befores & afters magazine

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This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the release of #topgun. A few years ago, for fxguide, I spoke to Top Gun’s special photographic effects supervisor Gary Gutierrez about the work done at Colossal Pictures/USF on the film, including the miniature jet photography. One cool aspect was mimicking a 'shaky cam' look to the miniature photography, which was done by bolting on a drill attached to an off-set piece of wood to the camera in order to give the shots an unbalanced and ‘shaky' feel. "It’s now become part of the bag of techniques in CG to take the curse off of a shot, to add in deliberate imperfections that you might get in live action photography,” Gutierrez told me. Congrats on 40 years, Top Gun! Can't wait for more of these films to come...

The latest ‘From classroom to credits’ story at @beforesmag is now up! In it, we hear from @campusvfx graduate Vania Ruano, now a compositor at Sony Pictures @imageworksvfx with credits that include KPop Demon Hunters, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Some great insights here into getting into compositing: /2026/05/16/from-classroom-to-credits-4/ #vfxinsight

Demerzel’s fate —> Bringing the robot character to life, and death, for season 3 of ‘Foundation’: a new excerpt from @beforesmag magazine. Here we look at the work surrounding Demerzel led by @outpostvfx , both for her ‘head removal’ shots, and eventual demise. Plus work crafted by @craftyapesvfx . Great to chat to @chrismacvfx , Mathieu Assemat and Damien Hurgon about all this work. Read the excerpt here: /2026/05/15/demerzels-fate/

What the world needs right now is this video of @thehughjackman interacting with sheep stuffies --> A collection of b-roll from ‘The Sheep Detectives’, showcasing the stuffies and on-set stand-ins for the sheep in the film. Watch at the @beforesmag YouTube channel: /watch?v=mK_6LIu9SGo #vfx #thesheepdetectives

Oh man - what a week at the 2026 @fmxconference conference in Stuttgart --> It was an incredible experience getting to interview @rolandemmerich on stage about the 30th anniversary of 'Independence Day', and then also going to a special screening of the film, where he and Volker Engel did a very fun intro to the movie. (My highlight was the audience cheering at Roland's credit, and then also cheering at Volker's...and everyone staying for the whole credits). I also had a blast on stage for my other 'Then & Now' presentations, which included with Rejean Gagne on the history of Softimage, @andy_kaiser_animation on his stop-motion animated and VistaVision shot film 'The Lighthouse Keeper', and with @hugocguerra for our LIVE VFX Notes podcast on the greatest VFX shot in history. The conference would not be possible without the dedicated work of the FMX team - big shout-out to Patricia Rohr, Vanessa Steinmann, Bernd Haasis and Mario Müller (his last year at FMX - Mario, I can't thank you enough for supporting 'Then & Now' each year). Looking forward to working with incoming project manager @agonushaku on future FMXes. Also wanted to give a special shout-out to @jonaskluger and @kluger_vfx for hanging with me in Munich before and after the conference. Munich is so beautiful! Keep an eye out at @beforesmag for plans for Then & Now for FMX 2027 (yes, we're already devising new presentations...) And thanks to everyone who came along to my sessions! Photographer credit: Dominique Brewing.

More of the @acmsiggraph #siggraph2026 schedule has been published --> A huge number of Talks have been announced, covering projects like Fire and Ash, Stranger Things 5, Toy Story 5, and more. The secret weapon of SIGGRAPH — Talks — have been announced for 2026. These sessions are some of my favorite things to attend at the conference. This is because, in relation to VFX and animation, they tend to be focused, in-depth presentations on very specific aspects of a production. Sometimes they are the ONLY place where these aspects get discussed. Here’s a run-down of sessions at @beforesmag featuring Talks by @laikastudios , @pixar , @framestore , @wetafxofficial and @imageworksvfx (and these are touch the surface of the Talks on offer): /2026/05/14/more-of-the-siggraph-2026-schedule-has-been-published/

Watch @dneg ’s VFX breakdown for ‘Mickey 17’ --> Watch in full at @beforesmag : /2026/05/14/watch-dnegs-vfx-breakdown-for-mickey-17/ And don't forget to check out the full-length befores & afters magazine on Mickey 17 here: /beforesandafters/shop/issue-32-mickey-17-digital-1781348

