This advanced 2-hour workshop covers the Unreal Engine 5 lighting workflows that Naughty Dog Lighting Artist, Ted Mebratu, uses to achieve cinematic results. Unreal’s Lumen is a very powerful Global Illumination system. However, when comparing it to static/baked methods, it can take some of the artistic control that Lightmaps make available to lighting artists. In addition, due to performance constraints of current hardware, there’s a limitation to how many runtime light sources you can place within a given scene using Lumen. With Lightmaps, however, this budget is practically infinite. This workshop teaches both workflows to arm you with the skills that make the most sense for you. Starting with Lightmaps, the first portion of this video guide details the process of lighting an environment for two different scenarios — night and day — using baked/static Lightmaps (GPU Lightmass). Through these first chapters, Ted covers the different tricks and techniques he uses to craft baked direct and indirect lighting. He explains how to effectively use reflection probes to achieve believable results and walks through how to achieve realistic fog and atmospheric effects using static volumetric fog. The workshop then dives into the process of creating a full multi-camera cinematic using Unreal 5’s Sequencer tool. Demonstrating using an ornate cathedral in Unreal, Ted showcases different techniques for shot lighting a cinematic sequence utilizing Lumen’s real-time GI system. He reveals how to create a full master cinematic sequence from scratch, featuring his top techniques for arranging and editing cinematic shots. You’ll also discover Ted’s approach to achieving dramatic compositions. By completing this workshop, you should gain a solid insight into lighting in Unreal Engine 5 and understand how to create cinematics using UE5. There are many helpful takeaways from Ted’s workflow shared throughout that you can incorporate into your own projects.

Sharpen your scripting skills as we delve into modular rigging with Python in this 3-hour workshop created for riggers and aspiring coders. The objective is to create a one-click solution for rigging bipeds, with the potential for customization to suit other types of characters, pipelines, and project requirements. Nick Miller, Creature Supervisor at DNEG, introduces a comprehensive library of code and explores the moderate-to-complex components of Python, Object Oriented Programming, and rigging. Building your own modular rigging system gives you several advantages; not only does it save you significant time, but it also enhances your problem-solving skills and prepares you to contribute to a company's rigging toolset. Watch as Nick leverages Maya's standardized human IK skeleton as a template by using it as a foundation to build rigs. This technique helps you to incorporate motion-capture data to drive your rigs. To showcase the system, Nick utilizes a downloadable character from Mixamo and then applies his tools to generate a fully functional rig before applying motion capture as keyframes onto the rig's controls. Additionally, Nick instructs how to organize rigs in a game-engine-friendly manner, allowing for easy export of the skeleton and character mesh. Upon completing this workshop, subscribers will have learned essential rigging techniques, including building a modular rigging system with Python, the basics of Maya's human IK skeleton, how to apply motion-capture data, and how to export rigs for game engines. Project files provided with this workshop give students a reference or guideline to follow. The downloadable project files include Nick’s asset build folders for three characters, including models, guides, textures, scripts, weights, and controls, as well as his modular rigging package (nmrig and grig).

Adrian Vallecilla’s 5-hour workshop details a complete workflow for integrating hero assets into backplates with photorealistic results. Using a classic technique in visual effects production, Adrien reveals how to transform a 3D scan of a train into a production-ready asset using Maya, discussing the important hard-surface modeling theories while demonstrating the process. The texturing portion includes how to clean up textures from the 3D scan and project them back onto a clean 3D asset using Mari — a standard practice that ensures the CG asset is usable in VFX production. Back in Maya, the look-dev, lighting, and rendering is handled with V-Ray. Adrien discusses the importance of matching the lighting of the plate with the 3D asset being integrated for truly realistic results and demonstrates how to recreate the correct lighting scenario. Using Maya's render setup tools, Adrien shows how to export all the necessary lighting passes required for professional compositing in Nuke. As well as detailing the process, he also discusses what to look out for when creating realistic CG integrations using Nuke. Provided with this workshop is Adrien’s low-res model of the environment and camera (.mb file for Maya) used for the shot, which you can download and use with your own assets. An HDR image and backplate courtesy of HDRI Haven is also included from their free collection. Be sure to check out Adrien’s other workshops detailing Exterior Scene Development and Creating a Photoreal Interior.

