Digital Production is taking a short end-of-year break. We would happily keep going until the very last calendar page, but the news situation has become impressively sparse and the editorial cat has formally vetoed any further attempts, insisting on a pause. When the cat is right, the cat is right.

Before you disappear into the holidays, one gentle reminder. Back up your data. All of it. And maybe take a moment to sort out the chaos folder. We all have one, were files like “final_really_this_one” quietly acumulate, along notes, software you defintily wanted to test and those meeting notes that were oh-so-important. Cleaning that up may even provide a respectable excuse for postponing visits to THOSE relatives.

Behind the scenes, we are still here. If anything genuinely relevant pops up, we will jump back in. Otherwise, we will see you next year with fresh news, new tools, and the usual mix of things you needed and things you did not know you cared about.

Thank you for reading, supporting Digital Production, and sticking with us through the year. Have a calm end of the year, enjoy the holidays, and see you on the other side.

The post That’s It for This Year: Digital Production Wishes You Happy Holidays first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In a plot twist worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, Canadian visual effects powerhouse Rodeo FX has acquired parts of Mikros Animation from the beleaguered Technicolor Group. This strategic move comes on the heels of Technicolor’s financial unraveling, which has sent shockwaves through the VFX industry.

The deal includes all of Mikros Animation’s operations and Technicolor Canada’s equipment, ensuring uninterrupted studio activities—despite the recent shutdown of other Technicolor Group entities. The acquisition strengthens Rodeo FX’s international expansion, following the opening of its Paris office in 2023, and highlights the company’s economic stability in an industry navigating post-pandemic shifts and disruptions caused by Hollywood labor strikes.

Technicolor’s Fade to Black

Once a titan in the realm of visual effects and animation, Technicolor’s recent financial woes have led to a series of unfortunate events. The company filed for administration in the UK and initiated receivership proceedings in France, leaving thousands of artists worldwide in a state of uncertainty. Notably, subsidiaries such as MPC and The Mill have been impacted, with the latter’s US employees forming a new venture, Arc Creative, in collaboration with Dream Machine FX.

Rodeo FX: Expanding the Creative Corral

Amidst this industry upheaval, Rodeo FX has seized the opportunity to expand its creative horizons by acquiring Mikros Animation. Founded in 2006 in Montreal by Sébastien Moreau, Rodeo FX has built a stellar reputation for delivering high-end visual effects across film, television, and advertising. With studios in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Vancouver, Paris, and Los Angeles, the company employs approximately 900 talented individuals.

Industry Implications

The downfall of Technicolor has sent ripples through the VFX and animation sectors, underscoring the volatile nature of the industry. The acquisition of Mikros Animation by Rodeo FX highlights the importance of adaptability and strategic growth in navigating these turbulent times. For production artists, the focus remains on tools and partnerships that prioritize usability, simplicity, and stability. As the dust settles, the industry watches closely to see how this acquisition will influence future collaborations and creative endeavors.

For more details on the acquisition and its implications, visit Rodeo FX’s official website.

The post Rodeo FX Saddles Up Mikros Animation Amid Technicolor’s Tumble first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Technicolor Group, the parent company of MPC, The Mill, and Mikros Animation, may be shutting down its operations, jeopardizing thousands of jobs across the VFX and animation industries. The financial situation of Technicolor has become critical, pushing the group toward potential bankruptcy.

Financial Trouble

The crisis stems from mounting debt and restructuring issues, with Technicolor Group struggling to sustain its studios. MPC, known for its high-profile VFX work, The Mill, specializing in advertising and real-time content, and Mikros Animation, focused on animated features, are all at risk. This collapse could significantly impact global VFX pipelines, affecting ongoing and future productions.

Maybe someone will step in and acquire the studios, or perhaps Technicolor, which absorbed everything in its path, will now be broken apart. Something will happen for sure, but one thing is certain: this is the end of an era.

