At SIGGRAPH 2006, D2 Software, Inc. a subsidiary of Digital Domain, Inc., will unveil new features for its award-winning NUKE compositing software planned for release later this year. The company will also give attendees a look at how top VFX companies are handling compositing on major projects through guest presentations and companion product demos in booth #1231 (co-located with Digital Domain), and offer attendees the opportunity to get a hands-on experience with NUKE at the Guerilla Studio.
NUKE continues to advance
SIGGRAPH attendees will get a preview of some of the new features planned for the next release of NUKE, scheduled for December 2006. The company will unveil new creative and workflow-enhancing capabilities including a new faster, more accurate tracker that is able to detect and adjust to subtle changes in the values of a tracking source, along with optical flow retiming, an updated floating point Primatte” Keyer, UI enhancements including an updated color picker, and support for popular file formats such as Quicktime”, HDR and CRW. FrameCycler Professional 2006 will be bundled with the new version providing Nuke users with uncompressed playback and a host of new review and analysis features.
Carl Stork, appointed CEO of Digital Domain after the company’s recent acquisition, said, "NUKE is the product of a working production environment and will continue to advance to help compositors stretch creative limits and overcome the deadline constraints of high-end visual effects. Our customers are vital to this advancement ‘ not only benefiting from it, but playing a critical role in feeding the innovation.”
High-end Compositing Workflows
The D2 Software main stage will feature guest demonstrations from top compositors who will walk audiences through high-end projects to show how they created effects using NUKE along with other tools. Visitors will see how Digital Domain created shots for My Super Ex-Girlfriend, how Reel FX created a complex sequence for The Wild, and how DNA Productions used NUKE to handle lighting and compositing for The Ant Bully.
A number of applications that feature prominently in the high-end compositing NUKE workflow will be showcased throughout the booth, in customer presentations and in standalone demonstrations, including:
  • Imagica’s Primatte keyer
  • PipelineFX’s Qube! render farm management system
  • NVIDIA Quadro FX ultra high-end graphics
  • IRIDAS FrameCycler playback software
“Compositing doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” explained D2 Software’s product and operations manager, Dominick Spina. “Artists need to know how NUKE fits in with other tools they have or need. We work very closely with partner applications to make sure customers have an efficient pipeline, and by taking more of a workflow approach to demonstrating products, we’re giving artists a feel for how they’ll work in their own environments.”
www.d2software.com