Press Release

The Foundry, leading developer of visual effects software whose products have been used to make globally acclaimed movies such as Avatar, is pleased to announce that Soho VFX, a world-class visual effects facility with studios in Toronto and Los Angeles, has invested heavily in Nuke.
 
Bill Collis, CEO, The Foundry, said,
 
“We are delighted to welcome Soho VFX into the Nuke family. We spent a lot of time working closely with Soho VFX to ensure that Nuke was going to fit nicely into their current pipeline. It is a big decision to change a business’ complete pipeline over to a new product, no matter what it is. There are many areas the tools and companies need to ensure line up and we were very pleased to have been involved from the outset.”
 
Allan Magled, CEO, Soho VFX, said,
 
“Soho VFX, like many facilities today, has spent years building a scalable workflow to satisfy the growing demands of the visual effects industry. This is not a simple task.

Ideally we need to ensure that the compositing tools that we use are fast, reliable, extremely customizable and that they enable us to push the boundaries of creativity. Most importantly they need to run on a variety of hardware platforms and work seamlessly with a multitude of other applications that are used across our facilities daily.

Our Nuke evaluation was quite lengthy.  We looked very closely at render and desktop performance over several iterations of the product. Integration into our current environment from both a developers and 2D Artist’s standpoint was very important to us and, as such, we spent a lot of time looking at scripting and internal development tools in Nuke as well as ease of use in transitioning from our previous compositing application.  Lastly we took a strong look at the development history and future road map of Nuke to ensure its direction matched our own.

In doing so we have found Nuke to be a polished compositing suite with a long and bright future.”

About The Foundry
 
The Foundry is a world-leading innovator of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity in motion picture and video post-production.
 
The Foundry has a well-established client base that includes leading visual effects facilities worldwide, such as Warner Bros, The Moving Picture Company, Weta Digital, Framestore, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain. It is at the cutting edge of software development, marketing and sales for visual effects compositing.
 
In June 2009 The Foundry announced a management buyout for an undisclosed sum led by Advent Venture Partners. Advent backed The Foundry’s management team, led by CEO Dr Bill Collis and the original founders.
 
The Foundry is highly profitable and has more than doubled in size in the past two years.
 
The Foundry’s products support a wide range of award-winning host platforms including After Effects, Autodesk Media and Entertainment Systems, Avid DS, Nuke, Shake and Final Cut Pro. In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award® to The Foundry’s development team for the Furnace image processing suite – and the company now holds two products with AMPAS Sci-Tech Award® winning technology including high-end compositing system Nuke.
 
The Foundry is headquartered in London, and has offices in Los Angeles. For more information please visit: www.thefoundry.co.uk

The Foundry, its logo and product names are registered trademarks in the UK, USA and/or other countries. Academy Award is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

About Soho VFX
 
Since its inception eight years ago, Soho VFX has pushed the boundaries of the visual effects industry, contributing effects to over 40 productions including such titles as Xmen Origins: Wolverine, The Incredible Hulk and The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe.

The company, currently based in Toronto and Los Angeles, celebrates a talented team of veteran animators, digital artists and software developers that have defined Soho VFX as an industry leader specializing in bringing to life photorealistic characters and creatures through creative animation processes and highly customized 3d skin and fur tools.

Two of the partners, Allan Magled and Berj Bannayan started out in the visual effects industry more then a decade ago. Allan began as a 3D animator and visual effects artist working on numerous television and feature film productions in addition to instructing artists at a local college. Berj, with an honours degree in computer science worked as a director of research and development and eventually a senior software developer for a number of reputable companies.

Together Allan and Berj along with Mike Mombourquette, a seven-year veteran in the commercial/post industry founded Soho VFX in March of 2002. Allan assumed the role of lead visual effects supervisor, Berj as lead software developer and Mike as a senior compositor. With their collaborative vision and exceptional skills Allan, Berj and Mike have created a full service facility providing cutting edge visual effects and on-set production services.

The partners dedication and success has gained Soho VFX a reputation as a leading visual effects facility that continues to exceed expectations and standards in every production they are a part of, from small independent works to large scale feature films.

For more information please visit: www.sohovfx.com