Weta - Software engineering

Maybe a possible person to contact:

Jack Greasley:

"Jack Greasley is a senior R&D Engineer at Weta Digital specializing in interactive artist tools. He has been working in Visual Effects for 6 years now (Previously at Framestore-CFC in London) and before that worked in the TV and games industries. He has written software that has been used on Harry Potters 3,4 and 5, Troy, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Fantastic Four, and the upcoming James Cameron film Avatar. His main areas of interest are GPU acceleration of image processing techniques, large image dataset managment, GUI techniques for artist use and photorealistic realtime rendering. He is currently running a project at Weta to create a 3D texture painting system. "

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Software engineering for visual effects at Weta Digital

Date: Friday 6 March
Time: 3:10 p.m. Location: Room 031, Erskine Building
Contact: For further information regarding this event, please contact Dr. R. Mukundan by sending email to mukundan@canterbury.ac.nz or by calling 7770
Audience: University staff and students

Computer Science and Software Engineering is hosting a seminar by Marcus Schoo and Jack Greasley on "Software engineering for visual effects at Weta Digital".

(Note: Weta Digital has requested that no part of the seminar be recorded in any form)

Synopsis:

The seminar will give an overview of some of the technologies, methodologies, problems and peculiarities of writing software in a film production environment. The aim of the seminar would be to give the students some idea of what it can be like in the real world when deadlines and creative demands drive development. The talk also will cover some of the more cutting edge techniques we've been developing for GPU acceleration of real-time tools and natural effects.

Biography:

Marcus Schoo graduated with BSc (Mathematics, Computer Science) and BSc Hons (Computer Science) from the University of Canterbury in 2006. Since then he has been an R&D Engineer at Weta Digital, specialising in interactive artists tools, specifically relating to texturing/painting and lighting. The code he has written has been used on The Chronicles of Narnia, Jumper, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and James Cameron's upcoming Avatar. More recently he has started working on ways to approximate slow production quality lighting techniques in realtime.

Jack Greasley is a senior R&D Engineer at Weta Digital specializing in interactive artist tools. He has been working in Visual Effects for 6 years now (Previously at Framestore-CFC in London) and before that worked in the TV and games industries. He has written software that has been used on Harry Potters 3,4 and 5, Troy, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Fantastic Four, and the upcoming James Cameron film Avatar. His main areas of interest are GPU acceleration of image processing techniques, large image dataset managment, GUI techniques for artist use and photorealistic realtime rendering. He is currently running a project at Weta to create a 3D texture painting system.