@zibra.ai , the Ukrainian deep tech startup behind ZibraVDB, has announced the Open Beta for its latest technology, ZibraGDS (Geometry Data Structure). While ZibraVDB is a highly efficient data compression and real-time rendering technology for volumetric effects, ZibraGDS applies the same concept to geometry-based animation sequences. For virtual production and games, it enables a wide range of high-fidelity effects such as water, destruction, abstract effects, growth simulations, vegetation, cloth, and characters. It can handle thousands of frames and millions of polygons per frame at production-ready frame rates. The core idea of ZibraGDS is to alleviate the data streaming bottleneck and enhance GPU utilization, and the breakthrough step that made this possible is Zibra AI’s proprietary high-performance, multi-attribute geometry compression engine that can achieve up to 92% in data size reduction. But compression is only half the picture. The developers said that significant efforts were devoted to the real-time rendering part of the pipeline, to ensure every stage of the GPU pipeline is optimized for both memory and speed. Meshes are subdivided into meshlets at the compression stage. During rendering, ZibraGDS only decompresses and draws the meshlets that are visible and the ones that affect lighting. This meaningfully reduces both VRAM consumption and rendering workload, providing significantly better performance compared to traditional approaches, delivering 6–10x faster rendering. According to the developers, the foundational work they have done so far for ZibraGDS also enables them to extend support to point clouds and hair curves in the future, two features frequently requested by the community. The Open Beta will run for a month, from April 29 to May 29, 2026. The version of ZibraGDS for the Open Beta is compatible with Unreal Engine 5.3–5.7. Support for other engines and DCCs are currently on their roadmap. Sign up for the Open Beta here: https://www.zibra.ai/zibragds #vfxinsight #zibraai #zibraVDB #unrealengine #beta

Go behind the scenes of 'Remarkably Bright Creatures' --> This Netflix featurette includes VFX supervisor Chris Ritvo from @untold_studios . Watch in full at @beforesmag : /2026/05/13/go-behind-the-scenes-of-remarkably-bright-creatures/

☄️ In-depth on the VFX of 'Foundation', season 3! Issue #55 of @beforesmag magazine covers the visual effects of s3 of 'Foundation', including all the key locations, battles, chases, characters and surprises. Overseeing 'Foundation' season 3’s visual effects work was production visual effects supervisor @chrismacvfx , who was also one of the second unit directors. He worked hand-in-hand with showrunner @davidsgoyer and production designer @rory_cheyne1 , among many others, to flesh out the world of 'Foundation', further guiding a global network of visual effects vendors in crafting the show’s signature look. In this special issue of befores & afters magazine, MacLean and a bevy of supervisors representing the VFX vendors— @rodeofx_film.episodic , @framestore , @accenturesong , @outpostvfx , @pfxcompany , @craftyapesvfx , @ssvfx.ie , @otomo_fx and @botvfx —break down key sequences and signature moments from season 3. Really fun chatting to so many supervisors on the show, including Chris MacLean, Arnaud Brisebois, Carlos Monzon, Mathieu Assemat, Ed Bruce, Stephan Schäfholz, David Anastácio Ferreira, Bernd Nalbach, Nico Klein, Martin Lapp, Falk Lude, Sean Pollack, Elanchezhiyan A A, Damien Hurgon, Stephen Elphick, Anya Vinnik, Jindřich Červenka + David Goyer and Kathy Chasen-Hay DIGITAL: /posts/issue-55-season-157928419 SUBSCRIBE: /c/beforesandafters/membership PRINT: USA: /dp/B0H1CXJH3T UK: /dp/B0H1CXJH3T Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Germany: /dp/B0H1CXJH3T France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Australia: .au/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Sweden: https://www.amazon.se/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Poland: https://www.amazon.pl/dp/B0H1CXJH3T Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0H1CXJH3T

🧊 Brand new VFX event in Melbourne coming up --> @framestore ’s visual effects for Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age! We're excited here at the @melbournesiggraph ACM Chapter to work together with the Melbourne Houdini User Group MelHUG to present a detailed insight into Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age. Featured speaker: Edward Ferrysienanda, FX Supervisor, Framestore Date and time: Tuesday 26th May, 6pm to 9pm Location: Framestore Melbourne, Level 4/476 St Kilda Road, Melbourne Event: Includes networking and drinks and special give-aways from @sidefxhoudini IMPORTANT: Only attendees who RSVP may attend this event. Attendees must pre-sign an NDA prior to attending the event (this will be sent out to attendees beforehand) RSVP here: /framestore_prehistoricplanet