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Visual Effects Companies in NY and Elsewhere
Meghan Eckman asks: "I am wondering what Visual Effects companies there are which strive to bring filmmaking up to the cutting edge of technology. Particularly, I am interested in the visual effects similar to those used in 'The Matrix' (such as the virtual camera set-up). I am a fourth year University student with Linux, programming, and digital media experience, but with a strong desire to go into the filmmaking industry, particularly in New York. I'd like to combine my technical and media skills to create stunning visual effects for the next generation of filmmaking. Where should I look?"
What's so special about NY? Join Pixar!
The word "woman" is no longer politically correct.
The word "woman" is no longer politically correct.
You should use "Female-American" instead.
Its karma, Kramer.
there are quite a few firms in NYC that produce music videos and such, try shoping around some of your work there.
-sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side
Industrial Light and Magic
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
Man I wish I was cool like you.
Australia's a nice place too - I don't know about NY, never been there.
Intel Inside: The world's most commonly-used warning label.
...talk about attack of the buzzwords. Its bad enough I have to put up with this stuff from the moronic tech employment agencies, but now I have to read it on Slashdot?
-W.W.
http://www.visualfx.com http://www.vfxhq.com/ http://www.3dsite.com All have listings of major post houses, fx and animation companies. Cheers!
The Visual Effects companies has had an impact on the video industry for decades. One of the earlier DIGITAL visual-effects was shown to the world, at least in US, when EXXON advertises its gasoline as "Tiger in a car" by MORPHING a speeding car into a leaping tiger.
If I am not mistaken, that ad was run on US teevee back in the 80's.
As for Linux, the movie "Titanic" comes to mind.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Okay.. could whoever moderated the parent post please explain to me just how the very first post on an article can be "Redudant"?!
Of course, you're implying that everyone how reads /. is in the United States, which is certainly not true. It's already bright and early in the morning in Europe, for instance.
You need to get a life loser. Slashdot is for people who interested in what is new in the industry not for people to post obsenities.
Look either AT the production studios, or behind them. Watch the credits for the name of who did the visual effects.
.AU (along with the filming)
Some I know of...
Image G - They did most of Star Trek.
ILM - I'll give you 2 guesses as to what they did. And they're pretty big.
Most places like this will be out in california, probably because the movie studios are out there. But don't think just in New York. Or much less just the US. Like a poster above said, the FX for The Matrix were done in
Ahhh... I too want to be an effects animator. The primary Special Effects house that was called into service for The Matrix was Manex, formerly MVFX. The special effects team was headed by the mighty master John Gaeta.
In New York, which is where I believe you said you wanted to work you will find Click 3x, among a host of others. They are the fellows who worked on Breakfast of Champions.
The best resource on the internet to find out about Special Effects is www.VFXpro.com
There are job postings, articles on techniques and tools, locations of major houses, and interviews with famous artists.
Good Luck! It's a harsh and challenging world out there!
Well, probably the 2 most famous are Blue Sky Studios and R/GA Digital. Blue Sky has worked on "Joe's Apartement", "Alien 4", "Star Trek: Insurrection", "Armageddon", and many others. R/GA mainly does commercials now, but they were responsible for the FX of the Predator movies. Another one on the East coast is Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company who worked on things like "Clear and Present Danger", "Stargate", and the Spiderman ride at Universal Studios.
Also check out http://www.ecdc.org/ for a list of companies. Other good places are VFXPro, Visual FX, and VFXHQ.
Keep in mind that most companies in the US are in California, after all they have to be close where the business is. And if you are thinking about jobs, better start saving and planning for SIGGRAPH 2000.
No really. I'm being honest here. Ad's are ever increasingly using computer graphics for one purpose or another, and begining to do really complex scenes with it. And ad agencies are all over New York.
From all I understand, getting into the big time movie houses requires a lot. Joining a smaller group, and doing well with something like tv ads, should allow you to advance into other genres a few years down the road. People watch tv everyday. Imagine walking into an interview and having your future boss say, "you did that? wow."
