courtesy of the new Blackmagic Camera App. Firmware updates that might actually make life easier.
RenderMan 26.3
Pixar rolls out RenderMan 26.3 with updates focused on real-time rendering, denoising, and artist-friendly features.
Blender to Unreal Exporter: Free Tool Promises Simpler Workflows
A free Blender-to-Unreal Engine exporter aims to streamline workflows between the popular 3D creation tool and Epic's game engine.
ShapeLab 2025: Sculpting in VR, Now Sharper Than Ever
ShapeLab 2025 brings VR sculpting tools for VFX artists, game developers, and 3D creators – now available for download.
Adobe Substance 3D Stager 3.1 Beta
Adobe Substance 3D Stager 3.1 introduces key updates, enhancing material editing, asset management, and real-time rendering workflows.
AI Meets 3D: Meshtron Spins Up Smarter Meshes
Meshtron uses AI to generate 3D meshes with speed and flexibility. A promising tool for VFX, games, and real-time workflows—simplicity remains key.
Framestore Brings Spike Jonze and James Gunn to the Table—Virtually
Framestore’s collaboration with Spike Jonze and James Gunn reveals the dynamics between directors and animators in CGI filmmaking.
Breakdown Maker for Blender: Get your showreel ready!
Breakdown Maker, a $25 Blender add-on, simplifies VFX breakdowns by automating render pass exports and offering professional animation presets.
Sony Releases BURANO Test Files for Download
Test Sony’s BURANO camera with free downloadable footage for workflow evaluation.
LayerPainter Update Enhances Painting Workflow in Blender
The LayerPainter add-on for Blender gets updated with improved UI, new features for texture painting, and added functionality for VFX workflows.
Crocotile 3D 2.4.5: Tile-Based 3D Modeling Tool Gets New Features
The Crocotile 3D 2.4.5 update adds key enhancements to streamline tile-based 3D modeling, with new editing tools, features, and improved workflows.
Procedural Texturing using Houdini and MaterialX
Learn how Houdini's MaterialX simplifies procedural texturing for VFX artists, with a focus on efficient shading and rendering workflows.
Let’s Fix it in Pod 03 Open Industry Standards with Jonas Kluger and Arne Palluck
In this episode, Bela and Christoph discuss the benefits of Open Industry Standards, but also the hurdles and processes in establishing these.
3dgs Render 2.0 Adds 3D Gaussian Splats Editing to Blender
3DGS Render 2.0 introduces Blender support for 3D Gaussian splat editing, streamlining real-time graphics workflows for VFX and game development.
World Creator 2024.3: Enhanced Terrain Generation for Game Dev and VFX
The latest update to World Creator introduces faster terrain generation, streamlined workflows, and deeper integration with engines like Unreal and Unity.
Nevercenter Updates Silo and Milo for 2025: Refining 3D Modeling and Rendering
Nevercenter launches Silo 2025 and Milo 2025, enhancing quick and lightweight 3D modeling and real-time rendering tools.
Sony Alpha 1 II
Sony introduces the Alpha 1 II, a second-generation full-frame camera with 8K video recording, dual processors, and key updates for post-production workflows
Black Friday 2024: Best Deals for Post-Production Pros
This year’s Black Friday brings discounts on DaVinci Resolve, FilmConvert Nitrate, and OWC hardware—essential tools for post-production workflows.
Blender 4.3: Updates for Animation, VFX, and Rendering
Blender 4.3 introduces light linking, a Metallic BSDF node, F82 Tint, enhanced compositing features, and updates for geometry nodes and simulations.
Free Brushstroke Tools Now Available for Blender from Blender Studio
New brushstroke tools for Blender—free from Blender Studio—offer expanded control for digital sculpting and painting.
Final Cut Pro 11 Introduces Magnetic Mask and Transcribe-to-Captions—Finally
Apple unveils Final Cut Pro 11 after an 11-year gap, adding features like magnetic masking and automatic transcriptions—but are these enough to keep pace with competitors?
Unreal Engine 5.5 Unleashes Color Grading, Virtual Production, and SMPTE 2110 Advances
UE 5.5 equips creators with new tools for animation, real-time IP workflows, and color grading—streamlining complex VFX and virtual production tasks.
Foundry Offers 10-Year Free License for Modo: A Farewell Gift for Loyal Users
Foundry grants 10-year Modo licenses for users as part of its end-of-life transition plan.
Foundry Announces Modo’s Retirement: A Final Version Before End-of-Life
Foundry announces the end of Modo development, shifting focus to core products; support for Modo 17.1 will continue until contracts expire.
Let’s Fix it in Pod 02 Jobs and A.I. with Benjamin Wild
In this episode, Bela and Christoph tackle the possibilities and challenges that Machine Learning and A.I. are offering to the vfx industry.
Chaos Group Unleashes V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max
V-Ray 7 for 3ds Max is here with expanded toolsets, boosting rendering flexibility, materials management, and GPU acceleration for high-end VFX and design work.