This course is the final part in the Look Development with Maya, V-Ray and Nuke trilogy and covers the final compositing of the shot.

This course, taught by Amid Rajabi, is the second of a three part course covering integrating the car from VRY203 into a live action plate. The focus in this part is on rigging, animating, lighting, and rendering.

This course, taught by Amid Rajabi, covers integrating the car model and textures from VRY203 into a live action plate. This offering, the first of three parts, focuses on prepping the scene in Nuke by looking at color management, camera tracking, and generating geo with point clouds.

This in-depth course covers how to create photoreal textured 3D environments, props, and scenes using photography and two software packages. Agisoft Photoscan is 3D reconstruction software and Pixologic Zbrush is high end 3D sculpting software. By the end of this course, you'll be armed with the knowledge to recreate all kinds of different and challenging objects including rocks, trees, roots, and large ground surfaces as well as entire environments as photoreal photo-scanned assets.

Unreal Engine Bootcamp, Part 2 gives a broad and detailed introduction to using Unreal Engine to create cinematic photoreal scenes for cinematics. It is especially tailored for VFX artists wanting to take their first steps in Unreal Engine and apply their knowledge to an advanced realtime game engine. It is the followup to Unreal Engine Bootcamp, Part 2 which was previously released

This 200-level course is created to teach visual effects artists how to use components of Unreal Engine 5 to create photorealistic worlds for projects. Key theory behind how Unreal Engine fits into the VFX pipeline and which DCC application assets can be imported into Unreal Engine will be covered in detail. The classes will cover the creation of photorealistic DEM landscapes, foliage and tree creation and systems, hard surface models and surfacing, material editing in UE5, character authoring and import using MetaHuman Creator, Sky atmosphere and lighting system in Lumin, water and ocean plugin for UE5, megascans assets for closeup details and Nanite virtual geometry system, post process fx and cinematic camera settings. Liam is an Australian based Senior VFX artist, who has been in the 3D industry since 2003. He has worked on various projects over the past 18 years including most recently the photorealistic canyon environments for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney Plus, and the hollow earth environments for Godzilla vs Kong, as well as VFX work on other upcoming high profile feature films and episodic series.

This is the first of a two-part course, which teaches how to use Autodesk Maya and Unreal Engine 5 to create a photorealistic cinematic short of a Ford Mustang in an urban city environment. The course covers material authoring, look development, lighting, virtual cinematography, and high-quality render settings in Unreal Engine.

This course covers how to create a highly detailed photoreal real-time environment using World Creator, Quixel Bridge, and Unreal Engine 5.

Professor Michela Ledwidge has designed this course to teach you how to build on your traditional film/TV skills and apply them in the creation of a realtime short film. Using the Unreal Engine, Michela provides a detailed overview of concepts every artist should know about designing, building and re-purposing assets for realtime use, as well as setting up a pipeline for publishing desktop, mobile, and VR experience.

In this course, Hugo Léveillé shows various tips and tricks to build a VFX pipeline. You will see how to build various pipeline tools using a variety of software. In this first part, you will learn how to manage Python modules with the virtual environment and PIP. Next, you'll learn how build a database system from scratch so that you can save our project information inside it, which will be the foundation of what will be built in future courses.

In this advanced course, Victor Wolansky will share advanced techniques on how to use survey information for a variety of purposes. This includes how to match cameras to real world coordinates, cross link tracking points from multiple cameras for better precision, and using survey data from Survey Stations. This is information which is very precise, so much so that you can force SynthEyes to constrain to those points to even solve shots without any motion.