If this is the end, then it’s time to celebrate what these studios were and how they revolutionized the industry. Their impact on culture and advertising history is undeniable. The Mill created some of the most iconic commercials of all time—Budweiser’s “What’s up”, a spot so powerful that an entire generation of Indians recognized it, despite the fact that it never officially aired in India (and that was before YouTube). Old Spice? Pure advertising history. In VFX, MPC played a key role in major Hollywood productions, and Gladiator was the first film to bring a VFX Oscar to Europe—fun fact: the birds from the Colosseum scene are still on The Mill London’s server and occasionally find their way into new projects.

More Information

A excellent 3DVF article goes into more detail, and Varieties’s take on the situation (including a focus on Technicolor) is also worth a look. The first thing we heard about it, was from Saltyanimators on Instagram

The post Technicolor Studios on the Brink – MPC, The Mill, Mikros Animation at Risk 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.

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: Polish VFX service provider Platige Image ( Platige for short) will also be involved in the third season of the Netflix series The Witcher. This is according to a recent report published on wirtualnemedia.pl. Platige Image was already involved in the first and second seasons of The Witcher.

In toto: The report also states that Platige will work on the episodes of season three in chronological order – starting with the first and concluding with the last episode of the new series season. Platige is expected to have successfully completed his visual effects for The Witcher Season 3 by the end of the first quarter of 2023. The scripts for the third season have already been finalised and filming is scheduled to start in spring 2023. The Witcher Season 3 is expected to premiere on the Netflix streaming portal in summer 2023.

Clicked on & clicked away: In DP 03 : 2020, we talked shop with Platige Image about the first season and one of the associated video games (“The Witcher by Platige”, page 78, an article we also made available to our readers free of charge on 29 September 2021 ). And just recently, in DP 05 : 2022, we had the opportunity to talk to Brad Blackbourn, Virtual Production Manager at The Third Floor, about augmented reality visualisation during the second season (“The Witcher: Adventures in AR” on page 71); see also the free sample copy of our e-paper issue. Finally, in our next issue, DP 01 : 2023, we had the chance to talk shop with the artists from Platige Image – this time about the second season of the series! Look forward to the insightful conversation in our upcoming new issue!

Source: News on wirtualnemedia.pl

The post Platige Image provides the visual effects for The Witcher season 3! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

Rise | Visual Effects Studios(www.risefx.com) has been around since 2OO7 and now has four locations. With a location in Vienna, the team is even represented in German-speaking “foreign countries”. The Rise team explained to us how they managed to expand their VFX business without losing their overview.

Rise founder and VFX supervisor Florian Gellinger, who will also be on the animago jury again this year, manages the main Berlin location together with Sven Pannicke, Robert Pinnow and Markus Degen. The second studio in Cologne was initially an “on demand” location, which has since been converted into a permanent site. Its success was followed shortly afterwards by the opening of the Vienna branch. The Stuttgart location has recently been added and will be up and running by FMX(www.fmx.de) at the latest.

Rise | Visual Effects Studios is a regular guest at our animago AWARD & CONFERENCE(www.animago.com). So if you would like to meet the team in person, you should be there on 15 and 16 October. Entries for all nine categories can be submitted for the animago AWARD until 30 June.

You can find out more about Rise’s day-to-day work and pipeline in the studio portrait in DP issue 05/13.

DP: Hi Florian, why did you see the need to be represented at these locations with your studio and to expand in this way?

Florian Gellinger: We want to be as close as possible to young talent and artists. And in Germany, the industry is unfortunately spread out in all directions, in contrast to London or Vancouver, for example. Many domestic productions also make use of regional funding. The regions of Vienna, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg in particular were quick to recognise the increasingly important role of digital visual effects. After all, up to 100 per cent of film images now come from computers – including the main actors.

DP: Is the first studio foundation the most difficult and all the others just routine work? Or did each studio challenge you anew?

Florian Gellinger: The first studio is always the hardest. You have to acquire orders while you build up the technical infrastructure. Cologne was our “trial balloon” for all other locations. We learned a lot from projects such as “Adlon – A Family Saga” and “Night Over Berlin” and used this knowledge to expand our decentralised production environment accordingly. In practice, we have found out how work at several locations can function best and that the efficient organisation of work processes is at least as important as the work on the effects themselves. Each new branch makes the organisation of distributed projects many times more complicated – but a larger artist pool also makes you faster and more flexible.

