So you want to be independent? Freelancing and running your own small business can be fun and rewarding. However, there's more to it than just being good at what you do. This course is an introduction to the business of being an independent business owner. We will cover topics relating to the type of business you should form, as well as to marketing and advertising, financing, and paying yourself. Many freelance designers are very skilled engineers and artists; this course takes an approach that keeps that in mind. You will learn about community resources and online tools that make managing your business easier so you can focus on your clients.

This class is about understanding human and animal anatomy and how that internal structure relates to external movement. Increasing demands for realism place a greater emphasis on accurately recreating the subtle details of motion and skin deformation. To recreate anything accurately, we first need to understand it. In this class, we explore foundation concepts of movement from an anatomical perspective. What are the different tissue types that are involved in movement and what are their properties? What forces are involved in moving and how do anatomical structures relate to these forces? What are the limitations of different parts of the body and how does all of this relate to what the viewer accepts as feeling real? Though mainly conceptual, this class also goes into specifics about creature design, topology layout, joint placement, and more. This class is not specific to any software package but is designed to be directly relevant to those who have an interest in animation, modeling, and rigging.

Visualizing a complex project requires creation of high-quality images for print, video, interactive, virtual reality (VR), and more. Print and video may require full-featured renderers such as Arnold or V-Ray, while interactive and VR demand real-time engines such as Unreal and Unity. These competing requirements often create conflicts, making it difficult to manage large projects. The solution is to create flexible rendering pipelines that can deliver many different outputs with a minimum of fuss. This course will explore ways to optimize your projects for easy rendering across multiple engines and formats. This includes setting up elements such as geometry, lighting, textures, and materials so they can be used throughout the project. The course will show how to move as seamlessly as possible between technologies—including 3ds Max software, Maya software, Arnold, V-Ray, Substance, Unreal, and Unity—in a production environment.

This course will show designers, architects, and engineers how to make better and more-appealing animations for visualization, architecture, and design. Taught by an animation-industry veteran, this fast-moving presentation will take the basic principles of animation and use them to demonstrate ways to make your animations more visually appealing and easier to understand. The course will cover such topics as the importance of design and layout and the importance of storytelling, and we’ll discuss maintaining proper timing and adding weight. We will also cover technical topics such as animation curves, motion paths, and procedural animation, but in a non-software-specific way to make the topics and processes accessible to all. This session features 3ds Max and Maya. AIA Approved

After collaborating on the award-winning feature Arrival, Framestore reunited with visionary director Denis Villeneuve for the 2017 science-fiction sequel Blade Runner 2049. In this session, Framestore will discuss the visual artistry and tools that contributed to the film's distinct look, and, in the spirit of Blade Runner 2049, we'll touch upon the trends that are shaping the future of visual effects.

Learn techniques that can speed up your day when you are working in Maya software to help you make better-looking art. It covers all aspects of Maya, including hidden hot keys, working with motion capture, getting faster renders, speeding up playback, and old school tips and tricks.

Our demonstration will focus on 3ds Max and its powerful extendability through scripts and plugins. Many 3D artists use both for bespoke workflows. With Maxscript knowledge, an artist has the ability to write useful tools to help with simple tasks. Writing bespoke C++ plugins, SiNi employs the full power of multi-threaded CPU processing, meaning our tools are many times more efficient and powerful that Maxscript. We will demonstrate how SiNi Software's suite of tools assist artists at every stage of production in all industries and types of work. As an independent Authorised Autodesk developer, we support many leading third-party renderers, plugins and file formats in 3ds Max, simplifying time-consuming tasks to a few clicks. Finally, we will discuss issues with multi-software workflows, (Revit, AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Maya, Unreal), and software ideas to simplify the pipeline.

Subdivision bodies are a type of geometry in Alias software that provides smooth continuous surfaces for the creation of objects and organic shapes. Alias subdivision bodies are compatible with standard Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces, which makes them like subdivision surfaces in other content creation applications such as Maya software and 3ds Max software. However, Alias subdivision bodies are a collection of continuous NURBS surface patches, so they also inherit characteristics from Alias surfaces. This means that Alias subdivision bodies include the strengths of Alias NURBS surfaces and traditional subdivision surfaces. This class will cover the new subdivision tools and integrated workflows in Alias.

Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the biggest films of 2015, a thrill-seeking, high-octane adrenaline rush. Directed by George Miller, Fury Road is the fourth film in a franchise that was born in the 1970s and has continued to excite ever since. In this talk, Iloura's Greg O'Connor will explain how he led a team of artists and technicians through production to manage the large assets that were required to create the Citadel location, the stronghold of Immortan Joe. He will show you how to use Maya to manage high density 3D scan geometry and align photoscan camera sequences for projection in a real time environment, how to present real time images to your client for immediate feedback, and explore how to take advantage of interactive lighting, as well as real time representation of normal, displacement maps and textures. If you’re interested in learning how you can better utilize Maya for production and efficiency, this talk is for you.

Whiteclouds is a 3D printing and design service bureau. We offer a wide array of 3D printing. We have become very skilled and proficient with taking a CAD file and converting it to be able to 3D print a detailed and colorful scale model. This roundtable discussion will focus on converting files created with Autodesk software such as Revit to make them a 3D printable file.

This course will present case studies of resident projects that were fabricated at the Autodesk Technology Centers. These case studies will focus on the robotic workflows for AEC, describing both the robotic software (examples include Autodesk Maya, Machina, ABB RobotStudio, PowerMill) and the challenges overcome from troubleshooting physical constraints. Attendees will gain knowledge in various approaches to robotic fabrication and how this informs the move to automate fabrication at the construction site. Case studies examples: Perkins and Will’s Mass timber pavilion fabrication utilizing workflow of suction grippers, drills, saws and nail guns; Mad Workshop’s Arroyo Bridge- a 75 ft pedestrian bridge utilizing a robot to position 600 steel members in unique places for a manual welding process; AI SpaceFactory’s MARSHA -a 15 ft structure made from biopolymer basalt composite utilizing additive workflow; and Apis Cor’s 3-D printed 2-story, 12,000 sq. ft concrete building.

Solomon Rogers, founder of Rewind.co a world-renowned and award-winning virtual reality production agency, will take you through a brief history of a technology that seems to be have been around for decades, yet has never really got traction…until now. Delve deeply into the various technologies, techniques, and strategies used to create amazing immersive and commercially viable content. Sol will focus on examples of 360 immersive video in work for Björk, the high-octane Red Bull Air Race VR simulator, and the stunning interactive showrooms for Lexus vehicles. Rewind worked directly with Red Bull to create the world’s first Red Bull Air Race Virtual Reality Simulator. The experience enables members of the public to sit directly in the pilot’s chair and experience the blistering pace and quick turns of an Air Racer, putting them as close to the action as possible. Rewind will bring hardware and demonstrations to experience and explore and try firsthand. http://rewind.co/portfolio/red-bull-air-race/

This class will cover the story and the key technicalities of My Home Experience, an ambitious project that is replacing “normal” decorated apartments by customizable virtual reality (VR) ones all across Brazil. We will start by showing off how a partnership between IM Designs and MRV is helping change the way people experience their dream homes. We’ll then dive into how to prepare your data set to fit your immersive technology (XR) hardware. For that, we’ll show how we solved performance and hardware limitation issues while achieving incredibly realistic looks through a series of optimization techniques in 3ds Max software, and we’ll explain their impact on real-time rendering. You’ll gain info about light baking, UVs, retopology, RTT for baking AO, normals, and more. On the hardware side, we’ll see how those techniques affect your GPU, CPU, and memory, and how to profile them to boost rendering performance. We’ll then finish by showing off the final implementation in untethered VR, and its challenges. We hope everyone learns a lot from our case.

What, why and how you can leverage the Autodesk App Store to find new customers, grow your sales internationally, and engage Autodesk customers across platforms and industries - AEC, Mfg, Infrastructure, Revit, Navisworks, BIM 360, Inventor, Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Civil 3D Max, Maya and more! (Joint AU/Forge DevCon class).

Autodesk Certification signifies your experience and expertise to employers and clients around the world. Preparing to take the certification exam is highly recommended, and you should structure your examination preparation for success using the exam roadmaps and this virtual course as study guides. This virtual Maya Certification Preparation course is intended to serve as preparation for either the user or professional exam by introducing the exam categories and certification objectives in a workflow based manner in Maya. The course will step through each category using relevant examples, and provide valuable insight for the exam. In preparation for the exam, we encourage you to watch this virtual course in combination with hands-on time in the application to increase your understanding of the concepts and skills. We wish you the best of luck!