Reminder: The next meeting of the RIFC VFX Group will be

Wednesday, May 19th (the third Wednesday of the month)

7 - 9 pm

DownCity Pictures, 236 Westminster Street - the Alice Building - Studio 705, Providence.

Hope you can join us!

Here are notes from the last meeting:

Notes from VFX Group of April 21^st

Discussed Clash of the Titans vs. Avatar

Film shot for 3D vs “adjusted up” for 3D

Adjusted up has nowhere near the quality as films shot or, like “Up,” made for 3D

We briefly discussed Sony’s recent total commitment to 3D content and equipment, and two dedicated 3D cable channels planned for this year.

We discussed new features of CS5, including.

64-bit after effects

Cannon and Red footage native in premier

Rotoscoping will be “auto-rotoscoping” – won’t be a panacea, but promises to be cool

Foundry 3d Motion Tracker – have to buy it, but will interact with CS5.

Adobe raised price of upgrades, but reduced cost of new with ed discount – should be $550 or so. It’s expected Mid-May

Matt led a Maya demo of Volumetric Lighting in Mental Ray. I can’t begin to describe it, but you can see it yourself on his website at mattpaquin.com

Some other websites to check out, as shared by our attendees:

Rifcfilms.com

Thecirclefilm.com

Theyreusingtools.com

The989project.com

Watched FX trailer of “The Circle” and selected fight and FX scenes from Dan Byer’s five-episode science fiction series. Holocore, a plug in for After Effects, was used, along with a lot of after effects, a little Maya (including a helicopter), Shatter, particle systems and Psychore (might’ve spelled that wrong) for digital rain, which we analyzed in slo-mo.

We discussed the online learning opportunities at FXPHD – half the cost of a CE class

We watched Go Shusaki work Mel had done, some compositing for an oddball PowerRangers spoof, and we saw a commercial Anthony worked on for John Medeiros Jewelry AE Paralax was used to composite seasonal photos and photos of models. No actual footage was shot, but the spot achieved a very footage-like feel.

Finally we watched attendee Michael Wood fight Donnie Yen (check YouTube)