The Foundry hosted a free Nuke Masterclass in Mumbai on November 23rd attended by around 250 visual effects artists and professionals. Speakers from studios like Image Engine and Double Negative discussed the latest features and techniques in Nuke 6 and Nuke X. Sessions covered topics like color workflow, plug-ins, tracking, stereo correction, and lens distortion. A demo reel from the film Aladin was also shown. Participants received discounts on purchasing Nuke software. The Foundry aims to make the Masterclass an annual event based on the positive response.

1. The Foundry conducts Nuke Masterclass in Mumbai
The Foundry hosted Nuke Masterclass on 23rd November 09 at PVR Phoenix Mills, Mumbai. The
entry was free to compositors, artists, supervisors, technicians, senior staffs and VFX
enthusiasts and the event was attended by around 250 artists and professionals.
The line up of speakers included Shervin Shoghian, Compositing Supervisor at Image Engine,
Roy Seltzer, Technical Director at Double Negative, Vamsi Ayyagari, Senior Executive Producer,
EyeQube, Soumyadip Chakraborty, Associate Compositing Supervisor at EyeQube, Jon
Wadelton, Lead Nuke Engineer at The Foundry and Simon Robinson, Chief Scientist of The
Foundry. The CEO of The Foundry Bill Collis was also present at the event.
Talking to AnimationXpress.com founder of FX-Graphics and coordinator of Nuke Masterclass
Mumbai Vivek Malhotra said, “We held a Masterclass in London last year and the response was
very positive. We have now many customers of Nuke already in Mumbai and thought of doing
the same here as our customers should also get to meet The Foundry team and be able to
interact with them on a one to one basis. Getting in the guys who work day in and day out on a
compositing software was our first priority as they would be the ones to appreciate what they
see and also interact constructively”
Sessions were on the latest features of Nuke 6 and Nuke X, colour workflow, demonstration of
the plug-ins in Nuke, latest algorithms and techniques, tracking, point clouds, Ocula stereo
correction, Lens distortion tool and depth maps. A demo reel of the Hindi film Aladin was also
showcased with the before and after shots. Each session ended with a constructive Q&A
session.
“Nuke is a single-shot effects platform which caters to the entire needs of a VFX film. Nuke
was originally developed at Digital Domain; it was developed for artists, by artists. Nuke
provides stability, features and reliability. We also have also recently started a HPC
department where we focus on high-performance parallel processing.” quoted the Chief
Scientist of The Foundry Simon Robinson.
Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry added, “We want to keep developing and enhancing Nuke. We
are going to bring 40 to 50 tutorials each of 10 minute duration for the community.”
Shervin Shoghian, Compositor Supervisor at the Image Engine has been working on the beta of
Nuke 6 and Nuke X. He has been testing the beta for almost 4 to 5 months. “Nuke is fast,
flexible, versatile and open software. The Foundry is always open to suggestions and depending
on the complexity of the fault, bugs and errors were corrected almost instantaneously.” said
Shervin.
The latest of version of Nuke 6 and Nuke X are going to be released in a month’s time.
At the end of the session, the participants of the seminar were announced a discount of 20% on
Nuke 6 (USD 2800 + USD 1000 maintenance/year) and 40% on Nuke X (USD 3600 + USD 1200
maintenance/year).The Foundry team is planning to make Nuke Masterclass Mumbai a yearly
event after the success and appreciation they got from the event.