KEYNOTES
Alien Invades Montreal!!
By: Todd Isroelit – Fox, Ferran Domenech – MPC, Christian Kaestner – Framestore and Rudy Grossman – Atomic Fiction
The VFX Sups from MPC Montreal /Ferran Domenech, Framestore Montreal /Christian Kaestner and Atomic Fiction Rudy Grossman will discuss the early creative briefs from the filmmakers, research and look development into the creation of the final complex and artistic shots for the film’s director – Ridley Scott.
Making a Modern Studio Great
By: Kevin Baillie – Atomic Fiction / Conductor Technologies
The pace of evolution in the entertainment industry is rapidly accelerating. Increasing schedule, budget, and creative demands are keeping all of us in the VFX & Animation field on our toes. As a result, the status quo is no longer valid; it’s more important than ever for artists and studio managers alike to think about how to make studios better. Atomic Fiction’s co-founder Kevin Baillie will share his thoughts on what every modern studio should be keeping their eyes on today, if they intend to succeed tomorrow. From technology-centric solutions like cloud rendering, to effective training programs, to studio location and culture, Baillie will paint a picture of his model for tomorrow’s successful VFX companies.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
By: Joseph Kasparian – Hybride, Quentin Marmier – ILM, Jean-Sébastien Guillemette, Olivier Martin, Alexandre Ménard – Rodeo FX
“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” is the visually spectacular new adventure film from Luc Besson, the legendary director of “The Fifth Element”, and is based on the ground-breaking comic book series Valérian et Laureline. This session zooms in on the artistry and technologies deployed to create this fabulous universe from three of the key visual effects studios: Industrial Light & Magic, Rodeo FX and Hybride.
Animation Track
Ballerina, the Creative Process
By: Laurence Vacher, Benoit Blouin and Ted Ty – L’Atelier Animation
This conference will present the creative approach of l’Atelier Animation in the production of the feature film “Ballerina”.
From Big Picture to Small Keys
By: Guillaume Charrin – Ludia
We will discover the creation of an animation direction under many constraints such as creating 75 characters in 6 months while keeping a constant level of quality. We will see how to structure our animations both technically and artistically.
Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
By: Jordan Beck – Fun Academy Motion Pictures Inc., Emmanuel Laurent – Mikros Animation Canada, Marc André Baron – Mikros Animation Canada, Philippe Zerounian – Mikros Animation Canada
The conference will focus on 3 key aspects of the production and distribution chain of an independent animation feature: – Creative challenges in the animation work: on top of Stubby the dog, realistic characters evolving in a dramatic and historical context -Production solutions set by the management team with the care of putting the artist at the heart of the collaborative process -Strategies for an innovative distribution: use of the social networks, identification of the main groups driving the topics (war veterans, shelters, 100th anniversary of the end of WWI…)
The Goal and the Obstacle: How the Human Struggle Resonates in Animation.
By: Chris Kirshbaum – Cinesite
This will be a half-theory, half workflow demonstration addressing the problems characters face in dramatic situations. It will delve into internal and external challenges both characters (and animators!) face, and how to capture that struggle in your animation. It is meant to be a lecture, but I can make it a masterclass if you need.
VFX Track
MASTER CLASS
Animal and Human Anatomy for VFX Artists and Animators
By: Stuart Sumida – California State University San Bernardino
September 7th, from 9h30 to 17h30
Attendees will be immersed in the biological and anatomical information that will help to develop thoughtfully constructed characters, be they animal, human, or mythical creature. Key rules governing animal construction and locomotion will be followed by those features that are critical to understanding the similarities and differences between human females, males, and children. The session will then progress into the utility of these strategies for application to stylized or unfamiliar characters and creatures.
Beauty and the Beast: The Magic of the Household Staff
By: Adrien Saint-Girons – Framestore
Learn about Framestore’s character creation on Beauty & The Beast and how the team brought household objects to life convincingly with photo-real look development.
Cinesite’s Visual Effects for Starz Modern Classic, “American Gods”
By: Aymeric Perceval – Cinesite
When series creator Bryan Fuller approached Cinesite about American Gods, he described the series as, “a cinematically agressive show with tonal wonkiness.” This perfectly summarises the work Cinesite subsequently created, ranging across 5 of the 8 episodes. From other-worldly environments to weather, particle FX, the Afterlife and epic storms which rumble ominously throughout the series, Cinesite VFX supervisor Aymeric Perceval will describe Cinesite’s challenging work, illustrated with detailed breakdowns.