Maybe ad agency's don't do the work themselves, but sub contract. So find out who they subcontract too, and apply.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
"It's already bright and early in the morning in Europe"
Of course. My bad. I apologize.
Better yet, there's the ACM SIGGRAPH organization, with local professional chapters, and annual convention held each August. Check out www.siggraph.org, and contact someone in the NY chapter for more information about work in the area.
Or come to Los Angeles! Plenty of visual effects companies out here...
Hey, this is probably an off topic post for
slashDot... check out:
http://my.purefizz.com/
based on PHPSlash, it's all about the graphics,
and visual effects community!!!
I just got outta a few parties myself, was drunk enough to practically pass out earlier, and now that i've sobered up and driven home, slashdot is my only stop before bed.. Slashdot rocks =D
In other news, I'm interested in this myself.. Matrix had some rockin fx in it. Hope more people are too =D
Beer. The only substance that can level any playing field.
L.A. is actually where the majority of special-effects producers for the motion picture industry exist. Think about it for a second--where are the studio headquarters located? Where would you expect post-production facilities to be located? Even after location shooting in some cheaper place like Canada or Florida (no slam intende to either place--it's expensive to shoot in LA), the studios like to bring things back to L.A. for post-production. It's a fact of life, however sad that might be for you. There are areas of Culver City, Burbank, and (yes) Hollywood with block after block of such companies, including literally dozens of digital effects houses.
Pixar and ILM are the exceptions (though still on the Left Coast), along with the Video producers in NYC. But if you want to do motion pictures, I'm afraid that L.A. is still the place, much as the above AC may try to deny it.
Yeah, I misspelled the subject on pirpose. I'm trying to make a point here...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
I used to work on one of the best digital post production programs in the world, Cineon from Kodak. Unfortunately Kodak's bean counters couldn't see that film is going to be obsolete in 5 years and decided that film is profitable *now* and digital isn't, so they pulled the plug.
Cineon was a very cool piece of software.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
New York and Los Angeles are the cities of the past in filmmaking. Most of the forward-thinking indie filmmakers are coming from Austin, TX these days. Check out the South By Southwest Film and Media conferences for great coverage on both computer and filmmaking info. It's going to be in March of 2000 and is an annual event. Check out http://www.sxsw.com for more info. The best thing to do if you're really interested is to just get the equiptment and play around. That's the best way to get your own style and will give your films a different feel than all the others out there. Good luck!
The ABSTRUSE One
Jason Byrons
"You all laugh at me because I'm different
I laugh at you because you're a
As an over-educated draughtsman, I've been schlepping(?) fo'the man for about 11 years. Wanted to 'be in pixels' -- love that expression -- since, oh, about 1977 (Star Wars/New Hope, anyone?). Is there a discussion group for this???
Anyone putzed around with Radiance or is that 'so last week?'
RSVP.
john k.
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
I wouldn't necessarily limit yourself to film. I do think filmmakers play with the neatest newest technology, but perhaps you might want to get your feet wet first. Most companies worth their salt won't look at a newly graduated student without some production (as in making a finished product, not producing film) experience.
The company that I work for has a wonderful graphics department full of lots of toys. They've done some stuff with basic animation tools that just blows my mind. Who ever thought animating engineering designs was so sexy.
Using 3D Studio Max, they downloaded a 3D map of an area they want to build a bridge on. Then they imported the bridge design from AutoCAD, slapped some cars on there and flew the camera around the bridge for snicks. They do this stuff all the time to show clients what a finished product will look like.
The beautiful thing for graphic designers, especially the ones with some animation in their background, is that dozens of companies are doing this. I'd suggest trying to find a company that makes 3D anims for business development and soak some experience.
I can't say much for NYC, but Rochester has some nice resources for visual effects. This is mainly due to Kodak's huge presence in Rochester. The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the University of Rochester both have very good visual design, computer graphics, photography and film departments, thanks to Kodak. I'm sure Xerox contributes in part as well (since they also have a large base in Rochester), but Kodak is the major player. In particular, the film school at RIT is exceptional.
