“Ziva is spreading throughout the industry and studios are telling us they want as many experts as they can get,” said James Jacobs, CEO of Ziva Dynamics. “With Ziva VFX Academic, students will be able to afford the latest advancements, helping them build skills that will increase their marketability after graduation.”

Used on everything from Venom to Mackevision’s VES Award-nominated PETA ad, Ziva VFX fundamentally changes the character creation process by combining the effects of real-world physics with the rapid creation of soft-tissue materials like muscles, fat and skin. Since Ziva mirrors the properties of nature, artists can produce CG characters that automatically move, flex and jiggle just as they would in real life, removing difficult steps from the rigging process.

“Traditional approaches such as shot sculpting and correctives have poor scalability,” said Lasse Rasmussen, VFX pro and educator (One of Us, TrueMax Academy). “Tissue simulation is the only way to hit the precision studios expect and Ziva is the only commercially available tool that can do it.”

As Rasmussen advises his own students, the rising demand for 3D characters is only going to make simulation knowledge more valuable as time goes on. “It’s not just about film VFX,” he says. “It’s something game developers also want to see. Displaying any kind of aptitude with simulation software is going to give aspiring VFX artists an edge.”