Thanks to everyone that commented on their Star Trek, X-Men, and other summer blockbuster movies and the technology used to create them. We appreciate the feedback and use it when creating future issues of the magazine.

Several subscribers asked about the critically acclaimed feature film District 9, which debuted in August, 2009. Please see our cover story, which explains how several types of software were used by visual effects artists at The Embassy as they developed alien characters and their weapons. The Embassy team has worked on a variety of visual effects projects with production companies in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Luxology LLC is an independent technology company developing next-generation 3D content creation software modo that was used for District 9. In addition to film visual effects, Modo’s modern workflow and advanced toolset easily deliver enhanced productivity for 3D artists working in design visualization, package design, game development, video production and graphic arts.

Other cool movie technology covered in this issue includes a vibration attenuation technology. It frees filmmakers from the constraints of dolly rails and stationary cameras often used in filmmaking.

And then there’s a story about a plug-in for After Effects and Nuke, which solves the image-distortion problems often experienced by users of CMOS cameras .Rolling shutter effects are commonly found with video cameras employing CMOS image sensors, which record every frame line-by-line from top to bottom of the image, rather than as a single snapshot of a point in time.

Keep your comments and suggestions coming. We appreciate the feedback.

Bruce Wiebusch

bruce@entertainmentengineering.com

Entertainment Engineering on Facebook