Leading visual effects software developer, The Foundry, has announced the appointment of Ron Brinkmann as special advisor to its NUKE development team.
For nearly two decades Brinkmann has enjoyed a variety of roles as both an end-user and supplier to the post-production industry, giving him an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the technological and workflow issues involved in the creation of first-class digital images. His expertise will be focused on assisting the development of NUKE, The Foundry's high-end compositing application it recently acquired from D2 Software.
A respected supervisor in the visual effects and animation world, Brinkmann's film credits include DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, CONTACT and VALIANT. He was nominated for a British Academy Award for his work on SPEED, and is the author of THE ART AND SCIENCE OF DIGITAL COMPOSITING, which is regarded as a standard book of reference in the visual effects industry.
Brinkmann was part of the initial design and development team at Nothing Real, the software company that produced the digital compositing application Shake. Apple acquired Nothing Real in 2002, and, for the last five years, Brinkmann has continued his role at Apple as the product designer for Shake.
"I'm very happy to be part of the development team at The Foundry," commented Brinkmann. "They have a huge amount of talent, incredible cutting-edge technology and for many years have produced a vast array of powerful tools and image effects for digital artists. The combined experience of the team involved with the development of NUKE will result in considerable enhancements to the product. From what I've seen so far, it's set to be a really exciting proposition for the film-making community."
"Ron's addition is a terrific coup for The Foundry, and clearly signals our intent with NUKE," said Dr. Bill Collis, ceo of The Foundry. "We have known Ron on a personal and professional level for many years, and his insight and experience will add enormously to the next wave of our products."
Brinkmann is joining a team of highly regarded engineers, including Bill Spitzak, the original author of NUKE, Matt Plec, formerly of Sony Pictures Imageworks, and The Foundry's chief of engineering Bruno Nicoletti.
Available on Linux, Windows and Mac platforms, high-end compositing application NUKE delivers unparalleled speed, an extensible 64-channel TCL-based architecture, and powerful feature set. NUKE is priced at $5,000 and version 4.6 is available to download now from The Foundry website.
The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk) is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image-processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post-production. On Feb. 10, 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award to The Foundry's development team for the Furnace image processing suite. The company now holds a trio of Academy Award-winning products, including the high-end compositing system NUKE, and keying application Keylight.
The Foundry's products support a wide range of host platforms, including After Effects, Autodesk Media and Ent. Systems, Avid DS, Baselight, Film Master, NUKE, Scratch and Shake. The company has also driven OpenFX, an open standard for visual effects plug-ins, now broadly adopted by host and plug-in developers such as Autodesk, Assimilate, FilmLight, Grass Valley, Soluciones Graficas por Ordenador (S.G.O.), Photron and others.
Customers include: Digital Domain, The Moving Picture Co., Sony Pictures Imageworks, Warner Bros. and Weta Digital Ltd.
The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