Creating Arrival’s Alien
By: Philippe Théroux – Hybride
Philippe Théroux and Nicolas Noël worked as VFX Supervisor at Hybride on ARRIVAL from spring 2015 to 2016 for a total of 14 months. They oversaw the pipeline to create numerous shots with CG animated creatures evolving in CG mist. They were also in charge of bringing the animated logograms to life, the language used by the aliens to communicate with the humans.
Explosive Races and Car Chases | PIXOMONDO on The Fate of The Furious
By: Mahmoud Rahnama – Pixomondo
Mahmoud Rahnama talks about PIXOMONDO’s involvement in the latest Fast and Furious movie and how they tackled massive water simulations, crowd sims, full CG aerials and more.
Enabling Storytelling with Modern Tools
By: Glen Derry – Fox VFX Lab
Enabling storytelling with modern tools. How to help Directors and Cinematographers do their best work on a VFX driven project. Technology, Techniques, and Tools.
Gender Equality – Women in VFX
By: Natasia Schumacher (Moderator) – Atomic Fiction, Zoe Cranley – Double Negative, Gaelle Bossis – MPC, Evelyne Leblond – Rodeo FX, Lucy Killick – Framestore
There is a visible gender gap in the visual effects industry, with studies showing just 17.5% of visual effects roles occupied by women. While many studios are working hard to bridge this disparity in female representation, there are still hard discussions and work to be done. The panel discussion is to shine a light on this topic and hear what women in prominent roles in the industry have to say.
Innovation in VFX
By: Laurent Taillefer and Wayne Brinton– Atomic Fiction
In recent years we have seen an explosion with some of the world’s largest VFX house, spreading across the globe, in an effort to keep up with the Hollywood’s VFX demands. In the midst of this, companies such as Atomic Fiction have been working hard to define the role of medium sized facilities, and how they can keep up with these larger facilities. Laurent Taillefer, head of 3d for the Montreal office of Atomic Fiction, and Wayne Brinton, VFX Supervisor with Atomic Fiction, will lead us through the studio’s work on recent films such as: Transformers 5, Star Trek, Deadpool, Allied and Ghost In The Shell, to illustrate various aspects of the innovations, concepts and methods medium sized facilities are using to stay competitive. From large-scale environment building to cloud rendering, resource training, photoreal animation tools, and adoption of open studio standards, they will take you on a tour of modern post-production forward thinking!
PANEL BY QFTC: In-depth discussion about the visual effects industry – Best practices, dividing the work on a film and/or TV show among facilities
By: Benoît Touchette (Moderator) – MELS, William W. Wilson III, Gretchen Libby – Global Studio, Randall Starr – Legendary Pictures, Nancy St. John.
Panellists will share their advice on how to optimize the quality of production by developing a collaborative spirit between different teams. What are the best practices to adopt and what are the obstacles to overcome when making visual effects for an American blockbuster?
Managing the Hologram of Ghost in the Shell
By: Damien Fagnou – MPC
The holograms in Ghost in the Shell define a unique aesthetic to the film and the sci-fi genre itself. Getting these holograms into shots on a tight schedule was no small feat. It required a huge amount of work, coordination, multi-studio collaboration, and software tooling.
Pirates of the Caribbean
By: Rudy Grossman – Atomic Fiction
Atomic Fiction would like to present our work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. During this presentation, Atomic Fiction will discuss the evolution, from concept to film, of St. Martins a lush and vibrant tropical 18th century Caribbean town. The St. Martin’s sequences include a comedic bank heist in which an entire bank is dragged throughout the town, a death-defying sequence where Captain Jack Sparrow narrowly escapes the razor edge of a guillotine blade, and a ramshackled shipyard amidst a jungle coastline.
The Blood Brothers
By: Jean-François Ferland – ALCHEMY 24, Maxime Lapointe – ALCHEMY 24, Carlo Harrietha – Les Blood Brothers and Jean-Mathieu Bérubé – Les Blood Brothers.
The marriage of special effects and visual effects is of paramount importance in a film. On the other hand, with the constraints of budgets and time, the organization between the two trades is often neglected, resulting in higher costs and headaches in post-production. Alchemy 24 and the Blood Brothers will show you some of the projects they’ve been working on together and show you tricks to save time on the set.
