I was recently playing Star Wars Battlefront as it recently gained popularity again, so I decided to make a fan trailer! Hopefully we'll see Star Wars Battlefront 3 in the future! This trailer was inspired by the loading screen of Battlefront 2. This was created using Blender + Nuke together. Song credit to Sam Kim and Lucasfilm. This video is not linked to Electronic Arts, Lucasfilm, or related to Battlefront in any official capacity. -------------- Haven't learned Nuke yet and you want to make your shots look feature film level? Learn Here with our Nuke Fundamentals Series 👉 https://www.compositingacademy.com/nuke-compositing-career-starter-bundle Want the VFX Assets or plugins featured in our videos? (Smoke, Lens Dirt, etc!): Check it out here:👉 https://www.compositingacademy.com/vfxassets

Blender and Nuke, why Lighting and Compositing is so important! This is part of a Star Wars Battlefront 3 cinematic I made.

Saturday, June 14th, 2025 Posted by Jim Thacker Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" The Gnomon Workshop has released Practical Lighting for Production, a guide to VFX and cinematics workflows recorded by former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham. The intermediate-level workshop provides four hours of training in Maya, Arnold and Nuke. Discover professional workflows for lighting a CG shot to match a movie reference In the workshop, Cunningham sets out the complete process of lighting and compositing a shot to match a movie reference, using industry-standard software. He begins by setting up a basic look development light rig in Maya, importing a 3D character, assigning materials and shading components, and creating a turntable setup. Next, he creates a shot camera and set dresses the environment using kitbash assets. Cunningham also discusses strategies for lighting a character, including how to use dome lights and area lights to provide key, fill and rim lighting, and how to use HDRI maps. From there, he moves to rendering using Arnold, discussing render settings, depth of field, and how to create render passes. Cunningham then assembles the render passes in Nuke, splits out the light AOVs, and sets out how to adjust light colors and intensities. He also reveals how to add atmosphere, how to use cryptomattes to fine tune the results, how to add post effects, and how to apply a final color grade to match a chosen movie reference. As well as the tutorial videos, viewers of the workshop can download one of Cunningham’s Maya files. The workshop uses 3D Scan Store’s commercial Female Explorer Game Character, and KitBash3D’s Wreckage Kit, plus assets from KitBash3D’s Cargo. About the artist Graham Cunningham is a Senior Lighting, Compositing and Lookdev Artist, beginning his career as a generalist working in VFX for film and TV before moving to Blizzard Entertainment. At Blizzard, he contributed to cinematics for Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal, Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Overwatch 2, many of them as a lead lighting artist. Pricing and availability Practical Lighting for Production is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost $57/month or $519/year. Free trials are available. Read more about Practical Lighting for Production on The Gnomon Workshop’s website Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects. Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon. Latest News DreamWorks Animation releases MoonRay 2.15 Check out the new features in the open-source release of DreamWorks Animation's production renderer. used on movies like The Wild Robot. Sunday, June 15th, 2025 Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production Master professional CG lighting workflows with former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham's tutorial for The Gnomon Workshop. Saturday, June 14th, 2025 Boris FX releases Mocha Pro 2025.5 Planar tracking tool gets new AI face recognition system for automatically obscuring identities in footage. Check out its other new features. Friday, June 13th, 2025 Leopoly adds voxel sculpting to Shapelab 2025 Summer 2025 update to the VR modeling app expands the new voxel engine for blocking out 3D forms. See the other new features. Friday, June 13th, 2025 iRender: the next-gen render farm for OctaneRender [Sponsored] Online render farm iRender explains why its powerful, affordable GPU rendering solutions are a must for OctaneRender users. Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 Master Architectural Design for Games using Blender & UE5 Discover how to create game environments grounded in architectural principles with The Gnomon Workshop's new tutorial. Monday, June 9th, 2025 More News Epic Games' free Live Link Face app is now available for Android Adobe launches Photoshop on Android and iPhone Sketchsoft releases Feather 1.3 Autodesk releases 3ds Max 2026.1 Autodesk adds AI animation tool MotionMaker to Maya 2026.1 You can now sell MetaHumans, or use them in Unity or Godot Epic Games to rebrand RealityCapture as RealityScan 2.0 Epic Games releases Unreal Engine 5.6 Pulze releases new network render manager RenderFlow 1.0 Xencelabs launches Pen Tablet Medium v2 Desktop edition of sculpting app Nomad enters free beta Boris FX releases Silhouette 2025 Older Posts

Houdini, Maya & Nuke Workflow with Josh HarrisonExplore the entire process of creating electricity and lightning visual effects using Houdini. Using a generalist approach, each chapter focuses on the essential stages of a complete, professional VFX workflow using Maya and Nuke in addition to Houdini. Artists will learn, step by step, how to integrate a custom character animation into a robust Houdini effects setup, covering everything from project organization to final-frame rendering.Beginning with asset prep and animation, Josh first covers how to prepare character models and animation for procedural import into Houdini. The first chapters also offer simple workarounds for rigging in Maya to provide more agency and flexibility to independent artist creators.Transitioning into Houdini, Josh then demonstrates how to set up materials and shaders in Mantra, Houdini's native render engine, to develop the scene further. From there, the workshop focuses primarily on generating lightning effects. After analyzing in-depth the fundamental concepts and approaches to creating electricity, Josh slowly explores more advanced techniques, instructing on how to make both secondary and tertiary elements, in order to add detail and complexity to a scene. He also discusses how to utilize particle and pyro simulations in order to generate dynamic electricity movement. After finalizing and finessing all the lightning elements, the final chapters guide artists in how to convert meshes into renderable light geometry, how to create custom AOVs in Mantra, and then how to use those render passes to create a professional composition in Nuke. Josh’s Anim.character.001.abc file is included as a downloadable project file with this workshop. The Mike Freeman rig by CG Truong and the Spartan Hoplite model by Ryan Reos are also featured in Josh’s workflow.WATCH NOW

For Season 3 of Amazon’s The Wheel of Time, Proof Inc. reimagined post-visualization, developing an innovative “Sketchvis” pipeline that blurred the boundaries between previs, postvis, and final VFX. Under Supervisor Steve Harrison, Proof created over 35 minutes of intricate, stylized visualizations across all eight episodes, establishing an expressive visual foundation for the series’ complex magical elements known as “channeling.” Proof’s Sketchvis combined 2D artistry with sophisticated 3D execution using Maya and Nuke, complemented by vibrant glows and intricate distortion effects. Each spell’s distinct energy was carefully choreographed, whether corkscrewing beams of power or serpentine streams of water, closely aligning with the narrative’s elemental logic and dramatically influencing the show’s pacing and visual storytelling. Working closely in daily collaboration with Production and VFX Supervisor Andy Scrase, the Proof team took on design challenges typically reserved for final VFX vendors like Framestore and DNEG. This proactive approach allowed Proof to define not only the aesthetic but also the motion logic of key magical sequences, creating a precise roadmap that remarkably mirrors what audiences will experience in the final episodes. For Proof, traditionally known for character animation and environmental previs, this venture into nuanced effect design and movement choreography represented both a creative challenge and a significant expansion of their artistic repertoire, adding to the visual texture of The Wheel of Time and pushing post-visualization into compelling new creative territory. The team contributed to all eight episodes with a core team of six artists. Proof’s ability to step beyond previs and postvis into effect design and movement development made them a key partner, enhancing in-camera performances and helping shape the visual language of the series.

