Info from Ninja Crayon:

Digital Media Artists / Los Angeles (DMA/LA) is an association for professionals creating imagery for video, film, and other media using desktop tools. MGLA was formed in August 1997 through the merger of several previously-existing groups. DMA/LA is an extention of that - continuing in 2008. DMA/LA's area of discussions are not restricted to a specific hardware or software solution, understanding that an artist often has to employ 2D, 3D, and other digital tools to realize their vision - and that artistic inspiration can be universal.

Lineup: Q&A with Tom Luth / SonicFire SmartSound / Trapcode Horizon / Chevon Hicks - HeavenSpot

7:00 - 7:30 Q&A with Tom Luth

In addition to a short Q&A session, DMA's Tom Luth will show off the bit of title design that we missed last month.

7:30 - 7:55 Smartsound SonicFire 5.

With the new version soon to be released, Stephanie Joyce will be presenting a sneak peek for us at DMA/LA. If you're a motion graphics artist or producer, you'll want to be sure to see the new features.

Stephanie will be demonstrating all the amazing new features in SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 5. Building on the recent success of their Multi-Layer Music and the famous Mood Mapping® feature, the new Sonicfire Pro 5 does things you never imagined possible with library music. Want to move a music beat to align with an event in your video? Come check it out.

8:05 - 8:30 Trapcode Horizon

Presented by Sean Safreed of Red Giant Software (site to all Trapcode, Magic Bullet, Knoll Light Factory Pro, Instant HD and more), Trapcode Horizon is the latest offering from Peder Norrby for After Effects users. Taking advantage of some simple steps, AE users can create scenes that, well, stretch to an unending horizon.

8:35 - 8:55 Break

Get to know some of the other members, grab a snack or drink in the lobby, or ask the presenters some of those questions you didn't want to raise your hand for.

9:00 - 9:50 Chevon Hicks : Heavenspot

Chevon will be presenting some of the company's recent work for FOX's NASHVILLE which will incorporate both motion graphics for promo and interactive. It is a great case study on a newly emerging trend, where the website design took an interesting influence on the broadcast look.

Door Prizes will include great prizes from our friends at: Black Magic Design/ Adobe / Artbeats / Red Giant Software / Smartsound / Automatic Duck / Toolfarm / Ballistic Publishing / Focal Press / 12" Design / Gridiron Software And More...

New Members welcome: JOIN (free of course)

If you have any announcements about jobs, projects or other employment opportunities, please contact Tom Luth (tom luth @ aol . com) (remove spaces).

And again, thanks to Adobe's sponsorship of DMA/LA this year, admission is free!

* Tony, Warren, Ed, Tom and Ko
Your co-hosts

Labels: Adobe, ArtBeats, Automatic Duck, DMA/LA, GridIron, Ko Maruyama, Red Giant, SmartSound

Dennis Radeke is organizer of the Adobe event later this month on May 29 near B&H at the New Yorker Hotel's Crystal Ballroom on the 2nd floor. There will be two sessions, 11am-3:30pm and 3:30pm-8pm.

From Dennis' Blog, The Genesis Project:

Additionally, rather than have the event be static where you sit and we talk, it is a twofold event. In one area, you'll have a large room where many of the vendors will present their products and workflows throughout the day in rapid fire 20 minute presentations. I hope that one of the highlights to these 20 minute demos will be a 20 minute technology preview demo of some stuff we're working on that I think you will find VERY helpful.

The event will have onsite representation from Adobe, AJA, Blackmagic Design, B&H, CalDigit, DigiEffects, GenArts, GridIron, Matrox, Maxon, MOTU, Wacom and Zoomin Online (aka Magnet Media).

They're giving away LOADS of prizes from these sponsors too. If you're in NYC at the end of May, this is a free event. Don't miss it. Register now!

Labels: Adobe, DigiEffects, Event, GenArts, GridIron, Wacom Tablets, Zoom in Online

One of the biggest Plugged-In podcasts ever, Show 21 NAB Special Edition! Keith Larsen and Alan Spaulding talk to dozens of guests.

