2008 is almost over, and it was quite a year for Modus FX. Here are three of our major projects that were completed during the year:

Screamers 2

• To be released on DVD on Feburary 17, 2009.
• 122 VFX shots in this sci-fi horror movie, including CG characters, digital set extensions, digital FX and comp effects.

European TV movie (Title TBA)

• TV thriller for TF1 in France, to be aired in Q1 2009.
• 256 shots of CG characters, crowd simulations, sky replacements and other comp effects.

MrNobody

• Feature film to be released in 2009.
• 130 VFX shots in a modern fantasy tale. CG characters, complex digital environments, particle simulations and heavy comp work.

Modus FX delivered over 500 VFX shots these past few months. Not bad for a young company that had only a few folding chairs and a couple of laptops just this January…

So after a year of hard work, all our staff will take a well-deserved break for two weeks during the holidays.

Thanks to all that contributed, worked or offered support to Modus since its beginning. Merry Christmas, happy New Year and we’ll see you in 2009!

A very heavy announcement from Red today; so much information, hardware and new benchmarks that it’s hard to digest…
… Images in 6K, from a full 35mm sensor size at 100 fps.
… IMAX size sensors for 9K plates recording at 500 MB/sec.
… 28K images !
All this with modular camera gear.
More details at the Red website.

]]> http://www.marcbourbonnais.com/blog/2008/11/14/more-red-madness/feed/ http://www.marcbourbonnais.com/blog/2008/11/02/martin-l%e2%80%99heureux-joins-modus-fx/ http://www.marcbourbonnais.com/blog/2008/11/02/martin-l%e2%80%99heureux-joins-modus-fx/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:47:30 +0000 Marc Bourbonnais http://www.marcbourbonnais.com/blog/2008/11/02/martin-l%e2%80%99heureux-joins-modus-fx/  

Important development in our management team; Martin L’Heureux is now a full associate of Modus as Producer, Animation Director.

Martin L’Heureux began his award-winning 3D animation career 16 years ago, and has since accumulated over thirty credits in film, television and video games.  During his career, he extended his passion towards the art of film visual effects at Industrial Light and Magic as a Sequence Computer Animation Supervisor. Martin’s film credits include: Men in Black II, Star Wars I, Small Soldiers, and many others. He founded Imperia Media Entertainment, a CG animation company, where he acted as a producer and manager. His talents have been honoured with a Clio award, AICP/Moma Award and an Anicomm Award. In 2008 Martin was also nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award (VES Award) as an Animation Director for the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project for the IMAX documentary film, “Dinosaurs 3D: Giants of Patagonia”.

Martin’s wealth of knowledge and experience in the animation industry led to his fascination with human movement, and the creation of The Principles Of Motion animation reference DVD’s, which have become an industry standard for visual effect artists. His professional career outside of academia also includes giving seminars to many visual effect schools throughout Canada and the United States.

Modus welcomes Martin! His natural talent and experience in management, client relation and of course animation make him an important addition to our executive team as the company continues its rapid growth.

A few weeks ago I had the honor of being the first guest speaker at the new location of the NAD Center, one of Montreal’s original schools of digital arts and visual effects… for over 15 years! I still remember when I was myself a student at the NAD, in a tiny portion of the 2nd floor of the Softimage building on St-Laurent Street. Today just the administration offices use more space…

The NAD Center now offers a University program, and has considerably grown its training services and research in 3D animation, visual effects and digital arts. High-tech classes and labs stand alongside training studios and traditional art classes.

I was invited to give a speech on the industry, careering and my own experiences in the world of digital effects. The place looks empty, because the kids were busy learning!

Animation Mentor just published a very thorough report on the animation industry. The independent survey was taken by over 1,200 professional animators from around the world and sheds some light on job satisfaction, salaries and other industry trends. Well worth a look… right here.

A VFX sequence for one of our feature film projects involves adding a shoreline to a live, green screen interior shoot. In our business, some might be tempted to go the full CG ocean simulation and matte painting route, but we want to develop the resourceful aspects of our studio…
Actually, we were just waiting for a reasonable opportunity to just rent a Red One camera and check out the footage. So a few weeks ago, we found a rent outlet near the seashore to grab some beach and ocean material. The weather was perfect and we got great 4K footage for all of our shots.
The plates we needed were relatively simple, nothing fancy. Setting up the gear and using the camera itself was a breeze, we will certainly do something like this again if need be. We are still testing out the material, and except for some tracking issues probably due to the rolling shutter, the images are great to work with.
As for the results… Well, coming soon to a theatre near you in 2009…

The Modus crew: Martin Pelletier, Lead look developer and Luc Julien, Lead 2D Compositer. Yes, you can work shirtless at Modus FX.

As you can see in the pictures, it’s a very simple build, drywall, plywood floor and luan sheets for those nice rounded corners. Next in the process: lighting. We do not know if we want to build a permanent fixture or go for rentals when need be.

The Montreal Houdini User Group will have a showing tomorrow, Thursday September 18. It will be hosted by François Duchesneau, Houdini artist and technical animator at Modus. He will be doing a presentation on shattering and controlling objects with Houdini. Similar to “BlastCode” and comparable solutions, he will be using a texture to break up objects and then driving pieces with particle setups instead of straight simulations. The meeting will take place at Oxy-Jeunes at 2020 rue De la visitation in Montreal.
François has been driving the MHUG for a year now; you can check out his website for Houdini tutorials, demo files and of course news from the User Group.

The //ADAPT 2008 site is up!
The third edition of ADAPT will happen on September 22-26 at the Pepsi Forum in Montreal. A good change from the Hyatt; good hotel but not the best venue for a conference like this one.
Modus will be around, lots of stuff to check out, hope to see you around!

60min: “You’ve been in a lot of movies with special effects. Was that calculated?”

WS: “Absolutely! … [My manager and I] got the top ten movies of all time, and we realized 10 out of 10 were special effects movies, 9 out of 10 were special effects movies with creatures, and 8 out of 10 were special effects movies with creatures and a love story. So, Independence Day and Men in Black were really no brainers.”

Priceless.