DP: Were there regional differences when setting up a studio?

Florian Gellinger: No, not really. But we were also lucky that our first people on site were previously long-standing Berlin employees who are well connected in the industry and know our work processes. We try to completely avoid competitive thinking between the locations by removing all barriers apart from the physical separation as far as possible. This means that employees in Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna should feel as if they are working in the same building as the Berliners and vice versa. All workstations are networked with each other via VoIP and chat and you can also simply transfer control of your own workstation to others, for example to get help.

DP: How did you manage to finance each new location?

Florian Gellinger: The new locations are created from orders placed and additional capacity required. We can also use the software developed in Berlin at all locations, which means that the development work is spread across more users, making it increasingly cost-efficient. The Berlin location is extremely important due to its proximity to Studio Babelsberg(www.studiobabelsberg.com). We can visit production offices on the studio premises at any time, giving our customers more flexibility. At the same time, the animago is ideal for finding new talent. In addition to the excellent universities, Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna are ahead of the game when it comes to promoting post-production – although in Vienna in particular there is currently no-one else on site with a comparable programme.

DP: What criteria did you use to select the premises at the respective locations?

Florian Gellinger: We love open, large spaces. That’s why we’ve always tried to put together as many artists as possible who are working on a project as an interdisciplinary group. That way, everyone can see what is being created on the monitors of the others and be inspired for their own work. The spatial concept facilitates communication and the result looks more consistent in the end. We actually see the entire company as a virtual open-plan office, regardless of where people are working.

DP: How many permanent employees do you have in total? How many freelancers also provide regular support?

Florian Gellinger: Our network has a total of 19 permanent employees. We see our work like that of a physical film production, which grows and shrinks according to demand: a few leads work in planning, preparing the projects and setting everything up according to our guidelines. For the work on the individual shots, we book additional freelancers and after the end of the project, they either jump to the next one or we downsize again.

DP: How do the locations differ in terms of technical equipment?

Florian Gellinger: The offices are all equipped according to their employee capacities – Berlin has the largest server and the largest render farm. However, these capacities can also be made available to the other locations at peak times. Berlin also has a DI facility with 4K 3D stereo projection. Approvals for larger projects also take place here.

DP: How does the data transfer between the locations work? Do you also use online render services?

Florian Gellinger: All data transfer between the locations takes place fully automatically in the background and is highly encrypted. Each location can access all data of an assigned project at any time. Our network is otherwise completely isolated from the outside world. Even if we wanted to, we would not be allowed to use online render service providers, as the security guidelines of some of our customers prohibit us from doing so. This is another reason why automatic render farm load balancing between the locations is so important.

DP: Do you have one licence server for all studios or a separate one for each location?

Florian Gellinger: That depends on the software. In some cases, there are only nodelocked licences for special software. In some cases, however, we also have floating licences that can be loaned out from Berlin to other locations. Our licence portfolio is structured very differently – depending on the software, the type of licence available from the manufacturer and our requirements.

DP: Do you use your internal Risebase database at all locations? For what in detail?

Florian Gellinger: Risebase is still the heart of the company and its further development enables us to work across the various locations. Review notes and comments on individual shots in particular can be sent across locations. For example, if it is necessary to do a review session with a client in Berlin, but the shots are actually being worked on in Stuttgart, the notes can be entered in Risebase in Berlin and the Stuttgart artists receive the corresponding comments in real time.

DP: What exactly does your cooperation with Pointcloud9 look like?

Florian Gellinger: Pointcloud9 is a subcontractor of Rise. Customers who use our LIDAR services shouldn’t feel like they have to book the rest of Rise’s VFX apparatus just for the LIDAR service they want. However, they can expect to receive results that we ourselves would want as a VFX service provider as a basis for our work. This means that Pointcloud9’s experience in handling LIDAR raw data is also growing as a result of our own projects.

