Thanks to David Jahns, Nuke (Foundry) and Mocha (Imagineer)!

Over but not forgotten, I just wanted to take a quick second to thank our presenters from the April 17 meeting.  A great meeting and well deserving of a recap.

David Jahns gave us an insight into a typical day and project at Joint Editorial, which I still consider one of Portland’s best kept secrets.  As the Smoke Operator, he’s depended on heavily to bring VFXto the VFXless, and Smoke has a solid commercial toolset refined well over decade now.  For many of us, it was a rare look at a Flame/Smoke style workflow, as you don’t often see these high end tools being taught in schools or in use by “Joe Videos.”  For me, a former Flame artist, it was nice to get a check in and see that development has continued and that Autodesk has successfully ported the tools over to the Mac environment.  My favorite part was the time lapse of a day in which David recorded and did the finishing on an entire spot, and completed several challenging shots right before our eyes over the course of about 10 minutes.  Not often does someone volunteer the goods on that level and I think it speaks volumes to the community we’re building here in Portland.  Be sure to check out his follow up post about NAB (which we into a bit at the meeting and then David proceeded to drop the full monte on us – read the post!).  Big thanks to David for a great presentation and helping to define the spirit of VFX/PDX.

Deke Kincaid from the Foundry gave us the update on all things Nuke 8, specifically showing off the updated color tools and UI, camera tracking and environment tools, and then a special treat – a sneak peek at the forthcoming Nuke Studio product.  I and everyone in attendance was (of course) sworn to secrecy but it was very exciting to see.  And pairing it with David’s Smoke presentation made for interesting comparisons afterwards.

Another thank you to Mary Poplin with her tornado of a Mocha demo.  She too was fresh off of NAB and her demo was well honed, razor sharp.  Most of us are familiar with Mocha from the included versions that ship with After Effects and Silhouette, so it was valuable to get a look at the true power that you unlock when using Mocha Pro.  Mary had some great real-world examples and I can’t wait to get a copy in at my studio to start throwing shots at it.  One of those situations where we all kind of knew that stuff was in there but seeing it in action is believing.

A great meeting and we’re looking forward to more of the same this summer.  We have a joint effort with 3DPDX and the Foundry to bring Brad Peebler (Modo) in on Monday, June 2nd – save the date!  And there’s another major meeting shaping up for the end of summer that will be a big one, probably closer to end of August or into September.  Hope to announce that soon – until next time!