Nightlords are arguably the hardest enemies in Elden Ring Nightreign — powerful, nerve-racking bosses who show up at the very end of your runs. All the preparation you go through during the first two days of a match in Elden Ring Nightreign — from farming runes to looking for ways to upgrade your weapons — is in service of one goal: getting strong enough to beat the Nightlord of your run. Each boss has their own dedicated mechanics and weaknesses, and you can tackle (most) of them in the order you see fit. In this Elden Ring Nightreign guide, we’ll go over our recommendation of the the best Nightlords order so you know which boss fights to prioritize.  Best Nightlords boss fight order in Elden Ring Nightreign  The best Nightlords order in Elden Ring Nightreign is a subjective matter, largely up to your individual class, equipment, and personal adeptness with each character. That said, we’ve assembled guide to present what would be, in our opinion, the fights you should focus on first to build up confidence and accumulate knowledge about the game. In general, the better-prepared you are for each fight, the better you’ll fare. But some Nightlords are less forgiving than others if you reach the final day under-leveled or under-equipped. Along the same lines, we consider bosses who can inflict detrimental effects more difficult to prepare for than those who you can defeat simply by mastering their mechanics. And then, of course, there’s the huge matter that all of this — as with all things Nightreign — is contingent on whether or not your teammates actually collaborate with you. With all this in mind, below, here’s our recommendation for the best Nightlords order in Elden Ring Nightreign, with their respective expedition names in parentheses. Gladius, Beast of Night (Tricephalos) Gnoster, Wisdom of Night (Sentient Pest) Maris, Fathom of Night (Augur) Adel, Baron of Night (Gaping Jaw) Caligo, Miasma of Night (Fissure in the Fog) Libra, Creature of Night (Equilibrious Beast) Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow (Darkdrift Knight) Heolstor the Nightlord (Night Aspect) Gladius, Beast of Night (Tricephalos) There isn’t much to say here because you can’t actually choose not to face Gladius, Beast of Night first. Tricephalos is the first expedition you have access to and the other expeditions won’t become available until you have defeated them. Use your first runs against this Nightlord to learn your way through Limveld. Gnoster, Wisdom of Night (Sentient Pest) It might sound contradictory to face a duo boss after beating Gladius, Beast of Night. Tracking two enemies is challenging and requires you to know the limits of your class. Even so, you should still pick Sentient Pest as your second expedition and fight Gnoster, Wisdom of Night. There are two main reasons for that. First, almost none of their attacks are capable of instantly killing you unless you’re under level 10. They don’t require you to have specific resistances or weapons either. If you’re playing a melee class, you just need to have patience until Gnoster gets closer and wait for a good window to attack.  The second reason is Gnoster’s weaknesses. Fire damage is extremely strong against it and it is easy to find a weapon that causes fire damage; throwing pots or Fire Grease, a consumable that makes your weapon cause elemental damage for a period of time. Maris, Fathom of Night (Augur) The only reason why we suggest tackling Maris, Fathom of Night (from the Augur expedition) after Gnoster is that this boss constantly applies sleep, dealing a lot of damage and leaving you exposed to follow-up attacks. Nevertheless, after enough matches, you’ll have obtained enough Relics, some of which can come with sleep resistance, removing a challenging factor of this fight.  When it comes to mechanics, there are just a couple of attacks to watch out for. Kill or dodge the small jellyfish the boss sends your way and run from the shining one, since it nukes a large area. Their main attacks are clearly telegraphed so there isn’t much to worry about on that front. Learn their patterns and defeat your third boss. Adel, Baron of Night (Gaping Jaw) Although the Gaping Jaw is the expedition Nightreign suggests tackling after Gladius, we’d suggest waiting to fight Adel, Baron of Night until you become more familiar with the game. Adel deals a lot of damage with their bite attack, which causes blood loss, a major threat if you don’t have a lot of health. In general, Adel’s attacks can really pin you down, but when the boss enters its second phase, it becomes a real nightmare. To make your life easier, you can use poison against the boss, but this is a type of elemental damage difficult to find weapons with or greases to apply. In other words, you will probably have to face the boss without relying on exploiting any weakness.  