Facilities Clients: Visual Effects Compositing Training

New Deal Studios is a full-service visual effects production facility that offers design and previz services, models and miniatures, stage and motion control, as well as 3D animation and compositing for major feature films. Their impressive list of credits include “Iron Man”, “Hancock”, “Tropic Thunder”, and many others. New Deal Studios decided to upgrade their compositing capabilities from Shake to Nuke to take advantage of Nuke’s advanced 3D compositing capabilities that integrate into the 3D production pipeline to lower production costs and increase quality. Steve was brought in to conduct the Nuke training for their 3D and 2D staff.

RTT (Real Time Technology) is a 3D visualization company with their home office in Munich and branch offices in Europe, Asia, and the US. They provide unique real-time 3D product visualization services for applications in the automotive, aviation, and consumer goods sector. The Pasadena office decided to upgrade their CGI production pipeline to include Nuke as their compositing program and asked Steve to come in to train their 3D and 2D staff on the Nuke workflow.

"Your training approach was spot-on. Assessing the group and dividing them into roughly equivalent capabilities is smart - the pre-NBC (Node Based Compositing) group and the post-NBC group.  Also, group discussions to answer questions (with demos on the system where applicable) was an excellent idea. The folks get specifically what they want out of the session. We loved it."

- Constantin Lorenz
Director of Production
RTT USA Inc.
Pasadena, CA

UPP Studios is the largest post-production studio in Prague with over 130 employees and is extremely well equipped with CGI, VFX compositing, Digital Intermediate, and telecine services. UPP is coming up strong in the industry and has even done VFX for American feature films such as “Alien vs. Predator”, “Flight 93”, and “The Illusionist”. They deliver visual effects for broadcast television commercials, TV series, and feature films. They provide sophisticated 3D animation, digital matte painting, and bluescreen compositing, and their highly experienced senior visual effects supervisors will mix in models and miniatures as well. Steve provided VFX compositing training to their complement of over 30 visual effects compositing artists who use Shake, Nuke, Adobe After Effects, Flame, and Inferno. He also consulted with them on their color pipeline as well as their production management structure.

Steve poses for Prague view	The Bishop’s residence	St. Vitus Cathedral
"Visiting Prague is like working in a museum. Everywhere you turn there is classical and gothic architecture dating back to the 14th century and King Charles IV. The citizens of Prague are extremely proud and aware of their history, but most of all they are wonderful people!" Play Steve's photo album "A Glimpse of Prague."

"Thanks a lot for your help with right way to make vfx - mainly log files compositing! I hope that we will see again as soon as possible in UPP in prague. You are very helpful!"

- Tom Kalhous
Business Partner
Universal Production Partners

Crest Animation is one of the largest computer animation studios in India with over 400 employees producing a wide variety of animation for episodic broadcast television and DVD distribution. For delivering large episodic projects Crest has developed a sophisticated high capacity production pipeline with Maya as the animation system and Shake as the compositing system. Steve made his forth trip to India to conduct two weeks of training for over 120 employees on both cgi compositing techniques and Shake operations. The training not only advanced the staff's productivity with Shake but also improved their compositing operations from both a technical and artistic point of view.

"Today I got a retake from the client saying the "3D Smoke FX" was having Glitch problem, then the 3D guy came running to me asking for my help to solve the problem, if it was before your training, I would have sent him back saying that it cant be solved in compositing. But now you have given us the solution, and I solved the problem completely, I would like to show it to you tomorrow. It looks awsome. Thanks a lot you boosted up our confidence."

- Nishok A
Digital Compositor
Crest Animation Studios Limited

Rainmaker is one of the largest and most prolific visual effects facilities in Canada with impressive film credits such as "The Da Vinci Code", "Night at the Museum", and "I Robot". Their visual effects services include greenscreen shots, cgi, set extension, match move, and character animation. Steve was invited up to Rainmaker to conduct Shake "booster" training to increase the productivity of the compositing staff. Beyond teaching Shake, Steve also taught advanced production methods as well as productivity techniques to increase both the artistic and technical proficiency of the compositors.

" It was an honour and a privilege to learn from the best. It has been a long time since I had such a positive and effective learning experience. Your teaching methods are spot-on, and your enthusiasm made it even more exciting. It did just uncover the tip of the iceberg on compositing, and made me realize how much more I have to learn. I am very much looking forward to having you back."

- Luke Vallee
VFX Artist
Rainmaker Entertainment

Tata Group is India's largest corporation employing over 300,000 people across a wide range of competencies from power generation and farming to air conditioners, trucks and software development. They are like General Motors and General Electric combined. Tata Elxsi is a Tata Group company and is their software and hardware development group, of which Visual Computing Labs is a division. They produce 3D animation and visual effects for film and television for both domestic and international markets.

April 24 - May 6, 2006

Visual Computing Labs (VCL) landed a contract to do a great number of wire removal and rotoscoping shots for Spiderman III. Steve's first trip to VCL was for two weeks to conduct in-depth training on both wire removal and rotoscoping techniques as well as to offer suggestions and recommendations on their overall visual effects production pipeline. The objective was to increase the throughput of the operation as well as reduce overall schedules and improve their ability to better forecast the time required for each shot. Mission accomplished, objectives met, and a good time was had by all.

