Category: Visual Effects

THE POLAR EXPRESS: AN IMAX 3-D EXPERIENCE, now in its second holiday season, has reached another box office milestone, surpassing $50 million at the box office since it premiered last November. The digitally re-mastered holiday classic was re-released Nov. 23 in IMAX theaters, simultaneous with its DVD launch, and has continuously been among the top 20-grossing films in North America. In its third weekend, from Dec. 9-11, the film registered an impressive 12th-place ranking on the charts, grossing $931,603 on just 66 screens.

Massive Software continued pioneering use of the company's AI-driven 3D animation system by Weta Digital for more than 600 visual effects shots on KING KONG. The Massive work on the film, which follows Weta's industry-leading innovation with Massive on such movies as THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and I, ROBOT, creates a living, breathing backdrop of activity on Manhattan and Skull Island.

Color grading for Universal Pictures' KING KONG was realized using media and entertainment technology from Autodesk Inc. Visual effects facility Weta Digital relied upon Autodesk's Discreet Lustre system to digitally color grade the entire film.

For those who have been waiting for the recut SIN CITY on DVD, the wait is over. SIN CITY: RECUT, EXTENDED, UNRATED (Buena Vista Home Ent., $39.99) bows on DVD Dec. 13, 2005. The new set by director Frank Rodriguez contains the theatrical cut on disc one (with vfx by Troublemaker Digital Studios, CafeFX, Hybride Technologies and The Orphanage) and also reassembles the movie on disc two, reinserting a few bits of business but more crucially allowing you to view each chapter separately. Thus, the chapters have been extended to more closely resemble the experience of Frank Millers stories.

Rhythm & Hues chose BlueArc's Titan Storage System as the storage foundation for the company's visual effects work on THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE.

For the film, Rhythm & Hues provided 400 shots, using a production pipeline that included motion capture, modeling, rigging, animating, technical animation/fur, lighting, rendering and compositing.

The government of the U.K. announced a new tax credit system this week designed to support the British film industry, which was applauded by the UK Film Council. In the Pre-Budget report, the Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed the new rate of tax relief for low budget films (films budgeted up to £20 million) would be a net 20%. For big budget films (£20 million and above), the rate will be a net 16%. Both rates apply to the U.K. spend of a films budget, capped at 80%.

3D software developer MAXON has launched the first completely integrated professional CINEMA 4D module for the creation of hair, fur and feathers. Known simply as HAIR," this new module lets users quickly and easily add realistic-looking hair to objects. The hair can be styled using HAIR's extensive tool palette, and a custom 3D shader gives artists complete control over the appearance of the hair. HAIR is not only easy to use, it's very fast, offers excellent rendering quality, and requires very little memory. An average configuration can easily render millions of hairs.

MTV Films has acquired the feature film rights to MARC ECKO'S GETTING UP: CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE, the highly anticipated videogame from Atari and Marc Ecko Enterprises. The videogame is scheduled for a February 2006 release for the PlayStation2 computer entertainment system, for the Xbox videogame and entertainment system from Microsoft and for Windows.