From the NAB Show

Rob Birnholz, Absolute Motion Graphics
www.absolutemotiongraphics.com

Zax Dow, Zaxwerks
www.zaxwerks.com

John Dickinson, Motionworks
www.motionworks.com.au

Harry Frank, Gray Machine
www.graymachine.com

Jim Tierney, Digital Anarchy
www.digitalanarchy.com

Wes & Harry Plate, Automatic Duck
www.automaticduck.com

Dan May, BlackMagic Design
www.blackmagic-design.com

Stephanie Joyce, SmartSound
www.smartsound.com

From the FCPUG SuperMeet

Kristi Prost, Larry Jordan Associates
www.larryjordan.biz

Jay Ignaszeski, Tek Serve
www.tekserve.com

Kevin Fischer, Lite Panels
www.litepanels.com

Kevan O'Brien, Adobe
www.adobe.com

Ben Syverson, DV Garage/PixelCorps
www.dvgarage.com

Brendan Cass, Quantum
www.quantum.com

Dan Montgomery, Imagine
www.imagineproducts.com

Marco Solario, Cinesoft
www.mediabatch.com

Francisco Scartozzi, Matrox
www.matrox.com

Frank George, Roland
www.roland.com

Jeff Greenberg, Philadelphia FCPUG
www.finalcutpronews.com

Greg Clarke, Open Television Network
www.opentvnetwork.com

Damon Hampson, Peachpit Press
www.peachpit.com

Jim Davis, LaCie
www.lacie.com

Justin McCarthy, Albatat
www.albatat.com

Jon Schilling, CalDigit
www.caldigit.com

Peter Wiggins, Ricardo Silva & Nancy Schopoff, Noise Industries
www.noiseindustries.com

Norman Zeledon, GMax Storage Solutions, LLC
www.gmaxstorage.com

Sharon Cedars, Lynda.com
www.lynda.com

Roger Mabon, G-Tech
www.g-technology.com

Steve Forde, Gridiron Software
www.gridironsoftware.com

Chris Heffner, Other World Computing
www.macsales.com

Simon Hollingworth & Victoria Battison, BlackMagic Design
www.balckmagic-design.com

Bernie Mitchell, Silver Platter Productions,
www.panasonic.com

Call the podcast toll free: 877-809-8145

TRT: 135 min.

Labels: Adobe, Automatic Duck, Digital Anarchy, GridIron, NAB, Noise Industries, Podcast, Zaxwerks

The GridIron team will be showing off their just announced software, GridIron Flow, and Todd Prives from GenArts will be showing off Sapphire. Door prizes include stuff from Toolfarm (yeah, that's us!) GenArts, Video Copilot, Zaxwerks and more.

It's Thursday, January 24, 2008, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM at the Pratt Manhattan 144 West 14th Street (b/w 6th and 7th Ave), Room 213. It's free to attend thanks to Adobe and Pratt.

Labels: After Effects, GenArts, GridIron, GridIron Flow

Save 30% on Nucleo and Nucleo Pro until 11:59pm on Friday, December 7. GridIron plug-ins are made to speed up your work in After Effects and Nucleo Pro even supports several 3D apps like Lightwave, Maya, 3Ds Max, XSI, Shake and Cinema 4D. Background rendering is all the rage for 2008. Don't miss out on this awesome deal!

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo, Nucleo Pro, Sale

Save 30% on all GridIron plug-ins from Monday, December 3 (12:00am PST) to Friday, December 7 (11:59pm PST).

GridIron Nucleo Pro 2 is the professional After Effects tool that allows you to get a better handle on your After Effects workflow. Instead of just standard AE renders and previews, Nucleo Pro 2 gives you the opportunity to choose how you work best. It also supports several 3D apps.

GridIron Nucleo is a high performance workflow plugin that will let you get the most out of After Effects 6.5 & 7 on your multi-core or multi-processor workstation. Maximizing CPU usage to deliver faster renders and previews, Nucleo gives you more time to be creative.

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo, Nucleo Pro, Sale

Studio Daily has a Click-thru Tutorial: Gridiron Nucleo Pro 2. Great timing, with it being ON SALE TODAY ONLY. You could call it a One Day Sale.

Toolfarm Specials - click that link to buy GridIron Nucleo Pro 2 or an upgrade at today's special price.

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo Pro, One Day Sale, Studio Daily, Tutorial

Save $100 on GridIron Nucleo Pro 2 today only. Normally it sells for $395 but get it today for just $295.

The upgrades are also marked down today.

• GridIron Nucleo Pro 2 Upgrade from Nucleo
• GridIron Nucleo Pro 2 Upgrade from Nucleo Pro 1

The sale is Thursday, September 27 only, from 12:00am to 11:59pm EST... yes, that's Eastern Standard Time. Tell all your friends!

