NUKE, short for "New Compositor", began as the in-house compositing and effects application at Digital Domain, where it won an Academy Award® for Technical Achievement. NUKE is built primarily for visual effects film work at a variety of element resolutions and color spaces, all within a floating point 2D and 3D environment. This lecture covers the essentials of working with film-based and CGI elements in a professional, extensible and fast compositing pipeline. Utilizing many techniques for speed and efficiency, NUKE is able to provide rich output results and ultimate customization for the user. In this DVD, Rob covers all the major aspects of NUKE and reveals many areas where the casual user would not have known to go at first glance. Rob also provides sensible approaches for how to lay a good foundation for proper compositing in your own projects. Rob uses Nuke 4.3 to teach this tutorial.

In the second DVD in this series on Maya Fluid Effects, effects animator David Schoneveld imparts a detailed view of the various methods and advanced features of particle and rigid body control through fluid dynamics. This multi-faceted lesson takes you through the beginning and inter- mediate techniques of the Ocean Shader before revealing how you can create object-avoiding particles without scripting. The lesson culminates by teaching you how to create particles driven by fluid dynamics that can interact with an object or character.

In the third DVD of this series on Maya Fluid Effects, effects animator David Schoneveld reveals the numerous methods he uses to create and control fluid explosions, covering dynamic, non-dynamic and texture-based effects.

Fluid dynamics are rapidly becoming a powerful alternative to particle effects. In the first lecture of this series, effects animator David Schoneveld introduces you to the rules of fluid production, showing how Maya Fluid Effects can be used for everything from smoke, dust and explosions, to underwater plane crashes and more.