It seems odd to me that the locations of a lot of the new up and coming Special Effects firms are in areas not traditionally noted for their technology. Look at the Matrix FX, done in Sydney (Australia) and Hercules & Xena's FX are done in New Zealand.
IMHO I think this is because the governments of these smaller coutries are realising how to get ahead in the ever changing world and are promtoing technology and so there are a lot of talented people coming through with new ideas - and these are being noticed by film companies.
I urge you to take a look at VFXPro.com, which has everything you'll ever want to know about the fx industry, from interviews to technology reviews to job listings.
The questioner would probably like to take a look at those job listings.
As for the rest of you, many would probably be interested in this spotlight on The Matrix, as it contains several hi-res quicktime clips of various cool scenes in the movie.
Here are the direct links to those clips, for those of you too lazy to look around:
Neo Dodging Bullets
Agent Dodging Bullets
Helicopter Crash
The Tunnel
The Sentinels
Melting Mirror
This brings up an question I had in the back of my mind. Are thing any companies out there right now that are developing an ASP suite on Linux? I think this would be a wonderful open source project as Linux has proven to be a stable server platform and companies are seriously looking to use ASP for they trival computing needs.
Foundation Imaging is probibly the best visual effects house. They did the first three seasons of Babylon5 and are now currently doing what's been called the largest effort ever in computer generated imagery.......ROUGHNECKS: THE STARSHIP TROOPER CHRONICLES!
While Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic may get all the press, Foundation is definitly light years ahead of them. Just watch Roughnecks, and you'll see why they're the unsung heros of CG.
http://www.foundation-i.com
http://sicon.homepage.com
Toronto is a nice place (IMHO), and it does have Alias Wavefront.
Montreal has Softimage.
Both of these "near" New York...
Never heard of any special effects companies from NY. Most are from London. Even Sydney has a few big names too.
but, i have never heard of any big names from NY doing special effects. maybe i just dont listen hard enough... but most come from London.
cheers
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----ooo00ooo----
This is more or less the trade-rag of the special effects industry. Its a very well put together magazine that comes out quarterly. It has the how to and who did it of all the latest films. It also has a LOT of advertising for all the various effects houses with contact info for most. Most of these though are in CA not NY but I would highly recommend it anyway. Also if you have a favorite film you can get order back copies of whatever film peeked your interest. Another hint: Start putting together an "art" portforlio of sorts. Most of these type of places want some sort of proof that you are creative in addition to being able to code. Although the art doesn't necessarily have to be computer related. Good luck on your search. P.S. You didn't say but if you are still in college, ILM, Disney and a couple of the others offer internships. The competition is tough but it would be worth applying or getting the application form to see what they are looking for even.
I say this not as an expert on the film industry, BTW, but as an accidental expert on publishing, in which talented newbies face a similar set of problems.
That Spiderman ride at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure kicks much ass. I've been on it a few times this semester.
Getting into that field is really hard. There are immensely talented people in the field, and many more entering it. The problem you're likely to find in getting work at any of the cutting edge shops is they are essentially meatmarkets. At the cream of the crop companies, you'll work extremely long hours for pay that will make you jealous of people with McJobs. There are pleanty of people willing to work for the big name places for free, so they are rarely willing to pay well for their positions.
I looked for a long time for an interesting position at companies like that, but in the places you tend to find them (SF, LA, NYC) cost of living is so high, the $25k they're likely to pay won't get you a place to live.
I saw someone else suggest ad agencies, that's a good place to think about, or find smaller unknown companies, you're a lot more likely to make a livable wage.
The NYPD.
Your next step after graduating is to enroll in a two year professional program. That will help you get your portfolio together, and also start to make you realize that you don't know anything yet. Research this well, and put all of your effort into getting into the best program you can find (which again, will be difficult without some kind of portfolio). For example, for computer animation, the best program in the world is Sheradon College in Canada. You graduate from that program with a job wherever you want it.
