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Category: Visual Effects

Headline News

Clash of the Titans Adds Gods to Roster

Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures have hired Mads Mikkelsen, Gemma Arterton and Alexa Davalos for their Greek god epic CLASH OF THE TITANS, per THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Louis Leterrier is set to direct from a script by Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay.

TERMINATOR SALVATION's Sam Worthington is toplining as Perseus, who tries to save a princess and defeat the god of hell, Hades. Danish actor Mikkelsen (CASINO ROYALE) will play Draco, a fighter and leader of the Praetorian Guard who helps Perseus.

Star Headline News

MTV Games, Paramount and Rock Band go Where No Man Has Gone Before

MTV Games and Harmonix's ROCK BAND are joining forces with Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Ent. to celebrate the May 8 theatrical release of the film STAR TREK from director/producer J.J. Abrams. The first-of-its-kind collaboration will fuse together the massive cultural followings of both STAR TREK and the video game phenomenon ROCK BAND to engage fans with free music, an in-game battle of the bands, and futuristic avatar creation contest.

Headline News

eyeon to Introduce New Training Initiative at NAB

eyeon Software has announced its new SWAT certification program to ensure that new and established VFX artists receive the training and support they need to realize their full creative potential. With the new SoftWare Artist Training (SWAT) umbrella program, the company has expanded its international network of trainers, colleges, online resources, and in-house product support personnel to ensure that every eyeon artist is up-to-speed on the latest versions of Fusion, Generation, Rotation, and Vision. eyeon will launch the new program at NAB, April 20-23, 2009, in Las Vegas.

Dark Headline News

Capcom Signs Battlestar Composer to Create Score for Dark Void

Composer Bear McCreary, known best for his work on popular sci-fi TV series BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, has signed on to score Capcom's third-person action game, DARK VOID. He has gained international renown over the last few years for his amazing work on BATTLESTAR, and DARK VOID marks the first time McCreary will be creating the score for a videogame.

Digital Headline News

Sony Pens Digital Cinema Deal with Disney

Sony Electronics' Digital Cinema Solutions and Services group has entered into a non-exclusive digital cinema deployment agreement with Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International. The companies will work together to provide operational and financial resources to exhibitors that encourage them to feature Sony's 4K SXRD projection technology in both 2-D and 3-D digital cinema-enabled screens across North America and Europe.

Headline News

Rackable Systems Buys Silicon Graphics for $25M

THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that Silicon Graphics Inc., who once pulled in $4 billion in revenue a year, has been purchased for $25 million by Rackable Systems.

SGI, whose heyday was in 1997, produces computer graphics computers, chips and operating systems and were best known at the time for building the hardware that helped create JURASSIC PARK's vfx. Once thriving on selling computers based upon their own chips and operating systems, SGI was undercut by cheaper products from NVIDIA and Intel.

Technology Headline News

Sebastian Sylwan Weta Bound

Sebastian Sylwan has left Autodesk to join Weta Digital as head of R&D. Sylwan served as Autodesk Media & Ent.'s senior film industry manager since 2007, with particular emphasis in stereoscopic technology. In fact, he wrote the final "Digital Eye" column for VFXWORLD in February: "Stereoscopic 3-D and the Future of Visual Storytelling".

Version Headline News

Xara 3D6 Available Via Download or by Retail

Launched Wednesday is a new version of Xara3D6. Xara has launched a stripped down version -- download-only -- just the program itself and associated resources, such as sample images, textures and fonts. Users can now buy this version for only US$29 (+ VAT in EU).

The boxed retail version remains but the price has been adjusted to US$49 (+ VAT in EU) slightly lower than it was before. Both operate on Windows XP/Vista.

Headline News

Arnett, Shannon Join Jonah Hex

Will Arnett and Michael Shannon have joined the cast of Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures' JONAH HEX, based on the DC Comics character, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.

HEX will be directed by Jimmy Hayward, with production set to begin this month in Louisiana. The cast also includes Josh Brolin, John Malkovich and Megan Fox.

Arnett will play a Union soldier who enlists Hex and is then blindsided by the dirty fighting style of his enemies. Shannon will be Doc Cross Williams, an eccentric ringleader of a brutal gladiator circus.

Headline News

Uninvited's Emily Browning Gets Invite to Sucker Punch

Warner Bros. will bring on Emily Browning to lead Zack Snyder's fantasy drama SUCKER PUNCH, per VARIETY. Browning (THE UNINVITED), replaces Amanda Seyfried, who had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with HBO's BIG LOVE filming.

The all-female cast includes Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgins, Emma Stone and Even Rachel Wood. Snyder will direct and produce with wife and producing partner Deborah Snyder via their Cruel and Unusual Films banner. Wesley Coller will exec produce.

Series Headline News

Paramount Digital Partners With Gaumont to Produce New Interactive Thriller

Paramount Digital Ent. and European production and distribution company Gaumont will develop SECTION 8, an interactive web series exclusively distributed in the U.S. by MySpace.

Endemol will handle worldwide distribution, product integration and brand partnerships.

Headline News

Paramount Hires Writers for Star Trek Reboot Sequel

Paramount Pictures, gearing up for the May 8 release of the STAR TREK reboot, has hired writers for a sequel, likely coming in summer 2011, according to VARIETY.

