Conference The State of VFX Then & Now
ON SITE Bertha-Benz-Saal Wednesday, May 07, 11:15

Nuke: From its Beginnings to Today

Jonathan Egstad worked at Digital Domain as an artist and supervisor at the incredible time that Nuke was born. There, he had a keen hand it how it would be designed. After working at other facilities including ImageMovers Digital and DreamWorks Animation, Egstad is now Senior Product Innovation Manager at Foundry, again working on Nuke. With befores & afters editor-in-chief Ian Failes, Egstad will share untold stories from Nuke’s beginnings, and answer your questions about the history of the compositing tool. You'll even get to see some old-school Nuke interfaces!

Jonathan Egstad

Jonathan Egstad, Senior Product Innovation Manager, Foundry

Jonathan has been involved in digital imaging, feature-animation lighting/compositing, digital compositing, and color technology for over 30 years and has worked on 20+ feature films as a compositor, supervisor and production tools engineer.While working in visual-effects production at Digital Domain Jonathan was a principal architect of the third-generation Nuke compositing software which is now ubiquitous in the industry. He was responsible for designing and implementing many of its groundbreaking and now industry-standard features including its multi-channel workflow, integrated 3D support and camera projection/rendering.Jonathan joined Foundry in 2020 to continue working on the development of Nuke with a focus on creating a modernized 3D system, multi-shot system, and other innovative features and workflows.In 2018 Jonathan was awarded an Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for the visionary design, development, and stewardship of the Nuke compositing system. This is an upgrade from his previous 2002 Academy Technical Achievement Award for helping develop the in-house NUKE-2D compositing software at Digital Domain.In 2020 Jonathan was awarded an Engineering Emmy for his contributions to the design and development of Nuke.Educated in film and television production at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts, Jonathan spent four years working in video postproduction engineering before joining Digital Domain in 1993.

Ian Failes

Ian Failes, Editor-in-Chief, befores & afters

Ian Failes is a journalist based in Sydney specialising in visual effects and animation. Ian recently launched his own VFX and animation publication called befores & afters (beforesandafters.com) and an accompanying print magazine. He has written for fxguide, Cartoon Brew, VFX Voice, 3D Artist, 3D World and many other publications. Ian is the author of the book, ‘Masters of FX’. He holds the world's largest collection of memorabilia from the film Speed.