Evotis is the first sub-pixel sample compositing system. Developed by Go Ghost, it enables control in a VFX pipeline that was previously impossible or impractical. Currently, processors spend a ton of time calculating renders of rays & samples, but the result is a filtered pixel image. What if you could make use of these rays instead of discarding them every time you render? The manipulation of samples rather than pixels allows for an entirely object-aware pipeline from start to finish, providing accurate post-render mattes, higher quality image resizing, render accurate relighting and more. The software's lossless & GPU streamable reduction methods ensure files are much smaller than deep compositing images, making the format usable for more than just a few select shots. (more...)

Paris-based Gobelins, one of the best animation schools in the world, is organizing for the tenth time an International Summer School from July 4-15 to enable students and professionals from around the world to gain a better understanding of character animation techniques. The program offers master classes and workshops, which are taught in English. More on Gobelins' website.

Krita's Kickstarter campaign to support the development of quality text and vector tools has been funded. The amount raised will allow the developers to also implement Python scripting and SVG import/export, according to preliminary results from contributors' votes. More on Krita's website.

Folks VFX has posted their latest demo reel featuring their television and feature film work. Watch it on Vimeo.

Method Studios Australia has posted a VFX breakdown of the commercial work they completed for Panadol pain reliever. Watch it on Vimeo.

Dance and dynamics meet in this AICP Sponsor reel created by Method Studios. The AICP awards celebrate global creativity in commercial production and this is reflected in a reel that portrays the AICP sponsors as dancers using a wide range of techniques including motion capture, particles, procedural animation and dynamic simulations. Watch it on Vimeo.

Lumière is a Blender add-on by Cédric Brandin for speeding up the creation of lighting setups. It allows to position and adjust lights with the mouse directly on your model, as well as tweak the energy and scale interactively. You can use Blender lamps, panel lights, HDRIs and background skies. You can also add gradient textures to mimic a professional light panel. Watch a video on YouTube and find out more on GitHub.

80 Level has interviewed Clinton Crumpler, Senior Environment Artist at The Coalition who are currently nearing completion of Gears of War 4. In the detailed interview he goes in depth on the King Wash Laundromat scene, a personal project with a hyper-real style. He discusses pre-production, look development, gathering references, project management, material creation including using Quixel and production in UE4. Read it in full on 80 Level.