Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/541232
www.postmagazine.com 6 POST JULY 2015 LOCAL HERO EMPLOYS SCRATCH WEB FOR REVIEW SANTA MONICA — Finishing house Local Hero has converted to Scratch Web for all Web review needs. Leandro Marini, founder and colorist at Local Hero, says that their pipeline is already based on Assimilate's Scratch, so it made sense to add the Scratch Web built-in cloud tools. "We use it for all Web dailies review, all Web VFX review, all Web color re- view, and even for publishing entire films for online review," says Marini. Scratch Web can be used for many different things, but is basically a simple, fast way to publish anything in a Scratch timeline to the cloud for personal or public viewing. It eliminates the need to create QuickTimes or move from the dailies or finishing system in order to upload a review version for a client or for future reference. It's also an interactive tool: clients can enter per-shot notes into the cloud timeline and those notes automatically sync back to the colorist or VFX artist that published the timeline. The artist can then make changes, and re-upload just the changed shots allowing for a fast and efficient review via a feedback loop with clients or vendors outside the facility. Recently, Local Hero chose Scratch Web over Pix or Dax for all the dailies reviews of a major studio film. Executives at the studio were pleased with the result and requested to use it on their next film. Another example is VFX review. "We used Scratch Web exclusively as a Web review tool for I Remember You, a film we produced in-house that featured a significant amount of VFX," explains Marini. "It was also used as the general database for all VFX and acted as a visual gallery for the state of all VFX on the film, allowing for multiple versions to be quickly reviewed and notes given. It allowed Local Hero to keep the VFX review process streamlined and in context with the rest of the film." Marini believes Scratch Web adds a new dimension to the Scratch ecosys- tem. "It's fast, really fast," he notes. "From the moment I hit publish on a shot inside my grading suite, to the moment a client halfway around the world reviews it in their browser, the time is usually under :30. It's also very respon- sive. You can be in your Web browser, scrolling around hundreds of shots and the moment your play head lands on a frame, it plays. It became very clear that we needed to consolidate all our disparate Web review tools and just use Scratch Web." For more on "Remote Collaboration," turn to page 20. BITS & PIECES CHAOS GROUP ADDS VR CAPABILITIES TO V-RAY 3.2 FOR 3DS MAX SOFIA, BULGARIA — Chaos Group (www.chaosgroup.com) announces V-Ray 3.2 for 3DS Max, adding VR rendering capabilities and multiple V-Ray RT GPU enhancements. The free update also includes improved volume rendering, dis- tributed rendering, and global illumination. "VR is one of the most exciting things to happen to CG in the last decade," says Vladimir Koylazov, Chaos Group co-founder and lead developer of V-Ray. "Now V-Ray artists can easily view their designs in VR." Among the new features included are two new VR camera types to render stereo cube maps and spherical stereo images for VR headsets such as Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR. Improvements to V-Ray RT GPU include displacement, anisotropic highlights, composite map, output curves, texture bak- ing, UDIM support (MARI) and QMC sampling on Nvidia Cuda. Other features include volume rendering, which adds support for Open- VDB, Field3D, and Phoenix FD volume grid formats and distributed rendering, which lets users add or re- move distributed rendering nodes on the fly. V-Ray 3.2 for 3DS Max is a free update for all V-Ray 3.0 customers.