Windmill Lane: NukeX

spherevfx is pleased to have trained artists from Windmill Lane Pictures, Irelands largest and longest established integrated film and television post production company.

The course covered all aspects of NukeX including its unique multi layer/channel workflow, keying, masks, tracking, colour correction, 3D, camera matchmoving, lens distortion, gizmo creation and much more.

For more information about Windmill Lane, click here...

NukeX Introduction Course for Skillset

spherevfx is delighted to have run a Nuke Introduction course for Skillset Academy Plus.

The course was is designed for those artist would had no previous Nuke experience.

Intermedia and Advances courses to follow soon. See the Skillset Academy Plus website for more details.

Flame to NukeX Course

spherevfx is delighted to have trained a senior Autodesk Flame artist in NukeX.

Eduardo “Alvin” Cruz has worked at some of the top digital production studio in the UK, USA and Spain including: Golden Square (Soho), Pure (New York), MacGuff (Los Angeles) and Serena Digital (Madrid).

The week long course covered many aspects of NukeX and focused on the different tools and techniques found between Flame and Nuke.

For more information on Eduardo, click here...

New Stereoscopic Course

spherevfx is pleased to announce our new 'Introduction to Stereoscopic Post Production' course.

The course looks to introduce existing artists working in 3D and Compositing into the world of stereo and covers everything from concepts & theory to hands-on exercises.

The 3D software being taught is Autodesk's Maya but with the Compositing side of the course you can choose either The Foundry's Nuke or eyeon's Fusion. A fourth section covers the use of The Foundry's Ocula.

For prices and full course information, click here...

A Month of Maya and Nuke Training

Artists from Lumiere Services (Cyprus) have attended a months training at spherevfx covering both Maya 2011 and NukeX 6.0. The specialist course cover many aspects of both programs including:

• Maya - Modeling, Animation, Rigging, Dynamics, nParticles, nCloth, Shaders, Lights, Cameras, Render Passes, and mental ray.
• Nuke - Multipass compositing, Layers and Channels, Colour Correction, Roto and Paint, Tracking, Keying, Time Manipulation, Matchmoving and 3D.

Along with software skills we also covered:

• Visual Effects Workflows
• The State of the Industry
• File Formats & Colour Depth
• and best Industry Practices

Summer 2010 Wall Paper Released

New spherevfx wall paper has been released with images from Toy Story 3, Predators, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Inception, Piranha 3D, The Last Airbender, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Knight and Day, Shrek 4: Forever After, Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore, The A-Team, and Sea Rex 3D.

To download click here...

New Vue xStream Course

spherevfx is delighted to announce our new Vue 8.5 xStream course.

Vue 8 is the most efficient and advanced solution for creating, animating and rendering natural 3D environments. It offers a high-end 3D scenery solution for SFX studios, animators, illustrators, architects, matte painters and CG professionals. It is strongly focused on power, productivity and inter-operability with existing toolkits. Vue 8 naturally integrates and extends all major 3D applications to provide a complete, professional natural 3D studio.

Specifically designed for professionals, it combines a multitude of cutting-edge features that easily integrate with your workflow.

With its intuitive, production-oriented layout, you will quickly enhance your production with rich EcoSystem of wind-swept trees and plants, Spectral atmospheres and detailed terrains in fully animated scenes.

Vue has been used on many feature films including: Prince of Persia, G.I. Joe, The Wolfman, 2012, Pirate of the Caribbean, Terminator Salvation, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

NukeX and Maya 2011 at the Film School

spherevfx is pleased to have taught students both The Foundry's NukeX and Autodesk's Maya 2011 at the International FIlm School Wales.

The three course covered Lighting, Rendering and Animating Techniques in Maya. Basic Nuke compositing tricks where also taught including Layers and Channels, Colour Correction, Keying, Tracking and basic 3D.

Matt Leonard Teaches NukeX in Norway

Matt Leonard (Head of Training for spherevfx) is delighted to have attended this years Digital Storytelling conference in Oslo, Norway. Following the conference Leonard had the pleasure of teaching NukeX to artist from across Scandinavia during two days of workshops.

