FXPHD – NUK309 – Advanced NUKE & Digital Environments

This advanced course offers students the opportunity to work through 3 demanding shots – from the first steps to the finishing touches – employing on the way a variety of techniques to tackle some tough challenges.

The VFX industry is in constant flux, and artists see a growing need to develop a wider scope of CG skills and be prepared to deal with a variety of VFX challenges. Taught by Emmy and VES award winning supervisor Eran Dinur, the course addresses this need by treating different tasks – compositing, modeling, lighting and matte painting – as one continuous process.

While the main focus will be Nuke compositing, this course is not about a specific application. Rather, it’s about getting the shots done and making them look great - using whatever combination of software and techniques is required to achieve this goal. So in addition to Nuke, students will also be using Maya, Arnold, SpeedTree and Hiero.

The shots in the course are part of a short film in the making, so the course will cover typical workflows for film VFX and subjects such as color matching, grading for editorial, color spaces and various formats. In addition to the 3 shots covered in the course, students will be given a fourth shot to tackle completely on their own. There will be several video review sessions through the course, so students will be able to receive constructive feedback for the work.

Eran Dinur is senior VFX supervisor at Brainstorm Digital. He is the recipient of an Emmy Award and two VES awards for his work on HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Film and TV projects he supervised include: The Wolf of Wall Street, Boardwalk Empire, The Men Who Built America, Annie, Delivery Man, The Heat, Gold Fever and The Immigrant. Before joining Brainstorm Digital, he was senior compositor at Framestore NY and ILM Singapore. Films he worked on include: Clash of the Titans, Salt, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Surrogates, Terminator Salvation, Star Trek, Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.