Caligo, Miasma of Night (Fissure in the Fog) Fighting a giant prehistoric dragon is never a good idea, but Caligo, Miasma of Night, the Nightlord you must fight in the Fissure in the Fog expedition, could be worse. To prepare for this fight, farm runes to reach level 12 or higher.  Once you know how to handle Caligo’s attacks, this gigantic dragon becomes less of a threat, but knowing the fight is not enough to survive. During the match, watch out for elemental resistances that might drop from minor bosses. Caligo’s attacks can inflict Frostbite and they cover large areas of the arena, so you’ll probably get hit by them. You also want to come with strong weapons capable of causing fire damage.  Libra, Creature of Night (Equilibrious Beast) The Equilibrious Beast expedition, where you must fight Libra, Creature of Night, is presents a notable step-up in difficulty compared to the previous fights. The most challenging aspect of this fight is in the preparation: Most of Libra’s attacks inflict madness and there aren’t many methods to prevent it. They are also weak to madness, but you’ll need to find the right incantation to cause that type of damage. Most importantly, there isn’t a safe spot to hide in this fight. Libra is fast, can teleport next to their target, and unleashes lengthy, quick sequences of attacks with their staff. Finding the right window to heal is difficult, because they can cast long-range area-of-effect attacks that hit many places in the arena. Beating Libra is a matter of farming, learning the fight, and luck. Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow (Darkdrift Knight) Among the bosses in Elden Ring Nightreign, very few are as punitive as Fulgor, Champion of Nightflow. This one-arm centaur is waiting for you in the Darkdrift Knight expedition and facing them will test all you’ve learned so far. Exploiting Fulghor’s weakness to lightning damage is a must, but the challenge here involves actually hitting them while avoiding their massive area attacks or quick thrusts.  You need to know how to farm well for this fight and memorize Fulghor’s attack pattern if you plan on completing this expedition. Fulghor causes a lot of damage, making you run out of flasks pretty fast if you don’t dodge at the right time. In addition, during the second phase, Fulghor becomes more brutal with a complex combination of short and long-distance attacks. Heolstor the Nightlord (Night Aspect) Just like Gladius had to go first, you can’t avoid saving the Night Aspect expedition for last since it is the last one you unlock and where you must fight Heolstor the Nightlord. Be sure to have sourced the best gear and achieved the highest level you can before facing this one. For more Elden Ring Nightreign guides, here’s how to change skins, what “memory fragment found” means, and a list of the best rune farming locations.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" A recording of Blackmagic Design’s livestream of its announcements for NAB 2025. You can see the new features in Da Vinci Resolve 20.0 at 2:13:20 in the video. Originally posted on 6 April 2025 for the beta, and updated for the stable release. Blackmagic Design has updated DaVinci Resolve, its free colour grading, editing and post-production software, and DaVinci Resolve Studio, its $295 commercial edition. DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 is a major release, adding over 100 tools, including a set of new AI-powered features for video editing and audio production, and is free to all users. Below, we’ve rounded up the key features for colorists and effects artists, including a new Chroma Warp tool, a new deep compositing toolset, and full support for multi-layer EXRs. The new Chroma Warp tool makes it possible to create looks with intuitive gesture controls. Color page: New Chroma Warp, plus updates to the Resolve FX Warper and Magic Mask For grading, the Color page‘s Color Warper gets a new Chroma Warp tool.It is designed to create looks intuitively, with users selecting a color in the viewer, and dragging to adjust its hue and saturation simultaneously. Among the existing tools, the Resolve FX Warper effect gets a new Curves Warp mode, which creates a custom polygon with spline points for finer control when warping images. Magic Mask, DaVinci Resolve’s AI-based feature for generating mattes, has been updated, and now operates in a single mode for both people and objects. Workflow is also now more precise, with users now placing points to make selections, then using the paint tools to include or exclude surrounding regions of the image. Another key AI-based feature, the Resolve FX Depth Map effect, which automatically generates depth mattes, has been updated to improve speed