Do you want to be in the know of the newest technology and techniques in the VFX industry? Do you want to meet with some of the brightest VFX talent in the UK and Europe?
Then CVMP is the perfect place for you to be on the 5th and 6th of December!

Our friends over at NVIDIA brought to our attention this “Making Of…” video including NVIDIA technology and Adobe CS6 Production Premium software. The video was created for Heavy Hand, a band formed of some NVIDIA employees.

Want to be a part of a European forum to discuss the latest research, advances and state-of-the-art industry practises?

Over the past six months we have been working with Michael Illingworth, founder of Vine Post Production to expand his studio. Michael has worked at The Mill and Cinesite and has been involved in post-production, compositing and visual effects supervision on some of the biggest film names in the industry including the Harry Potter franchise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down.

BOXX Technologies present the BOXX renderPRO, the first personal, dedicated, rendering solution for animation, VFX, engineering and architectural visualisation. The renderPRO is designed for desk-side rendering with easy configuring and a compact design for professional performance in minimal space.

Our friends at Boston are delighted to finally announce the launch of Supermicro’s highly anticipated Fat Twin server platforms.

Do you have a high-quality paper that demonstrates research or work related to media production? If the answer is yes, then now is the time to present it at CVMP 2012. The Best Student Paper prize is being sponsored by Google and the award is a very substantial £2,000.

Great news Softimage users out there… the line-up for the launch Softimage Creatives user group meeting has been released. And for those of you who are hoping to attend, I think you’ll agree this is a programme to get excited about.

Here’s the list of speakers and  topics for May 29^th 2012:

Pixomondo has expanded their impressive global network of VFX studios yet again. Recently they established their twelfth facility at the Celtic Media Centre in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to service local film and commercial productions as well as provide support to the other international studios. With over 150,000 square feet of design-built stage spaces, the Celtic Media Centre is perfect for meeting the demands of any production. This is the largest studio facility in Louisiana state, and with the generous tax incentives currently in place in that region, this looks to be a great move for the Oscar winning VFX company.

This is just a little reminder that the release of Adobe CS6 is just around the corner, but for those of you itching to upgrade, you should think about getting round to it soon. Adobe are currently running a pretty good upgrade promotion that will keep you up-to-date with the latest and greatest features in Adobe Creative Suites. When you buy a full CS5.5 license between now and May 6^th, you get an upgrade to CS6 absolutely free. Just to be clear, this will also save you money, as the CS6 price will undoubtedly be significantly higher. That’s a good incentive if ever I heard one, for upgrading now!

HP recently announced the new Gen 8 technology based on a number of new processors now hitting the market. These include a whole new range of workstations, ProLiant solutions, servers and blade centres.

This year Autodesk are putting you first, with the introduction of their new customer engagement initiative which they are calling "ACE". The program aims to offer the end user the best possible experience when purchasing Autodesk products.

The team at Avere have what looks like an impressive storage solution on their hands, and it’s great to see them taking the extra steps to make it the best it can be. Very recently they recorded a performance benchmark that could put the competition to shame - 1.56 Million IOPS with less than three standard equipment racks. It was 2.5 to be exact.

Last month we asked architects and designers to enter a competition to win an HP mobile workstation with V-Ray for 3ds Max software. The competition is now over, and we have to say we were really pleased with the response we had. It was great to see so many excited about the prospect of winning these two powerful technologies. A large number of you got all three answers correct but unfortunately there could be only one winner, and picked at random the winner is Simon Jennings of Jennings Designs, Nottinghamshire.

The Visual Effects Society (VES) are holding their 10^th annual awards ceremony very soon, set to define the greatest VFX moments from 2011. Earlier in the week VES released their nominations for this year’s awards, a list that recognises the outstanding VFX achievements across film, animation, television, commercials and games. Regularly referred to as the “Oscars” for the visual effects world, this is a highly prestigious event for VFX professionals internationally. Receiving an award from any of the 23 categories is a great honour.

For all of you architects and designers out there, we’ve just launched a competition which could see you win the latest kit on the market! In association with HP and Chaos Group we have a much coveted prize up for grabs for one lucky winner who can answer three questions correctly. The successful winner will take home an HP EliteBook laptop with software V-Ray for 3ds Max – two essential tools to compete in a fast paced, competitive industry.

On 16^th November 2011, Escape Studios and Autodesk joined forces to organise a Softimage user group meeting.  The event was held at the Autodesk London office on Broadwick Street, where product manager Jason Brynford ‘Chinny’ Jones presented updates as well as a preview on the Softimage roadmap. An over subscribed event, the UGM attracted an obvious attendance from users within Soho but also users from as far as Sweden, France, Bulgaria, and Germany.

A few months back FX Guide released an article on The Science of Fluid Sims. If you didn’t manage to catch it at the time, you should definitely check it out now. It is a great read for anyone looking to know a little more about the science and evolution of fluid simulation and what the future holds for its craft. The article should also set you up nicely to understand the importance of what the company Exotic Matter are working towards with their new product Naiad.

There is a new VFX facility in town to have recently opened their doors for business. They are a trio of young visual effects professionals who have proven talents across a range of high profile projects both in the UK and US. This company is the Electric Theatre Collective, and we would like to congratulate them on a very impressive start up. We believe these guys are destined for great things as they venture into the sometimes uncertain territory of running their own facility and build a strong foundation around the name Electric Theatre. We wish Giles Cheetham, James Sindle, Daniel Stanhope Marum and their team every success in the years to come.

A Softimage UGM in the UK has been a long time coming, something that Autodesk are very aware of. So, we've partnered up with Autodesk to make it happen. We are delighted to announce that Jason “Chinny” Brynford-Jones, Softimage product manager and demonstration guru, is making the trip to London to chair this meeting. It certainly wouldn’t be the same without him. A blast from the past for some of you, “Chinny” has been with the Softimage family for 15 years. He started out as a demonstrator in London and has since gained a reputation as being the cheerful face of Autodesk Softimage.  He has been working in Product Management for the last 8 years and is now a Technical Product Manager at Autodesk in Montreal.

Last week, Chaos Group announced that their V-Ray for Softimage is now ready for public Beta testing. This is the latest rendering solution by Chaos Group, due to release towards the end of the year.

V-Ray 2.0 for Maya is now shipping. And, just so you know, it now comes with interactive rendering on GPU and CPU.