DP: Do you have any other locations planned in the near future?

Florian Gellinger: So far, we are already quite busy with the four locations. But who knows what will happen next.

The post More locations, more VFX! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mirja Fürst.

In nuce: VFX service provider Pixomondo has been acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment. This is according to an exclusive report in the industry magazine Variety by editor Jazz Tangcay.

In toto: According to the report, Sony has acquired 100 per cent of Pixomondo. Pixomondo will continue to be managed by CEO Jonny Slow, who now reports to Ravi Ahuja, Chairman of Global Television Studios and Corporate Development at Sony. In its report, Jazz Tangcay sees the acquisition of Pixomondo as a further step by Sony to position itself even better in the areas of virtual production, visual effects and streaming & film productions. Pixomondo now stands side by side with Sony Pictures Imageworks and Sony Innovation Studios.

Requests to speak: In a statement, Chairman Ahuja expresses his confidence in the acquisition. He says: “Pixomondo will make the many programmes we produce for our streaming and network partners even more exceptional.” In a further statement, Pixomondo CEO Jonny Slow says he is delighted that Pixomondo has found a home at Sony, where it will continue to drive forward the areas of virtual production and VFX.

Click to continue: The original news story “Sony Pictures Entertainment Acquires VFX Company Pixomondo (EXCLUSIVE)” by Jazz Tangcay can be viewed on variety.com . As soon as further information is available, we will update this report.

Source: sonypictures.com ( professional profile of Ravi Ahuja)

The post Sony Pictures Entertainment akquiriert Pixomondo 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: Maxon is now one of the founding members of the Metaverse Standards Forum. This is the result of a recent press release. Other important founding members are: Adobe, Autodesk, Epic Games, Huawei, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Unity.

What is the Metaverse Standards Forum – and what does Maxon want there? The Metaverse Standards Forum is a newly established body dedicated to interoperability standards for the Metaverse. With its numerous software solutions in the field of digital content creation (e.g. Cinema 4D, Redshift, ZBrush), Maxon sees itself perfectly positioned as a founding member. Maxon’s goal is to contribute to an inclusive metaverse that supports the use of a wide range of technologies – including: 3D graphics, augmented and virtual reality.

David McGavran, CEO at Maxon, says: “The success of the metaverse depends on establishing universal standards. It’s about the Metaverse’s ability to work with other systems.” In order to achieve this goal, the Metaverse Standards Forum is not only committed to creating an interoperability standard – but also to realising this primarily through “pragmatic, action-oriented projects”, as the press release states.

Click further: All further information on the Metaverse Standards Forum.

The post Maxon involved in the Metaverse Standards Forum 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 Hugo Guerra, director, supervisor, lecturer and compositor, both in film and video game cinematics.

Let’s talk: Hugo Guerre talks to host Alexander Richter about what it takes to succeed in the visual effects industry, the added value of online courses – but also about why YouTube and other streaming platforms for content creators reflect a distorted picture of what the work behind the scenes of the visual effects industry really looks like.

Hugo Guerra’scareer – An outline : An important milestone on Hugo’s career path was The Mill (VFX Supervisor), before he later developed into an onset supervisor for video games such as Codemaster’s “Bodycount”, Ubisoft’s “Rainbow Six” or Activision’s “Call of Duty”. After joiningFire Without Smoke as director and visual effects supervisor, Hugo was involved in video game trailers for well-known companies such as Ubisoft, Deep Silver, Square Enix and Sony. Hugo has now been running his own training programme, Hugo’s Desk, for almost seven years.

Further information: If you like, you can visit Hugo Guerra on his homepage. For all other episodes of Alexander Richter’s podcasts 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 thing as a moving image on YouTube . And if you want to learn more about visual effects, we recommend Alexander Richter’s blog .

Independent Compositor and YouTuber w/Hugo’s Desk

The post What does it really take to make it as a VFX artist? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

My guest today is Christopher Hiess who is a supervisor, lead and engineer working for Double Negative and the Foundry. Chris was my lighting supervisor on the Heinzels animation feature film and I could experience his team management style in person.