and accuracy. For color management across a pipeline, the software has been updated to ACES 2.0, and OpenColorIO is supported as Resolve FX. Effects artists get deep compositing support in the integrated Fusion compositing toolset. Fusion: new deep compositing toolset For compositing and effects work, the Fusion page gets support for deep compositing.Deep compositing, long supported in more VFX-focused apps like Nuke, makes use of depth data encoded in image formats like OpenEXR to control object visibility. It simplifies the process of generating and managing holdouts, and generates fewer visual artifacts, particularly when working with motion blur or environment fog. Deep images can now be viewed in the Fusion viewer or the 3D view, and there is a new set of nodes to merge, transform, resize, crop, recolor and generate holdouts. It is also possible to render deep images from the 3D environment, and export them as deep EXRs via the Fusion saver node. Fusion: new vector warping toolset, plus support for 180 VR and multi-layer workflows Other new features in the Fusion page include a new optical-flow-based vector warping toolset, for image patching and cleanup, and for effects like digital makeup.There is also a new 360° Dome Light for environment lighting, and support for 180 VR, with a number of key tools updated to support 180° workflows. Pipeline improvements include full multi-layer workflows, with all of Fusion’s nodes now able to access each layer within multi-layer EXR or PSD files. Fusion also now natively supports Cryptomatte ID matte data in EXR files. You can read about the new features on the Fusion Page in our story on Fusion Studio 20.0, the latest version of Blackmagic Design’s standalone compositing app, in which they also feature. IntelliScript automatically generates an edit timeline matching a user-provided script. Other toolsets: lots of new AI features for video editing and audio production DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 also features a lot of new AI features powered by the software’s Neural Engine, although primarily in the video editing and audio production toolsets.The Cut and Edit pages get new AI tools for automatically creating edit timelines matching a user-provided script; generating animated subtitles; editing or extending music to match clip length; and matching tone, level and reverberance for dialogue. There are also new tools for recording new voiceovers during editing to match an edit. Workflow improvements include a dedicated curve view for keyframe editing; plus a new MultiText tool and updates to the Text+ tool for better control of the layout of on-screen text. For audio post work, the Fairlight page gets new AI features for removing silences from raw footage, and automatically balancing an audio mix. We don’t cover video or audio editing on CG Channel, but you can find a complete list of changes via the links at the foot of the story. Codec and format support Other key changes include native support for ProRes encoding on Windows and Linux systems as well as macOS.MV-HEVC encoding is now supported on systems with NVIDIA GPUs, and H.265 4:2:2 encoding and decoding are GPU-accelerated on NVIDIA’s new Blackwell GPUs. Again, you can find a full list of changes to codec and platform support via the links at the foot of the story. Upcoming features include generative AI-based background extension. Future updates: new toolsets for immersive video and AI background generation Blackmagic Design also announced two upcoming features not present in the initial release.Artists creating mixed reality content will get a new toolset for ingesting, editing and delivering immersive video for Apple’s Vision Pro headset. There will also be a new generative AI feature, Resolve FX AI Set Extender, available via Blackmagic Cloud. More details will be announced later this year, but Blackmagic says that it will enable users to generate new backgrounds for shots by entering simple text prompts. The video above shows a range of use cases, including extending or adding objects to existing footage, and generating a complete new background behind a foreground object. Price, system requirements and release date DaVinci Resolve 20.0 and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 are for Windows 10+, Rocky Linux 8.6, and macOS 14.0+. The updates are free to existing users.New perpetual licenses of the base edition are also free. The Studio edition, which adds AI features, stereoscopic 3D tools, and collaboration features, costs $295, following a temporary increase in the US following the introduction of new tariffs. Read a full list of new features in DaVinci Resolve 20.0 and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.0 Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.