One thing we’ve wanted to do with the blog is to let members know what is going on in other classes…things they might have missed. The heart of fxphd has always been compositing, and our first ever advanced Nuke course has been a lot of fun. Taught by longtime Nuke artist Sean Devereaux, it’s our first course done in version 5. Devereaux has been using the app for years…he’s done time at DD working on Star Trek: Nemsis, I, Robot, and the recent Speed Racer.

Since it is an advanced course, due to the complexity of a shot, we decided to cover a single shot over multiple classes. It’s an HD resolution greenscreen shot covering matchmoving, keying, object replacement, and environment creation. Deveraux coordinated the generation of assets from other fxphd profs and artists around the world — including tracking data, 3D object creation for projections, and multi-channel open EXR CGI renders. It’s about 1TB of material per course member — that’s a hell of a lot of bandwidth.

On top of the great project-based classes, the last two classes of the term are sure to be hit. We’ve got guest prof