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wrote the upcoming release, will be joined by LOST co-creator Damon Lindelof. J.J. Abrams, who both directed and produced the new chapter, is set to produce the sequel with Bad Robot partner Bryan Burk, but has not yet committed to direct.

Headline News

Lucy Lawless to Take on Starz's Spartacus

Starz Media's SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND will star Lucy Lawless, with Australian actor Andy Whitfield in the title role, per VARIETY.

The fantasy-action hourly series goes into production in April and will air on Starz in January 2010. It is a reunion for Lawless and her XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS creators Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi. XENA ran in syndication from 1995-2001.

Disney Headline News

Disney to Open Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast

Disney has purchased the rights to yet-unpublished book GRANDMA'S INTERGALACTIC BED & BREAKFAST by Clete Smith, reports VARIETY. Mandeville Films will adapt the property into a family-friendly feature, with studio-based David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman to produce.

Headline News

HP Unveils Z Workstation Series

HP has unveiled the HP Z Workstation series -- a reinvention of the product category from the core outward that offers customers unprecedented performance, value and serviceability in a sleek new design.

The HP Z800, HP Z600 and HP Z400 Workstations are the culmination of more than 20 HP design innovations -- including a self-checking power supply -- and take advantage of the new Intel Xeon processor.

Imax Headline News

Alice in Wonderland Goes Down IMAX 3-D Rabbit Hole

Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture' ALICE IN WONDERLAND, will be released to IMAX theatres simultaneously with the film's wide release on March 5, 2010. The special IMAX 3-D release will be digitally re-mastered. This is the third film confirmed out of the five-film agreement between IMAX and Disney, which was announced on November 19, 2008.

Headline News

DAZ 3D Sweetens its 3D Model Library with Release of the Girl 4

Get ready to meet the Girl of your dreams! Adding another addition to its 3D content library, DAZ 3D has unveils the newest version of its popular 3D figure, the Girl 4, complete with customizable body shaping, increased texture map resolution and greatly improved joint rigging. Created from DAZ 3D's fourth-generation Unimesh, the Girl 4 is fully compatible with all Victoria 4, Victoria 4 Elite and Aiko 4 head and body shapes, textures and poses, opening more options and new creative possibilities than ever before.

Color Headline News

Digital Film Tools Releases zMatte v3

Digital Film Tools announces zMatte v3.0, which adds four new plug-ins: Color Suppress, Frame Averager, Matte Wrap and Screen Smoother. In addition, there are many enhancements to the Keyer as well as the other plug-ins. zMatte also now supports Apple's fxPlug plug-in format and the Photoshop version sports an upgraded user interface with new garbage matting features.

Studios Headline News

AJA KONA 3 Provides Thunder for Norway's Storm Studios

AJA Video Systems' KONA 3 video capture and playback cards are an integral part of the post production workflow at Norwegian VFX and post facility Storm Studios. KONA 3 is AJA's top-of-the-line uncompressed capture card for SD, HD, Dual Link 4:4:4 HD and 2K formats for Apple Mac Pro systems.

Headline News

e-on software Starts Free Open Beta of Ozone 4.0 Plugin

e-on software announced the immediate availability of a free Open Beta of its upcoming Ozone 4.0 Atmospheric Plugin for 3ds Max, Cinema4D, LightWave, Maya and Softimage|XSI.

Ozone 4.0 implements the Spectral 2 cutting-edge technologies developed by e-on software for the simulation and rendering of atmospheric effects. Ozone 4.0 atmospheres provide an accurately simulated environment that affects all elements of the scenes, and behaves according to nature's rules.

Some of the new features of Ozone 4.0 include:

Headline News

yU+co. Creates Main Titles Sequence for Race To Witch Mountain

How do you distill the world's collective understanding and evidence of UFOs into three-and-a-half minutes? That was the challenge facing visual design and motion graphics studio yU+co., led by Creative Director Garson Yu, for the main title sequence to Disney's RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, opening in theatres on March 13.

'RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN represents the third time yU+co. worked with director Andy Fickman after THE GAME PLAN and SHE'S THE MAN. ''This project was especially challenging, but we're proud we could bring Andy's vision for the titles to life," Yu said.

Effects Headline News

Digital Domain Gives an All-CG Lincoln MKZ

LIGHT SPEED's original spot concept involved shooting a live action car and a lot of practical effects and then compositing the whole thing and enhancing it with a small number of 3D effects. So the scope of the original project was originally about 10% CG, but because of what DD was able to achieve in the digital realm, ended up being almost entirely CG and/or CG enhanced in the final execution.

Watch the spot at AWNtv.

Headline News

Water Goes Bananas at DMG and Fusion CI Studios

Fusion CI Studios and Department of Motion Graphics pooled talents recently to create this lively spot for New Zealand creative agency, Sugar and client, Fonterra. Fonterra's new "smart" water, Whole, leaps into the air then transforms itself into shape after shape -- first a brain, then a bridge, then bananas -- displaying a vigorous character and life of its own.

Headline News

BOXX Introduces New Workstation Featuring Intel Nehalem Xeon Processors

BOXX Technologies, an innovator in high-performance computing systems for visual effects, design professionals, and advanced visualization, has introduced the 3DBOXX 8500, a new Intel "Nehalem" Xeon Processor based workstation that surpasses the performance of previous BOXX desktop systems for all professional software applications.

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