December 4 - December 16, 2006

Steve's second trip to India was for two weeks to train VCL on the deep magic of compositing with log images. The primary topics were advanced bluescreen and greenscreen matte extraction, despill operations, as well as the proper procedures for compositing with log images. How to combine log images with cgi and digital matte paintings were also covered as well as the proper procedures for working with premultiplied and unpremultiplied cgi. Film print LUTs were installed so the artists can now properly view log images on their workstations.

Steve teaches a two week focused program on wire removal and rotoscoping for the Visual Computing Labs of Tata Elxsi: Mumbai, India

Axis Training and Vertigo Productions in Skopje, Macedonia (between Albania and Bulgaria) teamed up to invite Steve to Macedonia to conduct a three week workshop on feature film visual effects for twenty of their top students. Axis and Vertigo were in the final stages of merging their operations with CMG (Collaborative Media Group) and wanted to upgrade the skills of their members. Steve's trip to Macedonia was funded by USAID and the World Learning Center.

February 23rd - March 18th, 2006

Vertigo productions had shot several scenes on 35mm film then had the film scanned as Cineon log images. On the first visit to Macedonia, Steve conducted morning classes on the theory and practice of working with log images and how to combine them with linear cgi and digital matte paintings, plus a wide range of general digital effects techniques. In the afternoon a workshop was conducted where the classroom training was put into practice using the Cineon scans with cgi and matte paintings created by the workshop members.

June 10th - 24th, 2006

Steve returned to Macedonia to coach the team on finalizing five visual effects shots that were begun on the first visit. Multiple cgi elements were added to the shots as well as several bluescreen layers. Match move techniques and 2D motion tracking were successfully used to add matte paintings to the shots in spite of their energetic camera moves. Virtually all visual effects techniques were utilized across these five feature film class effects shots during the workshop which provided the eager students with rare feature film production experience.

Steve teaches a 3 week visual effects workshop for Axis Training & Vertigo Productions Technical University: Skopje, Macedonia

"Mr. Wright was hired to train and prepare the studio's staff through two three-week workshops, covering everything from basic VFX fundamentals to industry effects and practices and finally finishing with a large volume of advanced creative and technical topics. He was also hired as a consultant on the human resources, technical and business aspects of building and managing our digital VFX studio. We were extremely pleased with Mr. Wright's performance in accomplishing all these tasks. I can safely say that we could not have picked a better person for this job."

- Jovica Panovski
Executive Producer & Co-Founder
Vertigo Productions

When Greystone Films was experiencing their first digital intermediate (DI) they called Steve in to deliver a seminar on the process for the staff. Attending were producers, post production supervisors, cinematographers, and assistant directors. Using a power point presentation supplemented with handouts, Steve described the entire DI process from film scanning to final filmout. Special emphasis was placed on understanding the amazing capabilities found within the modern DI studio and how that impacts principal photography, digital effects, and editorial. There were also tips on the problems and traps the client needs to be aware of when selecting a DI facility and preparing a film for DI.

"Steve prepared a detailed presentation about Digital Intermediate and Digital Cinema for the "Fields of Freedom" team. His accurate, comprehensive and highly informative seminar helped all of our team to understand the intricate DI process. Steve is an extraordinary teacher! We look forward to a "level 2" seminar!"

  - Olga Arana
Post Production Supervisor
Greystone Films

For the last decade Kodak's film engineering department had been using Cineon, Kodak's proprietary feature film compositing software, to measure and test new film stocks in development. However, times have changed and it was time for Kodak to step up to more modern compositing software, namely Shake, by Apple. Steve was invited to Rochester, NY for a full week to teach Kodak's engineering department how to transition from Cineon to Shake, as Steve is also a senior digital effects artist and an expert on the Cineon system.

"It was a pleasure to have Steve spend time with our Research and Development Community! His ability to design and deliver a customized program is a testament to his experience in solving visual effects problems with artistry and science."

- Mark Henry
Director Entertainment Standards
Eastman Kodak Company

The Master's Compositing Class is an intensive two day course on matte extraction, despill operations, and compositing. It is held for members of Pixel Corps, a web based digital artist training organization based in San Francisco. Attendees from as far away as Brazil have come to learn from Steve Wright, the digital compositing guru. All of the training exercises are based on Steve's book "Digital Compositing for Film and Video". The two day intensive training is followed by two shooting days on a sound stage shooting the student's greenscreen plates with a Sony 950 cinema video camera recording HiDef 4:4:4 video direct to hard drives.

August 18-21, 2005
November 3-5, 2005
July 13-14, 2006

"I wanted to take a moment to thank you. I have read your book several times & was lucky enough to attend your Master's Compositing Class with the PXC last August. (Flew in from New Hampshire!!) Anyway, I got my first paying gig as a compositor last week. It all started with your class! Thanks for everything!"

- David Hackenburg
Freelance Compositor

Among Steve's many responsibilities as the 2D Technical Director for Kodak's Cinesite was also to train new compositors during his 8 year tenure with the company. To help the new hires Steve prepared tutorials on Cineon, Kodak's compositing program that was light years ahead of its time. The tutorials were html pages with embedded screen captures of the Cineon GUI and added graphics to assist new people to quickly learn the complexity of Cineon. He also coached the new hires and conducted group lectures for the entire staff on such topics as "Log versus Linear" and "Compositing CGI with Log Images".