Eye candy: The Foundry’s 2016 VFX reel
NAB time is showreel time, at least for the developers of visual effects tools.
Yesterday, we featured Autodesk’s new VFX reel, and not to be outdone, The Foundry has just posted its own compilation of the best recent work created using Nuke, Mari, Modo and Katana.
Whereas Autodesk’s reel highlighted the unexpected projects its tools have been used on – non-English-language movies and indie shorts both featured, along with a lot of nice ads – The Foundry goes straight for the jugular.
There are ads on there – notably the amazing photorealistic orangutan The Mill created for renewable energy firm SSE – but the impact of the reel comes mainly from huge Hollywood blockbusters.
Pretty much the entire long list for this year’s VFX Oscar is featured, including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, Mad Max: Fury Road and Avengers: Age of Ultron, along with eventual winner Ex Machina.
But there are also striking similarities – not least because the same shot appears on both reels not once but twice: first with The Martian, and later with Framestore’s work on Pan.
It’s an odd meeting of the industry giants’ tools, and proof – if any were needed – that no single product dominates the market when it comes to modern visual effects.