One unexpected privilege was Matt's opportunity to spend time with Robert Stromberg who has just won the Academy Award for Art Direction for Avatar. He also had the opportunity to meet up with Ben and Vikki from The Foundry, Theo Groeneboom (Lead Compositor on Avatar for Framestore) and Colin Doncaster (Weta Digital, Avatar / The Lovely Bones).

Maya Course Updated for 2011 Release

spherevfx is pleased to announce we're updated out Maya course to cover the updates found in the newly released 2011 version.

For more information on our Maya 2011 courses, click here...

fxphd and 'MYA 102: Introduction to Maya 2011'

Matt Leonard (Head of Training) is extremely pleased to be working again with Mike, John and all the team at fxphd. This term Matt is running a brand new Maya Introduction course and is aimed at those who have little or no experience in 3D, or post-grads who know another system, such 3DS Max or Softimage but want to expand their software skills. The course is designed to cover all the main areas of Maya's vast toolset including Modeling, Animation, Rigging, Muscles, nParticles, Dynamics, nCloth, Hair, Fur, Fluids, Shaders, UV’s, Lighting, Cameras and Rendering.

This course is entirely project focused and throughout the term we’ll be working on a single project. The shot will be created with a final Stereoscopic output in mind and will utilize all areas of Maya mentioned above. An extra bonus class has also been added on to complete the project in Nuke.

Nuke Course at SMU

spherevfx is pleased to have trained students and staff members for five days in Nuke.

The beginners course covered the basics of Nuke's multipass workflow, colour correction, tracking, keying and then progressed onto more advanced topics such as pan and tile setup and cleanup through use of projection techniques.

Nuke for VFX Supervisor/Senior Flame Artist

spherevfx is delighted to have trained VFX Supervisor and Senior Flame Artist Toby Brockhurst. The custom course covered many aspects of Nuke including 3D, Stereoscopic compositing, Keying, Tracking, Matchmoving and Nukes unique Layers/Channels system.

Brockhurst has worked at some of the top VFX companies around the world including Framestore, Glassworks, R!ot, The Mill and MPC. Along with countless Commercials Brockhurst has worked on feature films such as Pearl Harbor, The Devils Advocate, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Moulin Rouge!

Nuke Course for the French and English

spherevfx is extremely pleased to have taught Nuke to artists from both France and England.

The three day course covered many aspects of Nuke including it's Multipass Workflow, Stereoscopic Compositing, 3D, Keying, Tracking, Roto and Paint, Camera Tracking, Lens Distortion and more. We also briefly looked a custom shader creation in Maya.

Custom Nuke London Course

spherevfx is delighted to a have run a custom Nuke 6.0 course of a visual effects artist based in London.

The coursed covered Nuke's Multipass Workflow, 3D, Stereoscopic, Keying, Tracking, Roto and Paint, Camera Tracking and more.

Updated Nuke Course

spherevfx is pleased to announce the update of our Nuke courses to cover the new features found in version 6.0 of both Nuke and NukeX.

Some of the new features include:

• RotoPaint
• Keylight
• LensDistortion
  • Image Analysis
  • Grid Analysis
  • Line Analysis
• CameraTracker
• FurnanceCore

fxphd Courses in Maya and Fusion

Matt Leonard (Head of Training) is delighted that fxphd is re-running a number of his classes including:

• FUS202 - Intermediate Fusion 6
• MYA101 - Introduction to Maya
• MYA211 - Maya Rendering and Lighting

Matt has been working with fxphd for nearly 3 years and we can't recommend their excellent online training enough. For more information and to sign up for this term visit fxphd.com

Please also note their sister site fxguide.com, the definitive place for visual effects news, podcasts, videos and more.

Updated Generation Course

spherevfx is pleased to announce the update of our eyeon Generation course to cover the new features found in version 2, including:

• Red and EXR support
• Stereo playback
• Dissolves and improved editing controls
• 3D LUT
• Display Color Controls
• Python scripting support
• XML conversion of scratch style projects
• New interface features and refinements
• Multi playback layout