Camera Projection

PLTV 006 is a simple screencast of the camera projection setup I used for Fender Bender. Although camera projection is well covered in AE7 Studio Techniques, I don't think many people would consider it capable of creating as complex a form as an aircraft carrier. The lesson is that a good image (mine, shown above, was a 3008x2000 pixel RAW file shot with a Nikon D70s) projected on very simple shapes can be convincing for small moves.

Going HD Part 2

Dave Basulto of Filmmaking Central is everywhere! The second installment of his Going HD article for Digital Producer is online, and he very kindly mentions The Guide.

What Should The Foundry Do?

Speculation is easy, opinions are interesting. Some thoughts on what The Foundry should do with Nuke.

The facelift: Redesign the UI. Nuke feels cramped on one display. Lose the floating window model and adopt panes like Shake and Fusion have. Steal a color palette from a website you like.

The if-you-can't-beat-'em: Provide an option to view nodes' output without manually linking them to a viewer node.

The edumacation: Publish some video tutorials and release demos for all platforms.

The big, wide world: Outside the sanctum sanctorum of DD, little things like the ability to use Quicktime movies matter a lot.

The no-brainer: Integrate Furnace technology like crazy. The not-so-obvious adjunct: Don't raise the price in the process.

The clincher: Lower the price (even just a little). You are still competing against Shake, and what you need most is to convert users who have already made a financial investment in other solutions.

The clincher part two: Continue to support Windows, Linux, and OS X. Nobody's gotten anywhere by only living on one of the three, and nobody else is on all three.

The hard part: All the cool kids have particles.

Foundry Buys Nuke

The Foundry has acquired Nuke.

Update: The fxguide article now features an interview with The Foundry's Bill Collis.

Nuke is impressive to say the least, but it's a bit pasty from being behind closed doors for so long. Maybe a handsome Brit to escort it to its coming out party is just what it needs?

The world of compositing software is confusedly annoying right now. Shake has voluntarily succeeded the throne, only to watch Fusion stumble and fall on its face in an attempt to take the seat. After Effects, while still the best place to be creative with images, added 32-bit support to an aging architecture, effectively putting gold rims on the hoopty. Toxik offers you the option to composite using Russian politics.

Meanwhile, Nuke is production-proven, has great kung-fu under the hood, and an "interface" that makes Kodak's Cineon look luxurious. With a fresh take on how it might be bundled, dressed-up, and marketed, Nuke might just pull out ahead in the race to suck the least in the world of desktop compositing.

Read the story at fxguide.