Autodesk Launches Pre-SIGGRAPH 2022 ‘Virtual Vision Series’

Autodesk is teaming up with top studios and creatives to offer its virtual “Vision Series” August 3–4, a series of presentations coming right before SIGGRAPH 2022 happening next month in Vancouver. The lineup offers behind-the-scenes looks at top project workflows while highlighting the use of Maya, 3ds Max, Bifrost, Arnold, Flame, and ShotGrid to streamline production across film, TV, and games.

Registration is free and required to attend. Register here.

Creatives from WB Games Avalanche, Playground Games, Crafty Apes, IGNITE Animation Studios, Crater Studio, Megalis VFX, edstudios, and others will lead Autodesk’s online series:

Wednesday, August 3:

12:00 pm ET: Forza Horizon 5: Exploring Next-Gen Content Creation Pipeline

• Playground Games' Dan Wulczynski offers a behind-the-scenes look at next-gen content creation on Forza Horizon 5. Learn how Autodesk tools were critical during development, including insights on how 3ds Max helped the team produce scalable content for Xbox and PC.

3:00 pm ET: Bifrost Procedures for Film & TV at Crafty Apes

• Explore practical production applications for harnessing Bifrost’s procedural capabilities in each pipeline step while learning how to art-direct complex, layered effects, read images directly in the graph, iterate rapid prototypes, and build useful tools for Maya in Bifrost.

6:00 pm ET: WB Games Avalanche: An Inside Look at Hogwarts Legacy

• Discover how Hogwarts Legacy characters, animations, and cinematics were created and refined using Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder and brought to life in Unreal Engine. From virtual production performance captures and character rigs to real-time cinematics, take an in-depth dive into the project and learn how Avalanche used an Autodesk ShotGrid pipeline for cloud-based tracking and review.

7:30 pm ET: Breathing Life into the Japanese-Inspired World of ONI: The Thunder God’s Tale

• Explore the charming creatures and fantastical worlds of the upcoming TV series, ONI: The Thunder God’s Tale. VFX Supervisor and DFX Supervisor of Megalis VFX share a behind-the-scenes look at the original stop-motion pilot and its challenges. They’ll also discuss how Arnold and USD played an integral role in the production and why they’ll continue to use both tools in their pipeline.

Thursday, August 4

12:00 pm ET: Camila Cabello & the Toughest Green Screen Shot I’ve Ever Undertaken

• Join VFX artist and Flame Award winner Rufus Blackwell as he discusses how he developed a complex, 32-second, 360-degree green screen VFX drone shot with singer-songwriter Camila Cabello, announcing her opening of the UEFA Champions League Final. Blackwell will share tips and tricks to approaching complex green screen shots, camera tracking, beautifying a CG comp, and color grading with Flame and FPV drone technology.

1:30 pm ET: Using 3ds Max and TyFlow to Render Simulations in Real-Time within NVIDIA Omniverse Create

• Edward McEvenue of edstudios showcases a detailed breakdown on importing animated geometry and particle simulations into Omniverse Create for real-time rendering.

3:00 pm ET: ANDY: A Hero's Journey

• Director Jamy Wheless offers a behind-the-scenes look at how a global team of creatives joined forces to produce the heart-warming, animated short film. In early 2020, Wheless founded IGNITE Animation Studios, a remote facility with a new pipeline based on Maya and Unreal Engine.

4:30 pm ET: Open Standards: Charting a Path to a More Resilient Future

• Open standards play a critical role as projects scale in terms of workload and complexity. Hear how Autodesk drives open source projects forward, including USD, LookdevX, MaterialX, and Hydra, while paving the way for tool-agnostic workflows that benefit artists.

Autodesk’s virtual SIGGRAPH Vision Series is free - register here. 

More information about Autodesk at SIGGRAPH 2022 in Vancouver is available here.

Source: Autodesk

Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.