The crisis triggered at MOPA by the CIPEN / CCI's layoff of Julien Deparis has resulted in one of the best possible outcomes: the birth of a new school. Isabelle Aubin and Deparis, former directors of MOPA, have founded a new CG school in the nearby city of Avignon, together with teachers from the former MOPA pedagogic team. Known for the excellency of the educational programs they built at MOPA, the team is taking its expertise and years of experience to the new school, called ENSI: École des Nouvelles Images (School of New Images).

"When we saw that the school would become a shadow of what it was, we decided to create its successor", stated Julien Deparis, according to French newspaper La Provence. The ENSI team is also taking the chance to further improve the education they offer students by partnering with the University of Avignon, ArtFx school (known for their quality VFX program) and the department of Music & Musicology of the Lumière University Lyon 2. They are already receiving strong support from the industry, including Illumination Mac Guff, Mikros Image, Cube Creative, Sève Films (who used to distribute films produced by MOPA students), renowned artists, etc. (more...)

Pixar has made available a short titled "Dante’s Lunch - A Short Tail" for promoting its upcoming feature film "Coco". Watch the video on YouTube.

Following the transition of some corporations to a rental-only business model, a number of companies are rumored to be considering extending the model further to other property owned by their customers. A top executive from a company that develops graphic applications agreed to comment unofficially. "Yes, it's on the table, so to speak. We believe that some people are developing a passion for paying rent, and extending the model further would be the right thing for our customers. So we're studying ways that they can also pay us rent for other things they own - cars, apartments, mobile phones, you name it". (more...)

Unity Technologies has released the latest version of its multiplatform engine and development tools. New features include: Progressive Lightmapper preview, new Light Modes, Vulkan support, updated Particle System, improved graphics performance, new video player, support for Facebook Gameroom, Google Daydream, etc. Unity is available through rental and pay-to-own licensing (the later is an option for those renting Unity Pro for a minimum of 24 consecutive months). More on Unity Technologies' website.

Art of VFX has posted an interview with Rising Sun Pictures' VFX Supervisor Dennis Jones on his and Rising Sun Picture's work on the movie Logan. Read it at Art of VFX's website.

RealtimeUK, known for their commercials and cinematics, have posted a case study titled Lost, which they did for Amazon's real-time engine Lumberyard. Lumberyard is based on Crytek's popular Cryengine real-time engine. View the demo on RealtimeUK's website.

New features in Assimilate's color grading, compositing, conforming and finishing software include: expanded HDR support, new DIT report generator, Ambisonic audio support, VR 360 stitching (in Scratch VR), improved UI, etc. Scratch is priced at $650, Scratch VR Suite 8.6 at $1995. Read the release notes and find out more on Assimilate's website.

Rupert Sanders, the director behind the live action version of the 1995 anime hit Ghost in the Shell, has posted an even longer clip on Sony Playstation's blog than the one that was made available earlier this month. You can watch the 9 minute clip on Youtube.