iA

Profile

/*jupiter jazz*/ is a collective of visual developers backed up by a private and independent company, Jupiter Jazz Ltd.

We are a heterogeneous and eclectic group of individuals, a symbiosis of skill sets in vastly differing domains.  You can think of us as specialized artisans in the field of imagery, with ideas, techniques and workflows that have their roots in high-end Visual Effects and R&D.

The collective, founded in January 2007 by Paolo Berto, is backed up by a privately-funded and fully independent company Jupiter Jazz Ltd. with the group members acting as mercenaries. The company is strategically based in Hong Kong to efficiently cover the emerging Asian markets, but we serve clients worldwide.

After publishing and contributing on several OpenSource projects the company now directly produces commercial software, with our first product, AtomKraft.

AtomKraft

AtomKraft turns Nuke into a complete Look Development, Re-Lighting & Re-Rendering solution enabling studios to alleviate the use of 3D packages for this part of the production pipeline.

Software

We provide a wide spectrum of software tools under different licensing schemes:

Consulting

Traditionally our name is more known in the world of rendering, technical direction, software R&D and in general for the whole CGI animation pipeline, but our research is focused on all aspects of design, from software design → to graphic design → to product design.

We usually provide R&D consulting services to:

  • VFX production companies
  • CG software companies

We also provide consulting services in a broader field of imagery involving Design and Visual Arts, here’s a short list of things we like to do:

  • Industrial design, analysis and production
  • Scientific, industrial, architectural visualization
  • Development of visual arts systems for expositions, events, fairs & campaigns
  • CG Education for organizations & universities. Read more about our Educational Portfolio

Drop us a line at software@jupiter-jazz.com if you’re interested in our software products and consulting services.

Design

We are more and more involved with real world product design challenges, therefore we recently started up a branch focusing on it named /*made on jupiter*/, it is led by Tom Kluyskens in New Zealand.

Evolution into a group

Originally /*jupiter jazz*/ was the tag attached to the activities of Paolo in the world of visual research. Then, because of the globetrotting nature of his work, he had the chance to meet a bunch of great people in several production studios and software companies. Most of them had spent a decade or longer in the VFX and R&D trenches. They all shared the same thoughts on what they wanted to change about how they worked with others and the nature of their work itself. But there is only so much one can achieve as a singular entity…

The necessary consequence was to join forces and evolve into a more decentralized and flexible world-wide collective. Essentially, by forming the /*jupiter jazz*/ group we cover much broader areas of knowledge and we avoid reinventing the wheel™.

Now we work faster, better and, more importantly, less! — backed by a lifestyle much more fitting to our freedom-longing souls.

Origins of the name

The origin of the /*jupiter jazz*/ name are to be found in episodes 12 & 13 entitled Jupiter Jazz (Part 1 & Part 2) of the superlative Japanese animé series “Cowboy Bebop” by Shinichirō Watanabe. The logo is wrapped as C-style multi line comment.

There have been several graphic designs based on this name and refer to them as ‘campaigns’. Commonly, but not necessarily, the main page of this site randomly displays one of them.