Once you are in, it's a very lucrative industry, which is why you'll be competing against a million other kids with a similar background. But you have to realize the nature of the business. When I hand out a piece of work, I know it has get turned around in two days, even though it really is about 4 days worth of work, and it needs to be perfect and stunning! There might be my next $200 K project riding on it. So you work with who you know, and long-standing relationships are very common. As for NY or LA, there are a million post houses in either city so take your pick. NY is the media capital of the world, people who don't live here don't comprehend the amount of work that gets done here. On the other hand, if you're really into the idea of film, you'll have to live in LA at some point. Good luck!
One problem of visual effects today is that the contrast isn't correct. Just compare "normal" filming with computerized film. You'll see the foreground and background contrast doesn't quite match, even if the graphics look great. Even in Star Wars, which is a wonderful achievement, you see that somehow the environment looks like a painting, not really like a normal camera film. If you've got the skills, perhaps you can offer your skills to study and change this problem. Perhaps you should work for a medium-sized company and gain experience and then go to a bigger visual effects studio. Real 3D filming is also rising, you know: the hologram filming where you can really look around the scene and characters without a pair of silly 3D glasses.
check-out the pages i have compiled on the subject at:
http://media.berkeley.edu/~mrehrer/vfx/
and a good list of vfx houses andpost houses:
http://media.berkeley.edu/~mrehrer/vfxlinks.html
btw manex still refers to itself as mvfx (manex visual effects) what they formerly were is mass illusions....much more impressive than the matrix was their work on what dreams may come...
matthew
The Matrix has at least one glaring error in the special effects. Watch the rooftop scene where Neo dodges the bullets of the man in black. Neo drops his guns to his side, then when they show him dodging the bullets and do the panoramic shot, the guns are gone. When he falls down, the guns are back.
How could they miss this?
-A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Hasn't anyone seen packages such as Hudini? I work for a major computer OEM in the US, and I am constantly working with both hardware and software vendors to understand and appreciate this simple fact: Advanced graphics hardware and high-end CAD/CAM packages run better, faster, more robust, and with more stability using Linux, than with that other "industry-standard" OS. I have witnessed this fact, and I am confident that there are others out there, like me, who see the need to sing high the praises of the Linux graphical architecture and the opportunity it provides to bring new heights of hardware and software performance. Regards, Alex Shows
Try 3DCafe.com's job listing page.
---
"...silence is a dangerous sound."
Yeah, and what are you doing with it except for keeping it on your hard drive and bragging about it? Working on a Toy Story 2 movie after school perhaps?
My company makes some of this software and I am not happy to see you pirating my work.
You're better off moving to LA, working for a few years, then trying to start something in NY. Visual effects artists don't have permanent jobs that you fill out an application to and everything is cut and dried. You have to pretty much go out and find a client who needs something done like a commercial and show them that you can get it done better than anyone else. There are a lot more clients in LA than NY. Another thing you should do is start working on stuff right now and put it on the internet. Don't put up a jpg but put up the entire movie. You'll also want to get a reset button that you can just click on instead of leaning over and feeling around the case. This kind of work requires a lot of rebooting if you get my drift.
I've got these in 320x480 24fps. 20 megs a pop.
Fortunately, the new PCs are blisteringly fast, and Linux is a wonderful development environment. My company has a slight advantage, when moving to Linux, in that we write all of our own tools; and it's been quite easy to port them to Linux for the most part. SGI has some wonderful hardware and software integration (particularly for multimedia) that I can't match yet; but I'm sure it's coming. In house tools are a slight advantage because Side Effects is porting Houdini to Linux; and I'm sure that Alias and Softimage will follow soon.
I'm desparately trying to promote the use of Linux in the visual effects community -- to the point of giving away free year-long licenses of our in-house tools to anybody who wants them. So far, though, the penetration of Linux in the FX field is so small that I've had relatively few takers.
The next big thing, of course, is the release of the DRI/XFree86 4.0. This will give us hardware-accelerated OpenGL for everybody; and at that point I expect Linux to take off (or crash and burn with conviction :)) in the FX arena.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Montreal is also a stone's throw from the NY state border so you wouldn't be living far from home. Don't worry, you don't *need* to know French to get by in Montreal... but it's useful.