The Future of VFX
By: Wayne Brinton (Moderator) – Atomic Fiction, Marc Sadeghi – Atomic Fiction, Glenn Derry – Fox VFX Lab, Jordan Soles – Rodeo FX, Kevin Baillie – Atomic Fiction / Conductor Technologies
Film-making is a collaborative form of story telling, and this is especially true today. With the exponential growth of computer technology, film-makers are constantly striving to find the best use of technology from camera advances to figuring out how to improve multi-site communication to transferring mass amounts of data around the world. This panel will draw from decades of experience in all fields of production and post production to discuss the road our industry has travelled in the past 20 years, and where we see it in the next 20 years. The panel will take on the daunting task of trying to identify trends in the VFX industry and where they will lead us in the future.
The Landscape of VFX in the Philippines
By: Dave Yu – Mothership VFX
The landscape of VFX projects in the Philippines is very different from other countries. I will discuss challenges in our projects and present case studies.
The Mummy: Lighting in FX Driven Show
By: Albert Szostkiewicz – Double Negative
Albert will be presenting his method of creating streamline effects-lighting ecosystem on Double Negative’s latest effects heavy show – The Mummy, using the Houdini package. He will talk about the optimisation of the FX for pipeline and also how to deal with common fx problems from the perspective of lighting artists. He will also talk about creating custom light tools in Houdini without need of deep coding.
The VFX in Game of Thrones
By: Thomas Montminy Brodeur and Patrice Poissant – Rodeo FX
The Rodeo FX team will take you through the process behind the creation of the visual effects in Game of Thrones since season 4.
Unity for Filmmaking and Storytelling. See the Power of a Parallel Creative Pipeline.
By: Adam Myhill – Unity
Unity is revolutionizing game content creation, storytelling and CG pipelines with powerful sequencing, camera, color grading and rendering technology. See how parallel content authoring allows you to make creative decisions much later into the project and see everything in context. The visual gap between real-time rendering and traditional CG pipelines is narrowing, making the significant advantages and incredible time savings of Unity’s workflow a powerful and economically attractive solution. When you factor in that once you move your IP into Unity, it’s now ready for games, interactive and VR, allowing you to grow your content into new markets. A game changer.
The copyright is © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.
War of the Planet of the Apes
By: Dan Lemmon -Weta Digital
War of the Planet of the Apes is the stunning conclusion in the acclaimed Planet of the Apes trilogy. Bringing apes with intelligence and emotional resonance to the screen has successfully carved out a new standard and a new era in the realistic animation of digital lead characters. Dan Lemmon will explain how Weta Digital’s advanced VFX and motion capture techniques allowed them to facilitate every part of the film – from vast digital environments featuring thousands of digital characters, down to the small details in each of the ape characters like the way snow catches in their fur. In particular he will discuss Weta’s advanced outdoor motion capture system, fur simulation tools, and facial capture and modelling technology.
Art & Technology Track
MASTER CLASS
Dynamic Anatomy for Artists
By: Scott Eaton – Scott Eaton
September 6th, from 9h30 to 17h30
This masterclass is an in-depth investigation into dynamic human anatomy. Over the course of the day, Scott will explain the most complicated areas of the human figure and show how they deform with motion. The course is aimed at all artists interested in improving their understanding of non-bind pose anatomy, but is especially relevant to visual effects modellers and riggers working with characters and advanced deformation. After each lesson, Scott will demonstrate how he approaches sculpting dynamic figures in ZBrush, applying each of the anatomical principles to a full-figure digital sculpture. The masterclass will draw heavily on material from Scott’s recently released Bodies in Motion reference library (www.bodiesinmotion.photo) to clearly illustrate the principle of dynamic anatomy.
Dynamic Figures – Drawing from Bodies in Motion
By: Scott Eaton – Scott Eaton
Spend this session practicing dynamic figure drawing and exploring anatomy with Scott. He will introduce his Bodies in Motion reference library, a resource for artists inspired by the work of Eadward Muybridge, and attendees will get a chance to challenge and stretch their skills by drawing from dynamic Bodies in Motion sequences. After each sequence, Scott will cover the important anatomy lessons that the motion reveals. Over the course of the session Scott will cover the most important anatomy fundamentals he has learned from years of studying, drawing, and sculpting the human figure.
