fxguide is in New Zealand to sit down with Weta Digital's senior VFX supervisor Joe Letteri to discuss The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - visiting Gollum and the world of Middle-earth, this time in stereo and at 48fps.

This week we report from SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 in Singapore. The guys see how EA Sports use Side Effects Houdini in their game creation, and go behind the scenes at the fun Emerging Tech exhibition.

We visit CBS Digital in Los Angeles to check out their restoration work on the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" TV series, all completed on Flame, Flare, Smoke, Lustre, and Inferno.

This week on fxguidetv we're at Atomic Fiction to discuss Robert Zemeckis' Flight with vfx sup. Kevin Baillie. The film's dramatic crash sequence relied on live action backgrounds captured with a three-RED EPIC rig, multiple cockpit + fuselage gimbals and a CG airplane !

This week we go behind the scenes of our fx2012 practical and digital effects workshop at 32TEN Studios in San Rafael, and we preview the October 2012 vfx training courses available at fxphd.

This week, a special double episode going behind the scenes of The Foundry-Luxology merger and behind the scenes of Sony Pictures Animation's new film Hotel Transylvania.

This week we have a tutorial from Image Engine lead texture painter Justin Holt about his work on Battleship using The Foundry's Mari tool. This session was recorded at SIGGRAPH 2012 in LA.

At IBC, Autodesk is showing a dramatically redesigned Flame, which will be the next version which ships to customers. We visited Montreal and spoke with lead product designer Philippe Soeiro about the changes and got a first hand look at the new workflow.

This week we celebrate 20 years of Sony Pictures Imageworks, and 10 years of Sony Pictures Animation. Mike Seymour talks to SPI visual effects supervisors Ken Ralston and Jay Redd, and CTO Rob Bredow, about some of their key projects over the past two decades.

In part 2 of our SIGGRAPH LA 2012 coverage, we look at a hands-on robotic emerging tech shown at the conference, iKinema's LiveAction real-time software and we get a sneak-peek at the next release of The Foundry's NUKE.