Of course, if this is *really* what you want to do, you'll probably want to go to California. NYC gets a lot of film work, but most of these companies get the 3D art done in California (since it's next to home) or outside of the US (Canada or Europe... maybe a few other places too) because it's cheaper.
Erm, better make that Toy Story 3... Toy Story 2 is coming out this month :) I'd like to see somebody brag about having open source tools nearly as good as some of this sw. Till then, anybody serious about production work should be paying for their sw.
There has been a misinformation campaign by the Australian press to make out that the visual effects for The Matrix were Australian. The main company behind the vfx was Manex Visual Effects http://www.mvfx.com. Animal Logic and D-Film in Australia were also involved and between them did more shots (and damn good work too) but technical innovation (eg. the bullet time rig) were from Manex (although the rig was physically built on the East Coast at Innovation Arts). The effects supervisor was based at Manex and Manex was the central coordinating location where standards were set. One Australian magazine, in a desperate attempt to make Australians seem the heroes, actually claimed Manex was Australian! Everything was shot in Australia though. Of course working at Manex doesn't make me biased or anything... BTW At NAB last year an Aussie came up to me and asked me about the Matrix crew gear I was wearing. When I said I did vfx in California for the Matrix he accused me of being a liar because all the effects were Australian and he walked off disgustedly. It was certainly a successful press campaign! Dan Piponi, Head of R&D, Manex Visual Effects
-- SIGFPE
If you're looking for the big 3d companies, ILM (George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic), as well as Pixar and a few others are really big. The question is, do you really want to be buried in a team of 100 animators?
I've found that startups are always a much more fun and dynamic way to work in technology, as well as allowing you to take a big place even if you're young.
http://www.logient.com
... open up there software? What I'm thinking of, is along the lines of going to each effects house, and seeing if they'd be willing to (L)GPL their software. Try to do it by reciprocal agreement - ie if such and such FX shops will open their software will you? This would provide the possiblitiy for improving the quality of tools in all of the movie houses, it would allow potential prospects to use the graphics software that they would be using on the job, hence significantly reducing training costs, it will reduce maintenance costs of the various tools, it might allow a merge among the various tools resulting in overall more powerful tools... (For instance the place the makes Blender has suggested already that they may GPL it...)
...
Comments, suggestions
LetterRip
WETA is Peter Jackson's special/vfx that he's using in the ubercool upcoming "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The shooting location for those movies is in New Zealand, so that's where they're working right now, but I'm unsure of where their permanent base of operations are.
For the trilogy, at least, I've read that the special fx are not really Matrixish, but still damn cool. They have a software program called MASSIVE which will be largely responsible for creating and animating in a true-to-life manner armies of 400,000+ orcs in complex battle scenes. WETA is also creating a character for the movie -- Gollum -- and all reports say that Gollum is the most lifelike, unfake pure fx character yet. Furthermore, they're using CGI to shrink the actors playing hobbits to half their normal size or so. Finally, they're altering the filmed landscape in subtle ways to make it more magical.
For more info, see:
Ringbearer.org
The Official Movie Site with preview stills
The principle of aggrandizement is the fundamental law of every government. - Frederick the Great
i you want a job at pixar, ilm...etc any of the bug names, i hope you have your PhD from a very respected school. a highly educated friend of mine (she know all things computer graphics) was offered a job at ILM doing "nightly backups". this is how the graphics idustry works.
10 years ago I was working as a sound designer/sound editor at a commercial postproduction-editing house. We used to get these yellow books (The size was like a zagat restaurant guide maybe a bit longer. I would like to give you the name but unfortunately my copy was taken) that listed the addresses of every editing, special effects, lighting, audio, and equipment rental house in the city. When we needed effects work done we went over to R. Greenberg which was on west 39th street (they did the original effects for Predator and many other movies and commercials) I'm not sure if they are still in business, but its worth a try. It's important to understand that during that time only very large and successful companies could afford cutting edge digital equipment, now there are many more mom & pop effects houses out there. Also be prepared to start out as a messenger, most companies start people out that way than promote them internally to assistant editor or FX guy.