Immersive Narrativity for VR and Fulldome
By: Yan Breuleux – NAD-UQAC
How to envison projects for immersive devices? Which are the main issues regarding live broadcasting of a project? Presentation of a series of case studies regarding broadcasting devices ”Fulldome” and ”VR”
Making Zafari, the First Animated TV Show Made with Unreal Engine
By: Peter Skvosbo and Pierre Blaizeau – Digital Dimension
Founded as a VFX Studio over 20 years ago, Digital Dimension has recently completed its transformation into a full-service animation studio producing animated television series and feature films, as well key art and cinematics for the gaming industry. A completely independent, locally owned and operated facility, Digital Dimension has accelerated its recent growth by embracing technological innovations such as implementing Epic Games’ Unreal Engine into its linear pipeline. Join us and discover our production process, the efforts required to integrate a game engine with a traditional linear pipeline, the associated risks and the fields of opportunities such a technology unlocks.
Rigging Approach at Squeeze: Overcome Production Challenges
By: Renaud Lessard Larouche – Squeeze
Change of scale, new proportions, and updates. In the Rigging Department, the reality of production leads to frequent changes and sometimes difficult to manage. Fortunately, it is possible to design mechanisms to support these changes – both for the body and face Rigging methods. Discover how the experimental approach put in place at Squeeze has allowed the Rigging Department to adapt to production challenges.
The interactive audio workstation
By: Martin Dufour – Audiokinetic Inc.
Brief overview of the modern game audio production pipeline, focusing on the emergence of game audio middleware that includes a complete authoring environment for interactive sound design. Exploration of the uses of interactive sound design outside of game audio, including VR storytelling.
Technical Innovation, an Indie Studio, and Two Animated Shorts
By: Emily Paige – E*D Films
See how Montreal-based indie animation house and digital tools lab E*D Films develops and produces its own unique, efficiency-enhancing hybrid technical pipelines to tell beautiful animated stories filled with plenty of innovation, community-based online collaboration, and heart. Emily Paige, Creative Producer at E*D Films, will present works in progress from “Retour à Hairy Hill,” a 12-minute animation based on the true story of a Franco-Albertan woman and a famous Métis rodeo star. Set in early 1900’s and present day, told in the style of Grimm’s Fairytales, with music and natural/digital soundscapes replacing dialogue, the short blends illustration with traditional and digital animation to convey the film’s sense of isolation, sadness, survival and rebirth. Paige will also show behind the scenes from Taqqut Productions’ “Giant Bear” – an Inuit legend about the last giant polar bear on earth and the hunter that tries to kill him. “Giant Bear” is a mixture of 2D and 3D assets with digital compositing. It features game engine animation done in Unity then exported into Maya to achieve a distinctive cinematic quality.
Business and Production
All the Recruiter’s Secrets in VFX
By: Pierre-Luc Labbée – rhum, ressources et humains
A panel about jobs in VFX, overall. Pierre-Luc Labbée will bring different topics to the recruiters in order to demystify the recruitment process: interviews, positions, opportunities, social media, resume, and mistakes to avoid! Small and big studios will be present.
All the Recruiter’s Secrets in Animation
By: Pierre-Luc Labbée – rhum, ressources et humains
A panel about jobs in Animation, overall. Pierre-Luc Labbée will bring different topics to the recruiters in order to demystify the recruitment process: interviews, positions, opportunities, social media, resume, and mistakes to avoid! Small and big studios will be present.
Color Management in VFX: Understanding the Color Spaces
By: Francois Lord – Rodeo FX
Understanding the color spaces is essential for visual effects artists to ensure seamless compositing of CG images into live action plates, whether working on a feature film or television production. This presentation, intended mainly for VFX artists, will give an overview of the use of the color management system ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) in visual effects pipelines.
Double Negative’s surfacing pipeline: a matter of Substance?
By: Zoe Cranley – Double Negative and Wes McDermott – Allegorithmic
Double Negative: our texture / lookdev pipeline is changing. We will talk about how we are redefining some areas of our build pipeline to be more surfacing focused, and how we are looking towards tools like Substance to help us.
