15 films for 84th VFX academy awards

ACADEMY ANNOUNCES 15 VFX BAKEOFF FILMS
Press Release from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
today announced that 15 films have been selected for consideration for
Achievement in Visual Effects for the 84th Academy Awards.

The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

"Captain America: The First Avenger"
"Cowboys & Aliens"
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2"
"Hugo"
"Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides"
"Real Steel"
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes"
"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows"
"Sucker Punch"
"Super 8"
"Thor"
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon"
"The Tree of Life"
"X-Men: First Class"

The Future of Flash in Mobiles

Check out these articles which points out the future of flash applications in mobiles.

Thoughts on Flash

Adobe Feature Blog

Reliance and Fox bringing Spielberg's WARHORSE

The story of a young man and his horse that is sold to the cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War I.
The Trailor

The Pixar story - Part 1

I guess this need to be a must watch for all animators!

The Pixar Story- Part 2

THE LIGHT FIELD CAMERA-The camera that turns light into living pictures

The camera that turns light into living pictures

It is a new type of imaging technology called light field imaging. It allows you to change focus after the picture was taken, and also offers 3D stereo for your image. This is totally amazing tech, just think of what you could do with this. It is only a still camera, but what if this was a video camera? How about taking 3D stereo with only one lens? Seriously that would be totally cool, and to change or alter the focus of the image by just dragging your mouse over the image.

Once the picture is on a computer or phone, the focus can be adjusted to center on any object in the image, also allowing for cool artsy shots where one shifts between a blurry foreground and sharp background and vice versa.
The technology also allows photos to be taken in very low-light conditions without a flash, as well as for some eye-popping three-dimensional images to be taken with just a single lens.
LINKS
DEMO

LIGHT FIELD CAMERA

XGen Arbitrary Primitive Generator technology

Autodesk and Walt Disney Pictures announced an agreement to bring an innovative animation and visual effects technology to the Digital Entertainment Creation community. Autodesk obtained a license with a five-year exclusivity period for the XGen Arbitrary Primitive Generator technology (XGen), used most recently by Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS) in the hit animated film “Tangled.”

XGen technology was first presented by WDAS in a research paper at SIGGRAPH in 2003 for the creation of computer-generated fur, feathers and foliage. Since that time, XGen has evolved and been refined on seven features, three shorts and one TV show. It has been used to create the fur, hair, feathers, trees, leaves and rocks in “Bolt,” the trees and bushes in “UP,” the dust bunnies, debris, trees, bushes, clover and flowers in “Toy Story 3,” and the grass and trees in “Cars 2.” In “Tangled,” WDAS used XGen to bring the lavish 3D animated world to life: from Rapunzel’s perfectly groomed golden locks to the film’s lush, vegetation-filled landscapes, including bushes, flowers, vines, grass, weeds, moss, thistle, ground mulch, fallen leaves, sticks, rocks, butterfly fur, airborne dust, leaves and trees, plus props such as roof tiles, arrow fletchings, a broom and paint brushes.