Good Luck
I recently saw a school out on the east coast that does a 14 month (?) intensive digital graphics program. It is a very new school but they do nothing but digital graphics and sound. Check it out- Expression Center for new Media
-BF
-BF
I think you're lying.
you should check out some of the stuff that has been done in my research group...
http://www.CS.Berkeley.EDU/~debevec/
matthew
Write your own and open it. If you don't like that then you can play around with mine (currently some innovative terrain generation tricks combined with techniques for POV-Ray rendering), but frankly it would be best if you wrote your own. Do the work, and free it. Trying to talk a bunch of IP holders into opening their stuff just because it's a good idea is a very hard sell. It's the whole 'stone soup' concept- you have to start with _something_. What I have may not be much, I think it has potential- anyone who thinks it is crap is invited to GPL something better, please >;)
I would like to see a movie studio dedicated to open content, so people could focus on the stories they are telling. Desktop movie production is coming so soon, and it will be as much a revolution as the cassette multitrack home studio- and there are so many people working on things (such as computer game design and graphic effects) that could easily be applied to home moviemaking. There are GIF animation tools and computer image compositing tools available that do the same thing as the multimillion dollar Disney Multiplane camera used for Disney's greatest animated features.
Rather than going begging to effects houses, why don't we just arrange it so they end up coming to us? If I'm not mistaken, my terrain generation trick is markedly less demanding on CPU than the techniques used, say, for the pod racer scenes in Star Wars TPM. Cutting down modelling and render times is incredibly important in professional work, there's never enough time so it's always a balance being struck between vision and reality. I've GPLed my terrain generator program, meaning that anyone who either uses a Mac, or can port a Python-like syntax to another platform, can use it in movies for nothing. Anyone who really wants that industry's technology to open up would be well advised to do their level best to accomplish _something_ cool, GPL it, and then simply let it be known as such- other stuff that wants to incorporate this can do so by going GPL itself, and we don't need to beg or pressure anybody. Really, IP on these sorts of tools is a bit like IP on brushes or pencils- you don't copyright the brush, you copyright the painting you do with it. The brush is not important compared with what's being done with it...
Jaja.. Matrix was done down here, just around the corner at Animal Logic and some other stuff at Dfilm(?). Theres quite a few effects houses in syd, but i still say you're better off going for a smaller place, you tend to get paid more and more respect. Ive worked in the bigger places and it borders on slave labour, although you do get more programmer types there, and this means you can squeeze them for special routines :o) There is a mailing list (Digital labourers federation)(run by a guy from animal logic/omnilab i forget) quite a few peeps from ilm etc are on it, and jobs do float past.. http://www.dlf.org.au/ ./DuRab www.cotse.com www.2600.org.au
Associated with Otago University computer science dept Animation Research Limited has done some pretty impressive stuff http://www.arl.co.nz mostly because they actually write the graphics stuff they use Dave B
I'm heading in the same direction, but more on the art/animation side.. From my research and word of mouth I hear that the demand for technical animators is very high, much higher then artists, if you've written some plug-ins for some high end packages and know them in and out, you've pretty much got an in on a high paying job. BTW exstensive UNIX exp.(Irix and such) is a must. dunno about schools... cogswell or maybe sheridan?
-= Briareos =-
http://www.subvoyant.com nuff said
Avid bought SoftImage from M$, and you need to be more specific on your berating. Make sure that you are compairing apples with apples (no pun intended). If you are going to be compairing hardware compair it to hardware. The same goes for OSes.
I personally would love to see some of the highend 3D packages ported to Linux so I could choose what hardware I run it on. No matter if it be Mac, Intel, Alpha, Sun, or your old Amiga (probably not viable, but thrown in for the hell of it).
On a more basic level you have to keep in mind that it is the artist and not the tools. Without the artist the tools sit idle. Just my two cents.
-Sol
Kleizer Walczak in North Adams, MA, did special effects for "The Rage: Carrie 2" and "Judge Dredd". It's four hours from New York City.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
I may have missed it, but I don't think anyone mentioned Disney Feature Animation in LA. They spend so much money on toys it's ridiculous. Very cutting edge and I know they hire college grads straight out to do technology development (they recruit pretty heavily at my school). Give 'em a try... can't hurt to talk to them.