Among the many hats Christopher wears in a professional environment is the hat of supervisor, technician, and person with managerial responsibility – both at Double Negative and The Foundry. Host Alexander Richter was able to get to know Christopher Hiess’ management style at first hand, as Technical Director Christopher was personally involved in the animated film “Die Heinzels – Rückkehr der Heinzelmännchen” and can report first-hand on how Christopher Hiess did as Lighting Supervisor. The two minds also talk about how to build a successful and happy team in the midst of a stressful film production – and how a healthy feedback and error culture really works in the VFX industry.

Further information: For all other episodes of Alexander Richter’s podcasts worth listening to, visit him on Spotify. If you’d rather see the minds behind the voices, you can watch the whole thing as a moving image on YouTube . And if you want to learn more about visual effects, we recommend Alexander Richter’s blog .

The post Building a healthy and productive team w/ Christopher Hiess | 21 Artist Show 017 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Alexander Richter.

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.

In nuce: In the latest episode of his 21 Artist Show, Technical Director and host Alexander Richter talks to Carl Rosendahl, founder of the now defunct VFX company PDI (Pacific Data Images).

Let’s talk: As president of PDI at the time, Carl Rosendahl was involved in visual effects-heavy films such as “The Arrival” (starring Charlie Sheen), the cult superhero film “Batman Forever”, the action classic “Terminator 2” and the Robin Williams vehicle “Toys”. Rosendahl and PDI later plunged into the beginnings of fully animated cartoons and were involved in genre gems such as “Antz” (with Woody Allen as a constantly nagging ant) and “Shrek” (the daredevil hero with a green coat of paint).

PDI – A company history: Apart from these cinematic stations, Rosendahl also reports on how PDI was acquired by DreamWorks in 2000 and renamed PDI/DreamWorks. So if you want to know everything about the founding days of the legendary VFX company PDI, how the core team worked together and why PDI’s company history finally came to an end in 2015, you can click (and listen) to the latest episode of the 21 Artist Show.

Further information: For all other episodes of Alexander Richter’s podcasts 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 thing as a moving image on YouTube . And if you want to learn more about visual effects, we recommend Alexander Richter’s blog .

Founding PDI/DreamWorks (ANTZ & Shrek) w/ Carl Rosendahl

The post Interview about the company history of “Pacific Data Images” first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Arri Media is now called Pharos – The Post Group. This is according to a recent press release. Media Services GmbH, formerly known as ARRI Media, has been part of Dr Stefan Laucher’s group of companies since August 2021. Media Services GmbH is now dropping the Arri brand and will become Pharos – The Post Group with immediate effect. Josef “Sepp” Reidinger will remain on board as Managing Director.

What will change as a result? According to the same press release, The Post Group will continue to support filmmakers in the creative process. Dr Laucher says: “Following the acquisition of Ludwig Kameraverleih, MBF Filmtechnik and Non-Stop Film Service, Pharos was the missing link to the holistic strategy of a full-service provider.” The press release also states that The Post Group wants to support filmmakers with a comprehensive service and technology package from a single source. To this end, Pharos will continue to be present with its teams in Munich and Berlin.

What will change for customers? Customers now also have access to the rental services of Ludwig Kameraverleih, MBF Filmtechnik and Non-Stop Film Service – all from a single source.

Where does the name “Pharos” come from? According to Joseph Reidinger, the new name is reminiscent of the legendary lighthouse of Alexandria and reflects the high standards that Pharos – The Post Group sets for itself. In the press release, Reidinger says: “We set the pace, make things happen – and, like a lighthouse in the surf, give filmmakers orientation and security in the shallows of film production.”

The Pharos family of companies: Finally, the same press release announces that Pharos’ services are flanked by its subsidiary The Playmaker Munich, formerly known as Arri Media International, which specialises in global distribution and co-production, and a Pharos-owned platform for dailies and post-production called Webgate.io.

Click further: You will soon be provided with further information on pharos.de .

The post Arri Media is now called Pharos – The Post Group first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.