This course will be no exception to Victor Wolansky's other offerings, with wicked shots as long and as complicated as they can get. But it's not tricks without a reason, as he will examine many of the new improvements of Syntheyes 1212 (yes, 1212 is the version). The release creates significant changes in the workflow compared to previous versions, especially a good introduction to the new

This course, taught by Katie Morris, consists of seven classes with four diverse and complex shots that explore various manual and procedural painting techniques and workflows.

In our new course, taught by Katie Morris, you will learn the fundamentals of Silhouette Paint. The course begins with an introduction of the paint interface and an overview of the Paint Tools and Auto Paint. The subsequent five classes focus on two shots, one a facial dot marker removal shot and the other a wire removal and plate reconstruction shot.

In this course, you will learn everything from spline types to manual roto to fully automated workflows, showcasing Silhouette and its comprehensive roto module. In addition, the Mocha Pro plug-in will be incorporated into a class to demonstrate its beneficial tools available to artists.

Shotgun is the industry standard for production management, but unlocking its full potential requires a firm grasp of organization principles and best practices to keep things running smoothly. Taught by multiple producers, artists and TD's from Austin-based studio Mighty Coconut, this course covers how to make the most of Shotgun on everything from large animated series to smaller VFX productions.

This in-depth course, taught by Liam Whitehouse, covers how to create closeup photoreal 3D environments from start to finish. A key aim is to ensure that the end result holds up at resolutions up to 8K for next generation HDR VFX projects. The classes include training on how to photograph

This project-based RealFlow course is geared towards the technically inclined independent or resident studio artist. The course utilizes RealFlow's Hybrido simulation tools, as well as its secondary particle systems (white particles), to create a highly detailed stormy ocean plus an impact of a large whale into the stormy water surface.

This course is ideal for people new to color correction,  photographers, editors, DITs, DPs, VFX artists and directors. I always strive to show you why you do something not just how to do them. One of the fantastic benefits of this course is that it comes with almost 7GB of…

The second part of this two-part course, taught by Victor Perez, focuses on putting the theory discussed in the first part (NUK312) into practice. To that end, this courses uses our case studies with a practical approach, compositing the scenes from scratch to recreate the qualities of light, from internal to external setups, in different times of the day.

The goal of the visual effects compositor is photorealism, using the art of compositing layers of images to look coherent using the physics of light at the service of storytelling. The art of compositing consists of merging two or more images making them look like they have been shot at the same time with the same camera and lenses, under the same lighting conditions.

For this advanced course, profs Ludovic Iochem and Nick Marshall will be working through one of the main reveal shots in the short film The Last Chick, where our female lead finds herself in a deserted Mexico City. In our hero shot, she walks out onto her balcony overlooking the city and as the camera moves past her we see a city void of people. Professors Ludovic Iochem and Nick Marshall will share principles and techniques they use in their jobs as Digital Matte Painter and Environment Artists at Double Negative in London.

Photogrammetry without a 3D software? Yes! This course is designed for compositors that want to integrate objects generated in Metashape without the help of a 3D software. In this course, you will learn how to solve 3D objects in Metashape from scratch and then see various tricks on how to import them inside Nuke so that you can push your composites to the next level.

This course is all about exploring production-level shot lighting techniques to create beautiful, realistic and faithful lighting. There are some some fundamentals techniques that can help and instructor Philip Maddock demonstrates how to apply these techniques creatively, elevating your lighting and the quality of your rendered images.

While tracking and roto are not considered the most glamorous part of a compositor's life, they both are still vital to making your shot work. Mocha Pro has been the industry standard for planar tracking for quite a while now. This course aims to teach the foundations of planar tracking while at the same time providing members with production-level shots to learn and improve these skills.

Este curso es una clase creativa dedicada al arte de la corrección de color y no a aprender el programa. Aclarado eso, este curso incluye una clase extra de actualización a V16 para coincidir con su lanzamiento en 2019. Es perfecto para quienes ya son coloristas pero quieren mejorar aún…