Allegorithmic: the pipeline initially employed by Double Negative can be achieved with Substance Designer and the newly released Substance Automation Toolkit, of which we will do a live demo.
Virtual Production – Realizing the World of Warcraft
By: Brett Ineson – Animatrik
Brett Ineson, virtual production supervisor on Warcraft, will present a behind the scenes look at the virtual production technology and methodology that made Duncan Jones’ film possible. As the world’s most ambitious virtual production effort to date, Warcraft posed many challenges. Brett will detail how the tremendous effort of the highly skilled crew, and a number of technical collaborations, gave Warcraft’s production team the tools they required to deliver on a virtual Azeroth, in a film of momentous technical and creative scope.
Sponsored Sessions
Building Dynamics Systems in Houdini
By: Jeff Wagner – SideFx
The Dynamics environment in Houdini offers the Visual Effects artist a large palette of solvers and sources along with a great deal of flexibility once you know how objects are constructed and solvers are run. This presentation will look at a few specific examples where effect networks are built up to do pyro, fluid and particle/cloth type effects with an emphasis flexibility and reusability.
Creating FX simulations for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
By: Dominik Kirouac and Pierre Rousseau – Rodeo Fx
Join FX artists from Rodeo FX as they share their journey through the Valerian universe and how they contributed to bringing Luc Besson’s vision to the screen. Rodeo FX team members will discuss the challenges of creating FX simulations for the space battle sequence.
Creating Procedural Geometry And Procedural Assets
By: Jeff Wagner – SideFx
Houdini 16 brings a new paradigm in proceduralism: Parallel processing of Procedural Networks to address issues of scalability. The lecture will look at improvements to Houdini’s architecture and networks In this session. Several Procedural tools will be built that take full advantage of todays modern hardware using VEX, OpenCL and Compile Blocks.
Foundry Presents Nuke 11.0 and Post Production in the Cloud
By: Terry Riyasat – Foundry and Mathieu Mazerolle – Elara
Join Foundry’s Terry Riyasat and Mathieu Mazerolle at Effects Montreal, where we will be showing you some of latest technologies that we premiered last month at SIGGRAPH in LA. This includes the latest release of our flagship compositor Nuke 11.0 and Project Elara, our cloud-based service for post-production that centralises infrastructure, creative tools and pipeline.
Have a Date with Clarisse
By: Eric Smith – Isotropix
Meet Clarisse, the next gen artist centric creation tool for 3D and VFX developed by Isotropix. Specialized in layout, scene assembly, look development, lighting and rendering, Clarisse’s unique workflow allows artists to interactively work on final images that display an unprecedented level of detail! Experience live how Clarisse gives power to artists to make instant creative decisions at anytime making it the ultimate creation tool available in the 3D and VFX Industry. Discover how easily Clarisse can be included in your pipeline and how it becomes simple to create, set-dress, lookdev, light and render complex environments.
Moving Animation Around Houdini
By: Guillaume Laferrière – SideFx
Guillaume will be looking at how to retarget character animation from mocap, crowd sims, rigged characters or geometry caches onto character rigged inside of Houdini.
Scalar Decisions presents: Advance Planning for Studio Production – Compute, Security & Vulnerability Must Haves
By: Neil Bunn – Scalar
Neil Bunn, CTO of Scalar Decisions will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing artists and studios when trying to compete on an international stage in a rapidly changing technology environment. Achieving high quality product at a competitive cost requires optimizing applications, pipelines and systems and doing so all under the constant threat of malicious hackers. We will discuss how a modern organization can ensure survival in this hostile space. Covering both how to work with partners to ensure audit and security compliance, and how to work across the spectrum of render options from owned equipment all the way to fully-burstable cloud solutions this talk will focus on some of the hidden operational approaches and secrets of the most successful organizations and the role Scalar plays in helping them. We will discuss how to be successful with demand-based render technologies, and why different organizations see dramatically different levels of success with different approaches to render farms.
Sketch-2- Screen’ Bringing Stranger Things & The Mist to Life
By: Michael Pecchia and Matt Millard – Aaron Simms Creative
The Aaron Sims Creative team reveal the workflow behind their character and world-building concept designs, previsualizations and VFX for some of the most iconic film and television franchises of a generation. Through a series of 3D models, animatics and breakdowns, they’ll demonstrate how your favorite superheroes, villains, and monsters are brought to life.