NEW VFX TOOLS, AND HOW VFX PROS ARE USING THEM
Artists working with visual effects are often faced with the risk of needing to use new tools. Of course, this requires an effort of both time and resources. It will, however, reap benefits by providing a new generation of skills and methods for achieving VFX visuals at the artists’ fingertips.
We have listed a few technologies that are now available for artists to try, as well as talked with experts about how the various pieces of tech are now being used in development.
We dive into Autodesk’s latest Bifrost for certain shows. Weta Digital’s work with the Nuke volumetric plug-in Eddy is highlighted. The texturing tool Nexture from Cronobo is then highlighted by Milk VFX. Lastly, we shall talk about the incorporation of new tools and techniques in music videos.
Bifrost and more about it
Exotic Matter, the corporation behind the fluid modeling platform Naiad, was purchased by Autodesk many years ago. Exotic Matter creator Marcus Nordenstam, now a regional product manager at Autodesk, has been working on integrating the replacement to Naiad – Bifrost – into Maya, which was unveiled in mid-2019 as a new plug-in visual scripting language. VFX training in Kolkata does discuss this in their curriculum.
Bifrost’s goal is to integrate a computational content process into Maya, allowing users to perform sophisticated FX simulations. Todd Akita, FX Supervisor at The Mill, is one of those people. A series of advertisements from The Mill have used Bifrost for process simulation, and The Mill has been involved in checking the tool’s boundaries.
Nexture and Milk Details
Painting complex CG textures on animals and characters is a time-consuming process. Cronobo VFX’s Nexture is a useful technology that aims to help implement beautifully rendered texture maps in less time. To pass data from a reference pattern bank onto CG texture maps, it employs artificial neural networks in conjunction with a patented image synthesis technique. On the television series Good Omens, Milk VFX used Nexture for some of their creatures. Join a VFX institute in Kolkata to learn more about this.
A few improvements were thus needed, and incorporating further information for the close-up proved to be critical. Nexture was more suitable for this, and we were researching it at the time, so Satan was the ideal candidate!
Weta Digital Never Disappoints
3D modeling techniques are often used to create elements such as CG smoke, flames, and liquid phase fluids. However, VortechsFX Ltd’s Eddy, a Nuke plug-in, has modified some VFX studios’ strategies to that kind of work by allowing volumetric simulations to take place at the post processing software level. Eddy employs the GPU to have quick processing times on simulation components that remain in the compositing setting.
Weta Digital has used it extensively in films and television shows such as Avengers: Infinity War, Endgame, Alita: Battle Angel, and Game of Thrones. Weta Digital, in fact, relied on Eddy to insert plumes of smoke for London’s chimneys in Mortal Engines.
We hope this helped you understand the kind of work which goes into making successful visual effects!