NAB 2019: A Whirlwind Week in Pictures
NAB 2019 has come and gone and with it, there was a lot of product announcements, parties, and stimuli! I’m sure you’ve already heard about the big announcements from Maxon, Autodesk, Blackmagic, and others, and I’ll link to them below. With NAB, each year it seems like there’s some sort of a theme happening.
The Show Floor
Maxon Booth
Andrew Kramer’s presentation was jam-packed with people, not surprisingly. We first learned that Cinema 4D was the 2019 NAB Product of the Year. We also learned about Redshift joining the Maxon Family as soon as we arrived at the booth. Exciting news!
Maxon Acquires Redshift Rendering Technologies
This is one that surprised me the most. I didn’t see that one coming! Maxon announced the acquisition of Redshift Rendering Technologies, Inc., developers of the Redshift rendering engine.
Andrew showed some interesting techniques in Cinema 4D, but the highlight of his presentation was a quick demo of his upcoming plug-in called Nebula 3D. His demo will certainly be on the archives of the livestream from C4DLive.com, which we will likely have up in the next week or so.
Nick Campbell from Greyscalegorilla at the Maxon booth.
Nebula 3D is a plug-in for creating volumetric clouds in After Effects. Yes, I first saw the presentation at the Maxon booth, where Andrew mentioned to not mention too much about it because it isn’t ready, but then it was on the live stream, and he showed it at the Adobe booth later, so the word is out! Below, there is a video of Andrew from the Adobe booth.
The Adobe Booth
I didn’t catch many presentations at Adobe this year but here’s Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot’s presentation.
Random Photos from the Show Floor, NAB 2019
The Autodesk Suite showing Flame 2020.
AI/Machine Learning/Deep Learning is Everywhere at NAB 2019
In the past decade, it has been topics like 8K, VR, drones, and stereoscopic video that dominate the news. This year it was robot and AI….. AI, Deep learning, and Machine Learning and robotic arms for cameras, that is. They had an AI educational area, which didn’t seem to have anything of interest to me when I was available, but talking to vendors on the floor, AI and Machine Learning is everywhere and included in products that we use every day. This AI is not flashy or sexy. It’s all under the hood and improves the workflow and usability of products. A few products jump to mind:
- Adobe Sensei is AI and is used in Adobe Creative Cloud.
- iZotope RX used machine learning for pulling out the human voice to reduce noise. They also use it in other products.
- Digital Anarchy Transcriptive uses AI to turn speech in your video into text
- Autodesk Flame 2020 uses AI to extract Z-depth and create 3D normals, useful in relighting.
- Blackmagic Design Davinci Resolve 16 includes AI-powered editing with their Blackmagic Neural Engine.
And, the number of robotic arms with cameras was just crazy. I’ll bet I saw twenty of them! Stay tuned to Toolfarm for a deep dive into AI and Machine Learning over the next few months.
Here’s an example of a robot arm.
NAB 2019 Events
Mograph Meetup at Beerhaus
We arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday and our first event was the Mograph Meetup at Beerhaus. Early on, we saw a lot of people at the event, including folks from Boris FX and Maxon. We ended up having a great conversation with Alejandro Brubaker, who is Co-Founder of Sugar Skull Creative. He was presenting at the Boris FX booth all week, so Google him. We met some really cool artists from Miami too (pictured). We handed out some Toolfarm lip balms.
MediaMotion Ball Volunteer Breakfast
Monday is always the busiest day for me during NAB week. On Monday morning at 7 AM, we first had the volunteer breakfast for the MediaMotion Ball at The Peppermill. The Peppermill is known for massive breakfasts and fun, kitschy decor. It was great to see old friends and there were a few new faces this year too. We had a meeting afterward in the parking lot and took a fun group shot in front of The Peppermill.
OFX Meeting
After breakfast, at 10:00, I lead the Open Effects (OFX) meeting with an overview of what hosts and plug-ins are available currently for OFX. I showed reels of OFX hosts FXhome HitFilm Pro and SilhouetteFX, as well as reels about OFX, supported plug-ins from Digital Film Tools, NewBlueFX, Kognat, and Red Giant. After I presented, Brian Fox of Boris FX and Pierre Jasmin of RE:Vision Effects presented. Brian announced that Autodesk Flame 2020 will support OFX plug-ins, including Boris Sapphire, which is pretty exciting. Dennis Adams of Sony and Peter Huisma of Assimilate also gave followups about OFX.
Boris FX’s Sapphire VFX Plug-ins Add OFX Support for Flame
Good news coming out of NAB this week for Autodesk users. Boris FX Sapphire will soon have OFX support for Autodesk Flame 2020.
If you’d like to learn more about OFX, take a look at my article Burning Questions: What in the heck is OFX? They finished with the Annual General Meeting.
The 22nd Annual MediaMotion Ball
The big event of the week to us is the MediaMotion Ball. The core team that puts the event on each year really puts their hearts and souls into it. This year it was held again at the SLS Ballroom. Toolfarm sponsors the event and also volunteers with photos and social media. My husband, Dan Terpstra, is a photographer and he came along once again, and he handles the red carpet photos as well as candid shots. Talon Rudel, an alum from my university who is now working for FX Network, came to help with photography once again.
Dan and Talon took thousands of photos from the event. You can see them all on the MediaMotion Ball 2019 Gallery on Facebook. Below is just a taste.
Posted by Michele Yamazaki