D5 Render 2.9: Enhanced Terrain and Workflow
D5 Render 2.9 updates: Terrain tools, AI-based lighting, and pipeline optimizations for smoother real-time rendering.
3ds Max Plug-In: Tree Generation
Looking for streamlined tree generation and animation in 3ds Max? This plugin offers an efficient approach to plant animations and environment design.
Topaz Labs Launches Gigapixel AI v8
Gigapixel AI v8 from Topaz Labs introduces real-time image processing, boosting performance and compatibility for high-resolution workflows.
Blender Pack Saves Your Back: 2,000+ Interior Assets for 3D Artists
Skip the furniture store—this 2,000-item Blender pack brings diverse, ready-to-use interior assets straight to your VFX pipeline.
Adobe Fresco Goes Free
Adobe Fresco is now free for all users. Does it fit into your pipeline? Here’s what you need to know about its potential use in painting and beyond.
Flow Warp Plugin for Nuke Bends Images with Precision
The free Nuke plugin, Flow Warp, lets artists bend images along custom paths with ease—ideal for particles and tricky compositing shots.
Substance 3D Modeler released! v1.15: New VR Feature
Adobe’s Substance 3D Modeler v1.15 brings VR sculpting enhancements and improved stability for 3D artists.
Fab Marketplace by Epic Games
Fab, Epic Games' new content marketplace, is now live. Artists can access 3D assets for VFX, games, and post-production projects. Expect updates as the platform stabilizes.
Blackmagic Camera 1.4 Update for Android: Xperia Support and More
BMD has rolled out version 1.4 of its Camera Control app for Android, now supporting Xperia devices.
Let’s Fix it in Pod 01 Control Surfaces with Mazze Aderhold
In their very first episode, Bela Beier and Christoph Zapletal talk about control surfaces for an artist's workstation.
DaVinci Resolve 19.0.2 – Gimme Mpeg Streams!
DaVinci Resolve has released version 19.0.2, focussing on enhancing file compatibility, streamlining audio management, and refining metadata handling.
The discovery of slowness
Artificial slow motion, i.e. the calculation of additional intermediate images, has been around for a long time. The best methods to date have been called "optical flow", although this actually refers to the visual perception of movement in general. Now A.I. or neural networks are also establishing themselves here. We compare Twixtor 8, DaVinci Resolve 18.6 and Topaz Video AI 4.
YC Onion Chocolate Cameraslider
A cheese that glides smoothly over chocolate?! When I was at this year's IBC in Hall 11, I met the well-known video blogger Aaron Parecki at Yolobox, who was travelling with an interesting monopod tripod
tripod. When I asked him where he had got it, he pointed to the neighbouring stand.
Like Ulanzi, YC Onion has a broad portfolio of camera gear in its programme
Programme. From various tripods with practical quick-release fasteners to
LED lamps, camera heads and mounts as well as some interesting camera slider models. A trademark of this company is that they name almost all their products after food.
The easy Cloudrendering?
There are many, many companies offering cloudrendering services – and most tell you how you can tweak everything, you have all the control –
and therefor you also need a TD and DEEP pockets, because the first time the bill from the cloud infrastructure arrives, it’s going to be massive.
Our Universe of… Houdini?
Who would have thought that one of our favourite documentaries seen this year would come from Bristol?
All the teeth!
Sometimes there are fantastical productions, where you get a
monster that feels fresh and new – and once we had seen Season 2 of “Carnival Row” (Release on Amazon Prime), we needed to talk about
the toothy skinned bat: Sparas!
Timeline Tools von The Foundry 2
Color, Comp und Conform! Nuke and Nuke X are the de facto-standard in node-based compositing. But even seasoned Nuke artists have often had little or no contact with the closely related reviewing and finishing products.
New in the toolbox
Standing around the DP stand at FMX and (as so often) looking stupid, various people came by and wanted to know something special. "Do you know anything for..." - and we were able to answer almost everything, and one of them (Hello Ralf!) said we should put the list in the magazine. Okay, here you go - the best tools we've recommended to people directly. You might find them helpful too!
Performance across the board in Blender 3.6 LTS
Blender 3.6 is the last release before the big jump to 4.0 and again with Long Term Support (LTS). Important work on the substructure has been continued, so that a leap in performance is noticeable across almost all areas. Other areas such as the viewport compositor have been completed and Cycles now supports significantly more hardware. However, this does not mean that the developers have skimped on new features. The Geometry Nodes can now finally run simulations, the Video Sequence Editor has been given a new retiming tool and there is much more to discover.
Firefly –AI for the Creative Cloud?
Everyone is talking about AI, and even in the general interest One of the points of criticism is copyright, as most programmes simply use the internet to learn how to generate images and text. Adobe has now also released an AI image generator with the beta version of Firefly, but it has a slightly different approach. I was one of the first beta testers to see how well it works.
Got you a Present!
“Present” stands for “Photoreal
REaltime Sentient ENTity”. During FMX 2022, Manne Öhrström, Global Head of Film Software at Framestore, delivered a talk about the Present project, where machine learning translates high-end film character rigs into real-time. A conversation with Manne Öhrström – and with Epic Game’s Research and Development Technology Producer, Emelia Fiell.