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo Pro, One Day Sale

I've always thought the GridIron logos for Nucleo and Nucleo Pro are just lovely. They're simple, clean and happy. The GridIron logo has also been updated and the new one is great! What do you think?

Labels: GridIron

Ottawa, ON, Canada - September 6, 2007 - GridIron® Software (www.gridironsoftware.com), a leading provider of high performance workflow software, today announced the appointment of Tom Goguen as Chief Marketing Officer. Tom brings to GridIron over 20 years of marketing and engineering experience developing innovative new products and successfully bringing those products to market. As GridIron's Chief Marketing Officer Tom's responsibilities will include all GridIron branding, marketing, and business development activities from product concept through to demand creation and sales. Tom will be based out of GridIron's satellite office in San Jose, California.

"Tom's experience and proven track record as a marketing leader will be a great asset for implementing our growth plan, enhancing our offerings, and developing new strategic partnerships," said Steve Forde, CEO of GridIron Software. "We are excited to have such a high caliber executive on our team and look forward to Tom's leadership, as he helps us to continue to grow the company and build our innovative next generation product line for creative professionals."

Prior to joining GridIron, Tom was Vice President of Sun's Solaris software marketing organization, with overall responsibility for managing the Solaris business including Solaris 10 and the OpenSolaris community, Sun Cluster, and Sun's storage software products. Tom also led product marketing for Apple's move into the server, storage, and desktop management software markets with responsibility for popular Apple software products including Mac OS X Server, Apple Remote Desktop, and Xsan.

Tom studied electrical engineering and holds a master's degree from the University of Ottawa and a bachelor's degree from the University of New Brunswick.

About GridIron Software

GridIron Software was founded in 2001 to develop tools to bring parallel computing to a wide variety of markets and applications. Today, GridIron is a leading provider of high performance workflow software for motion graphics professionals, with a proven set of products that allow users to improve their overall project efficiency. The company continues to leverage its unique expertise to offer innovative new products for the creative professional market.

Labels: GridIron

Ottawa, ON, Canada July 30, 2007 - GridIron® Software today announced the availability of Nucleo® Pro 2, an upgrade to the productivity enhancement tool that optimizes the workflow for visual effects artists using Adobe® After Effects®. With workflow enhancements like Spec Preview, Spec Render, Commit to Disk, and Background Render, Nucleo Pro allows creative professional users to harness the full power of their multi-processor or multi-core computer.

New Features in Nucleo Pro 2

Nucleo Pro 2 expands the workflow possibilities with support for 3D rendering applications in the Background Render Queue and Pre-Composition Proxies.

Background Render Queue for 3D Applications

With Nucleo Pro 2, motion graphics artists can manage After Effects and 3D renders from one convenient spot. Simply drag projects for any of the supported applications into the Background Render Queue. Then specify the appropriate render settings and allow Nucleo Pro to initiate and manage the render in the background. Support is available for most popular 3D rendering applications, including: Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, Maxon Cinema 4D, Newtek LightWave, Softimage XSI, and Apple Shake.

Pre-Composition Proxies

After Effects allows compositions in a timeline to be represented by pre-rendered frames to improve preview performance. This is known as proxying. Nucleo Pro 2's Pre-Composition Proxy feature makes proxying extremely simple by allowing the addition of a proxy with a single keystroke. If a proxied composition is changed, Nucleo Pro 2 re-renders only the modified frames in the background, then updates the composition's proxy automatically. After Effects users now have an easy way to proxy without ever having to worry about a proxy getting out of date, or ever having to manually render and import the proxy frames.

"It's important for creative professionals to work in a fluid environment, where they can move easily between different programs and maintain their creative momentum. GridIron Software addresses this need with Nucleo Pro 2, which allows Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max users to render projects in the background, while continuing their work in our 3D animation, modeling and rendering applications," said Rob Hoffmann, senior product marketing manager at Autodesk.

"The Orphanage had direct input on the feature request list for the release of Nucleo Pro 2. We’re happy to see the ability to cache pre-composition proxies made the cut. This allows us a new way to tag parts of a clip to be rendered in the background, as well as later apply updates only to the necessary frames in the render," said Stu Maschwitz, Co-Founder and CTO at The Orphanage.

Pricing and Availability

• Nucleo Pro 2 ($395 US) supports all versions of Adobe After Effects version 7.0 and the new After Effects CS3 Professional on both Windows and Mac OS X.
• Nucleo Pro 1 customers may upgrade to Nucleo Pro 2 for $99.
• Nucleo customers may upgrade to Nucleo Pro 2 for $350.

