Collaboration has always been central to the design process. For most of human history, that meant collaborating with other people to find an optimal solution. Today, you have another option: collaborating with artificial intelligence (AI). AI can do things humans can’t. It can generate and evaluate thousands of design solutions in the time it takes you to refill your coffee cup. It can compare, iterate, and solve for challenges before a human designer understands what the challenges are, and achieve multiple objectives, even when the objectives seem to conflict. READ MORE >

The digital revolution has brought us many things—new ways of working and connecting, new ways of building and making. It has also brought us data. A lot of data. From model and project data to enterprise data and beyond, businesses are generating more information than ever before. “If you take all of human history, from the time we started writing on clay until the early part of this century, human beings came up with maybe five exabytes of data,” says Peter Leyden, futurist and senior fellow for strategic foresight at Autodesk. “Now we’re creating five exabytes of data every two days. And we... READ MORE >

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When it comes to visual effects and animation, most of the attention understandably goes to the work artists do in creative platforms like Maya and 3ds Max. But when it comes to getting that creative work onto the screen—and scaling your production pipeline to keep up with growing production demands—the renderer you choose makes a big difference. It’s all about balancing your quality needs against available compute power, rendering time, and human hours. READ MORE >

Great AU classes don’t just happen—they’re carefully conceived, crafted, revised, rehearsed, and presented. The process takes months—from initial submission in the Call for Proposals through mentorship, feedback, and execution. And the action continues even after the presentation, as many speakers continue to respond to comments and questions on their class pages on the AU website. READ MORE >