With NAB in full swing, there's been a ton of great announcements and news coming out of Las Vegas so far. We've seen
Autodesk announce the new Media & Entertainment suites, including Maya 2016, 3ds Max 2016, and so on. We've seen
Blackmagic announce their new URSA Mini camera and, of course, the big announcement from The Foundry about
their free, non-commercial version of NUKE.
Speaking of which, we still have
free NUKE training for NAB, so grab a free copy of NUKE and our free training to get up and running.
As with the
day one and
day two, we'll be recapping some of the news and highlights from NAB and posting it here throughout the day.
Jump to the updates in this post using the links below.
Exclusive interview with Boris FX
We met up with Ross Shain, the Chief Marketing Officer for Boris FX and Imagineer Systems, to talk about some of their NAB announcements and the latest with their software.
Watch the interview over here.
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Why content creators should care about VR
With the fast-approaching release of VR headsets such as the
Oculus Rift and
SteamVR, it’s only a matter of time before many of us will be creating content for VR, if we’re not already. A panel at NAB this week offered some insights into why those of us who are creating content should care about VR right now.
For many, VR is a brand new medium. Although the content going into VR is often the same as what’s seen in other mediums, the technology itself allows the viewer to experience a whole new adventure.
Ted Schilowitz, from
20th Century Fox, pointed out that there are some predictions out there now estimating that by 2020, the VR business could be over $100 billion industry. That’s a huge potential in the near future, especially considering five years ago the industry was virtually non-existent (no pun intended).
Holding up an Oculus Rift to his ear as if it were a first generation cell phone from the 1990s, Schilowitz laughed about the fact that the technology we think is so great today will be seen as ancient technology only a few years from now. That’s how fast the VR industry is moving and advancing.
From a CG standpoint, Ikrima Elhassan, who is one of the founders of
Kite & Lightning, pointed out that VR is different from today’s VFX because you have to create content in the same way you would for games. With VR you don’t have control over where the end user is looking at any given time, so you have to take everything into account.
The biggest change in the approach from a more traditional VFX shot, which is where Elhassan’s background is rooted in, into VR is to be focusing on attention management. Where do you want your viewer to look and providing the subtle cues to help direct the viewer to that location without jumping around in 360° too quickly.
Schilowitz offered some resources for developers looking to either get into VR or learn more about creating a VR experience. For the Oculus Rift, there’s the
Oculus Share community where you can see other content creators sharing their work. Another website Schilowitz mentioned was
Road to VR or even the
Oculus Subreddit.
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Exclusive interview with Dissolve
On the show floor of NAB we got the chance to speak with Aaron Booth, Content Director and George Georgeadis, Product Manager at
Dissolve. They discussed how they ensure quality stock footage throughout the site, as well as their pricing model.
Watch the full interview here.
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New awards show: The Dronies
If you didn't think drones were everywhere already, content delivery platform
YuVue announced
The Dronies, the first annual awards show for videos shot exclusively with drone and sUAV technology. Learn more in
the official press release.
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Organizing clips with Final Cut Pro X
Steve Martin, who is the owner and Creative Director of Final Cut Pro training site,
Ripple Training, offered some tips and tricks for organizing your projects inside of Final Cut Pro X. The session covered numerous ways to speed up your workflow inside of FCP X, including using templates, rating, tagging and so on. Steve actually wrote a great article over at
FCP.co that covers many of the techniques he talked about during NAB.
Check out the article here.
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Bungie Artists Talk Destiny
Even though
Destiny has been out for several months there is still a significant amount of buzz around the game as new expansions and updates are released consistently. Creating a game of this magnitude requires hundreds of talented artists and years of production. During
NAB 2015 several
Bungie artists took the stage to talk about the art and creation of Destiny and some of what was involved with bringing such a massive undertaking to fruition.
Read the full article here.
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Talking NUKE Non-Commercial Announcement with The Foundry's Product Manager
We caught up with
The Foundry's Product Manager for
NUKE, Philippa Carroll. She filled us in on the new announcement around the free non-commercial version of NUKE as well some updates.
Watch the full interview and read the article here.
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Next Limit's Product Manager for RealFlow Talks About Upcoming Features
We got to meetup with our good friend Gustavo Sanchez, Product Manager for
RealFlow at
Next Limit Technologies to talk about upcoming features for RealFlow.
Check out the full interview here.
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