About GridIron Software

GridIron Software is the leading software provider in high performance workflow. GridIron’s mission is to provide tools that leverage its unique expertise in parallel programming and system optimization, for the creative content professional. With products that allow users to improve and expand their workflow, GridIron is the market leader in developing efficiencies for the creative professional.

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo, Nucleo Pro

GridIron Nucleo Pro 2 is now available. Nucleo Pro 2 is the professional After Effects tool that allows you to get a better handle on your After Effects workflow. Instead of just standard AE renders and previews, Nucleo Pro 2 gives you the opportunity to choose how you work best.

Nucleo Pro 2 offers After Effects professionals a wealth of new rendering and preview tools that help to optimize your time and customize the way you work. It also supports several 3D hosts, including Maxon Cinema 4D, LightWave, and even Apple Shake!

Labels: 3D Studio Max, After Effects, GridIron, Maxon Cinema 4D, Maya, Nucleo

Customize how nested compositions are rendered to further streamline productivity

DMN Newswire--2007-3-27--GridIron® Software today announced Nucleo Pro® 2, an upgrade to the productivity enhancement tool that optimizes the workflow for visual effects artists using Adobe® After Effects®. Nucleo Pro is well-known for its speculative and background rendering capabilities that allow motion graphics artists to render and work at the same time.

Nucleo Pro 2 (due to ship in early summer 2007) will support After Effects CS3 Professional and all versions of After Effects 7. New features of Nucleo Pro 2 include the ability specify how nested compositions are rendered and run renders of their favorite 3D applications in the Nucleo Pro Background Render Queue.

Labels: After Effects, GridIron, Maxon Cinema 4D, Maya, Nucleo, Shake

The price of GridIron Nucleo for Adobe After Effects has plumetted from $149.95 to $49.95. That's $100 less... now that's significant!

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo

Adobe After Effects New York (AENY) first meeting is set for February 22. There is no fee for this event, thanks to sponsorship from Adobe and Pratt Manhattan. They are covering Maxon Cinema 4D 10 and After Effects Integration, as well as Mograph, Stephen Neary will present "Bigfoot's Eulogy" and Aharon Rabinowitz will be presenting some quick After Effects tips. I met Aharon at NAB NY.

They're giving away LOADS of door prizes including Red Giant Software: Magic Bullet Suite, MB Colorista and Trapcode Suite (all Trapcode Plug-ins), three Wondertouch particleIllusion licenses, GridIron Nucleo and Nucleo Pro, Cinema 4D and Mograph, Sorenson Squeeze Power Pack, Automatic Duck, Digital Anarchy PlasmaFX, Cycore FX and more. Wow.... good stuff, indeed.

Labels: Adobe, After Effects, Automatic Duck, Colorista, Digital Anarchy, Free, GridIron, Magic Bullet, Maxon Cinema 4D, PlasmaFX, plug-ins, Red Giant, Trapcode, User Group

Friday, February 2nd is GridIron's 6th Birthday, and to celebrate, we're having a one day sale!

From 12.01am to 11.59pm Eastern Standard Time on Friday, February 2nd, any purchase you make at our online shop will be 20% off the regular price. This makes Nucleo Pro a mere $315, upgrades to Nucleo Pro from Nucleo only $240, and basic Nucleo just $119.

You *must* act quickly though - these sale prices are good on February 2nd only, and won't be extended beyond the sale date.

Support for Windows Vista

For any users upgrading to Windows Vista, we thought we'd let you know that Nucleo and Nucleo Pro do support this new OS in current releases. No need to worry - you'll be able to get all of the same benefits of Nucleo and Nucleo Pro on Vista that you'll have seen in Windows XP.

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo, One Day Sale

Andy Yardy of MicroFilmmaker Magazine has a terrific review of GridIron's Nucleo Pro. He gives it a total score of 9.5 out of 10.

Read the review of Nucleo Pro

By the way, you probably noticed our new site design. Have you seen the new and improved reviews section?

Labels: GridIron, Nucleo, reviews

Good until Dec 31st, 2006, GridIron has announced 20% discounts:

• GridIron Nucleo Pro - Get it for only $316 (reg. $395)
• Upgrade from Nucleo to Pro for $240
• Nucleo $119 (reg. $149.95)

Labels: After Effects, GridIron, Nucleo