Weta Digital buys Nuke site licence

July 6, 2009

Source: The Foundry

The Foundry announced that Weta Digital, New Zealand’s premier multi-award winning VFX studio, has purchased a site licence of Nuke to enhance its in-house pipeline.

Weta Digital was formed in 1993 by a group of young New Zealand filmmakers including Peter Jackson to create effects for his Heavenly Creatures project.

Since receiving critical acclaim for its VFX work on this project, the company has gone from strength-to-strength producing astonishing effects for Jackson’s subsequent blockbusters King Kong and The Lord of The Rings. Weta Digital’s talents have also been employed by many
other Hollywood directors and can be seen on box office hits including I, Robot, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Day The Earth Stood Still and Jumper. In total its efforts have netted the company five Academy Awards® for Best Visual Effects

Paul Ryan, chief technology officer at Weta Digital, commented: "With ambitious projects on the slate, we need to ensure we have the best tools at our disposal. Our long-standing relationship with The Foundry and our faith in their product development, support and focus on producing a truly useful artist tool set, have given us the
confidence to make this investment. We have a lot of challenges ahead and are looking forward to seeing the difference that Nuke makes to our workflow.”

Mat Welford, head of 2D at Weta Digital, added: “We have been employing The Foundry’s software here at Weta since purchasing Furnace for some tricky work on The Lord of The Rings Trilogy. Since taking on the development and support of Nuke, The Foundry has demonstrated the same commitment they have always applied to their plug-in business. Nuke is a great compositing tool that extends the parameters that a 2D artist usually works within. My team and I are looking forward to putting it through its paces on a large project.”

Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry, commented, "Weta is one of a few studios that sets the bar when it comes to VFX. The Foundry has been lucky enough to enjoy a very collaborative working relationship with them for many years. Their work on Avatar has been key in helping us
develop our stereo plug-in set – Ocula – and we are delighted that, having been using Nuke on a smaller scale, they have taken the decision to roll it our across their site.“

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