The Puppet Groove
The animated film "The Puppet Groove", which looks like a music video, shows a rocking puppet band on stage. In the background, the singer narrates their success story in an animated film sequence. But whether the musicians really have everything under control is only revealed at the end.
Trust is good, control is… QScan?
While gazing across the internet in search for DCC-related news items, we stumbled across a report released on
the 24th of October on postperspective.com titled “LWKS Offers Updated QScan for Automated QC”, announcing the launch of QScan 2023 – the most recent version of the automated quality control (AQC) platform, manufactured by Lightworks (LWKS). We got in touch with Daniel Roques, Product Manager for QScan to answer our questions about what improvements users can hope for with QScan 2023.
Black Adam!
The DC Universe has a new “Hero” – well, not really a hero, but you’ll have to watch the movie for that. What is one of the best entries into that universe though, is Digital Domains work in the beginning – the “Introduction” of Black Adam is a superpower-extravaganza, with super-speed, bullets everywhere, punching through walls and a healthy dose of electricity – and we asked DD’s Supervisor Nikos Kalaitzidis how that was done.
“Gyroscopes” for image stabilisation in post-production
Why do I put the term in parentheses? Because it actually refers to classic gyro stabilisation. The word is based on the Greek word for "circle" or "turn" - which is why the meat from the spit is also called Gyros in Greek.
Putting the „Ace” in ACES
The fact that ACES is more than just another buzzword in the VFX industry should have
t should have got around by now. And anyone who works at a major studio in a reasonably up-to-date pipeline will already have had contact with ACES. But what about one-person dancing bands, freelancers with mobile workstations and those who like to dance at several weddings?
Cut faster – The Blackmagic Speed Editor
In DP 02:20, we already presented the Editor Keyboard from Blackmagic Design (BMD for short). It used to be close to 1,000 euros, but when it didn't become a big seller, it was lowered to around 600. Meanwhile, the manufacturer has removed the regular keys in the centre, moved the side panels closer together and added a few extra keys. The result is called Speed Editor (SE for short) and is still being offered at the competitive price of 380 euros including a licence for DaVinci Resolve Studio. Some folks are even marketing the device for 199 euros without the licence, but it remains unclear whether this is permissible on the part of BMD.
Premiere listens – and types!
New functions and tools are added with every Creative Cloud update. In the last major update for Premiere, there was an entire subsection - transcribing. But how exactly does it work? (Including self-test and prize draw)
Blackmagic | ATEM Mini Pro ISO & ATEM Streaming Bridge
Recording engine extended to 5 channels, output as a Resolve project and more.
The best light meter ..
... is the one you have with you. And what does everyone have in their pocket these days? Sure, a mobile phone. But can an app compete with a professional light meter? We did the maths. And aren't light meters terribly old-school? Not really for cameramfolks on a film set - except perhaps for solo entertainers on YouTube.
Cloudy to fiery – Volumetric effects in Cinema 4D (Part 1)
In this two-part series of articles, we will provide the experienced Cinema 4D user with in-depth insights into the creation of volumetric effects with the onboard tools of Cinema 4D - without any plug-ins, particles or Pyro Cluster. The first part of the series is dedicated to visible lights and their texturing with volumetric shaders.
The virtual glue press:CineXtools from Cinedeck
Non-linear video editing with computers (NLE for short) has given us enormous freedom. Not only the fiddling with adhesive presses and cotton gloves, synchronised tape machines or even toxic carbon tetrachloride in magnetic magnifiers from the early days of videotape are a thing of the past. today, "cuts" are non-destructive and can be altered at will (sometimes all too often). But the whole thing has one disadvantage .....
Scratch… Scratch Play Pro
The trend towards packaging continues: Scratch Play Pro brings together a universal format player, an immersive media player, look creator, transcoder (Prores on Windows) and QC tool in one package, offering both filmmakers and post-production artists greater efficiency and productivity.
One for all? The Ursa Mini 4.6K Pro from Blackmagic
At NAB 2O17, the new version of the Ursa Mini 4.6K Pro (UM Pro for short) received a lot of attention, with Videomaker even honouring it as the "Best camera of NAB". But what does the "Pro" in the name mean? For whom is the new camera more professional than its predecessor with the same sensor? Can it satisfy in documentary and nature film or even in reportage?
Put in the right light
Review: In DP 04 : 2014, Depeche Mode went on a major tour - and Cologne-based post-production house the editors cgn was responsible for the high-quality post-production of the concert events. How do post-pros make the performers look as good as possible? Head editor Tobias Berbuer explains in an interview!
Visualising barley juice
Looking back: In DP 04 : 2013, we were thirsty for beer, because pilsner brand Warsteiner was celebrating its 260th birthday with an advertising campaign. The post-production studio nhb and the agency Kolle Rebbe created bottles in 3D for the Warsteiner brewery. Cheers!