Updated 16 February 2008

Visual Effects Web Links

Industry News & Resources

• FXGuide.com - news blob, articles, tutorials, and lately some great audio interviews in RSS podcast format
• Cinefex - the superb film visual effects journal
• CGTalk.com - good online forums for discussion of various topics and applications
• CGChannel.com - industry news, interviews, articles, tutorials
• SIGGRAPH - the computer graphics world's most central body and annual conference
• VFXPro.com - industry news, interviews and articles
• Turbo Squid - online market of 3D models and other assets
• Flay.com - 3D resources, tutorials, etc. Lightwave flavoured, but lots of good stuff there

VFX Colleagues' Sites

• Andrew Daffy (and The House of Curves)
• Andrew Whitehurst
• Colin Doncaster
• Elsa Santos
• Jamie McCarter
• Joe Connellan
• Matt Estela
• Oskar Wahlberg
• Philippe Leprince
• Xavier Roig
• ...if I've missed you let me know!

Maya

• Highend3D.com/maya/ - The source for free Maya scripts/plugins and excellent user mailing lists
• Maya Wiki Knowledge base - based on Wiki means everyone can contribute to this collection of Maya tips and tutorials. Setup by Matt Estela.
• Maya UV Pelting Tool - Sunit Parekh has released what looks to be an excellent UV pelting tool for Maya
• Character Rigging Tutorial (PDF Format) - excellent tutorial by Jake Callery, very well written and laid out, like a free book online.
• www.kurgan.dk - Soren Jacobsen's site, some great Maya scripts and other bits
• Maya Features Site - vote on things to add or fix in Maya

RenderMan

• RenderMan Repository - RenderMan shaders and other resources
• RenderMania - Simon Bunker's site for RenderMan/HDRI resources and news
• Matt Phar's Website - RenderMan stuff, graphics papers
• Highend3D.com/renderman/ - HighEnd also has RenderMan resources, but not as good as their Maya section
• www.fundza.com - Malcolm Kesson's site, lots of RenderMan info, particularly on Shading Language and MTOR/Slim/TCL

Guides and Tutorials

• www.zarria.net - How to make normal and displacement maps using a normal digital camera and light source
• Lighting flat sprite panels - interesting technique using normal maps to render sprites with real (non-baked) lighting
• Modelling and Shading Dobby - excellent tutorial on creating a very detailed and realistic character model in Maya
• Andrew Whitehurst has put together some excellent advice for students aiming to become 3D lighting gurus
• Nice advanced lighting techniques tutorial by Amaan Akram
• Article from American Cinematographer on Digital Colourspace Pipelines for film
• Guide to determining camera placement and lens information from an image by using traditional 2-point vanishing point perspective and some trigonometry
• The Right Way to Calculate Stuff - tips for shader writers on how to calculate certain things more correctly to avoid floating point errors and other things
• ...lots more to come

Reference Resources

• www.3d.sk - very thorough collection of human reference photos. Full figures (of all flavours), faces and body part studies. Subscription based, but quite cheap.
• www.1000skies.com - a commercial library of High Dynamic Range (HDR) sky textures. Very impressive, can be purchased individually
• BBC Motion Gallery - thousands of video clips from BBC news and documentaries, good search function
• Open Video Project - ecclectic collection of video clips online, some good for reference, some just wierd/interesting
• ImageAfter - free hires textures and images
• FotoSearch - stock photo library search portal. Great for reference pics, the previews are usually fine without needing to purchase anything
• NASA Blue Marble Earth Imagery - very high resolution cloudless satellite images of the Earth

VFX Studios

• Animal Logic
• Blue Sky
• Cinesite
• Digital Domain
• Double Negative
• Framestore CFC
• ILM
• MPC
• The Orphanage
• PDI/Dreamworks
• Pixar Animation Studios
• Rhythm & Hues
• Rising Sun Pictures
• Sony Pictures Imageworks
• Tippet Studio
• Weta

VFX Software

• Alias - Maya
• Pixar - Pixar's Photorealistic RenderMan (PRMan)
• 3Delight - a RenderMan compliant 3D renderer, fast becoming a good alternative to PRMan, and the first hit is free
• SideFX - Houdini
• Apple - Shake
• Mental Images - Mental Ray
• Softimage - XSI
• Newtek - Lightwave
• RealiViz - MatchMover, ReTimer, Stitcher and ImageModeller
• 2D3 - Boujou
• zBrush - very impressive modelling package, particularly for detailing models, modifying hires meshes, or generating displacement maps from hires models
• Adobe - Photoshop, After Effects, buy fonts online
• Sitex Graphics - makers of Air, a promising RenderMan compliant 3D renderer
• SplutterFish - makers of Brazil, another promising 3D renderer
• Final Render - upcoming 3D renderer with potential, including excellent 'toon' rendering
• OpenEXR - ILM's floating point image format, released to the world. The only format to use when rendering 3D for film work
• Endorphin - cool new software for 'virtual stuntmen' and rag-doll effects
• Gelato - combination hardware/software film quality renderer from Nvidia.
• Worley's FPrime - incredible plugin for Lightwave that does iterative rendering for amazingly quick workflow. Demo videos on the site are a must-see
• Hype - lens distortion software, just load in a lens grid and it will do the rest
• FrameFixer - an application I wrote to fix bad frames in a sequence. Uses optical flow technology for high quality interpolation

Misc

• Kemps Film and Television Online - listings of film/TV production services worldwide
• LinkedIn.com - great site for registering your info, and who you know, and building up networks of contacts for keeping in touch, finding people at various companies, etc.

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