Funny how I see people mentioning Montreal and only think of Softimage. Montreal is loaded with graphics software companies, and probably one of the best places to live in north america (except for the high taxes). Check out the following companies:
c s.html
http://www.discreet.com
http://www.lightscape.com
http://www.kaydara.com
http://www.dnasoft.com
http://www.softimage.com
http://www.toonboom.com
http://www.matrox.com
http://www.cae.com
http://www.haptech.com
and more. Check out this page for more computer graphics in Canada:
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/van/cangraphi
...but I'm digressing, the original poster had a question was for NY. Check out the following link for a cool description of life in this place:
http://jobs.zeroknowledge.com/
Move on your talent up here!
don't forget mainframe productions -creators of the excellent 'Reboot', the pretty good 'War Planets' and the excrebal 'Beast Wars?' here's a link to mainframe and other 3-d animation: http://3d-design.com/magazine/july97/07feature2.ht ml
One word, Digial Domain. the best effects company to date. http://www.d2.com
What? Check out Blue Sky Studios. They only use raytracing.
The film industry is pretty specific with regard to this. No reel, no job.
Fortunately, the equipment necessary to cut CG shots to video is pretty cheap these days, so all you really need to put in is the talent and hard work. (easier said than done, of course)
My advice to you (and this will likely raise howls of protest from many) is to warez (or, if youre extraordinarily rich, buy) whatever package will do the job for you and get as much quality work onto tape as you can. As one poster pointed out previously, its unlikely any individual is going to be able to shell out the $17,000 for a legal seat of Houdini, but one more skilled operator means at least one more sale in the future for Side Effects, those that the software is useless to would never buy it anyway... so i don't see the 'revenue loss' there. Please no flames, i don't want to start any piracy wars.
If youre not already in the industry, its probably harder to put together a lengthy demo tape, since you can't put a 3 minute sequence on there and note that you painted out the wires attached to the actor or whatever.
Still, the idea is to show off your abilities as much as possible, so it might be an idea to put down 'process-related' stuff, i.e. how you worked an idea from concept through to completion. i.e when you do an animation sequence, put your final rendered sequence at the beginning of the tape, then put on your animatics, your concept sketches, your set models etc. This gives a prospective emplyer a better view of not just what you can produce (lets face it, its bloody hard to do film-quality f/x on a desktop PC), but how much work you did to achieve your result, how you solved production problems etc. These things are just as important as your ability to produce a good looking result.
Although, in most large film f/x houses, the workflow is pretty compartmentalised - that is, if you want to do 'everything' - script, model, animate, production, post-production, direction, scoring and anything else you have time for, then you might find life difficult.
That is, in most cases you'll get a job doing one thing, one thing only, and that one thing is what will dominate your life for the duration of production.
The games industry might be more interesting, i know it is for me. Personally, i don't really 'get' movies.. Games are so much more interesting and immersive to me. YMMV.
I do a lot of stuff with Lightwave (www.newtek.com), and a little bit of Hash's Animation Master, which is the one package in the 3D animation arena that is actually affordable (Blender (www.blender.nl) is of course completely free, and deserves special mention). mainly as a hobby but i have been approached by a film f/x house, who said they were impressed but were worried that i might not enjoy doing just one task... (my background spans many areas, from 3D AutoCAD operation, to CGI programming)
i agreed with them, and frankly, my skills aren't quite honed enough for me to command a lead animator's position, or high-level TD, which might afford me the ability to work in a number of areas within the film production pipeline.
So, I just keep plugging away, modelling, animating and rendering stuff, which is a lot of fun. I pay the bills by doing CGI programming, teaching at a design school and working on te production crew for multimedia exhibitions.
I am 100% confident that i will be easily good enough to get a job 'in pixels', or to start my own games/fx company one day, but be aware that the only way to get there is to put in 150% effort, since making quality CG artwork is not as easy as it looks.
my 2c
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long