This round-table discussion covers the business of being an independent business owner. Discover from the experiences of others that there's more to a successful business than just being good at what you do. We will discuss 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.

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 roundtable discussion focuses on topics around freelancing and running your own small business. Discover from the experience of others that there's more than just being good at what you do. This discussion covers the business of being an independent business owner. We address topics relating to what type of business you should form, marketing and advertising, financing, and paying yourself. Many freelance designers are very skilled engineers and artists. This session takes an approach that keeps that in mind. Learn about community resources and online tools that make managing your business easier so you can focus on your clients.

This lecture will be an entertaining and exhaustive behind-the-scenes look at the way DBOX created an entire marketing campaign for the tallest residential tower in the western hemisphere. Starting with the naming of 432 Park Avenue, we will look at how a brand position grows to inform every aspect of a creative process. We will examine branding, visualization, film, interactive, casting, advertising, film direction, architectural photography, fashion photography, aerial photography, and music composition. The lecture will touch on the process of every step, examining how conceptual sketches evolve into successful final-marketing weapons. While the lecture will visit almost every creative discipline at DBOX, we will reserve considerable detail for the visualization, concept, and film work of 432 Park Avenue. This session features 3ds Max. AIA Approved

No matter how long you've been using 3ds Max software in production, you always have some portion of the software you've never explored or some unknown nugget of information that could save you a lot of time. This class is all about those quick tips and tricks that cover little-known tools or unusual uses for tools you already know in 3ds Max.

In this class, you learn to use MassFX in 3ds Max® for rigid body simulations in a destructive environment. Discover techniques for breaking things dynamically while maintaining artistic control. Learn about joint setups and art direction techniques to get MassFX to do what you want it to do rather than just what physics wants to do. There is nothing more satisfying than blowing stuff up in CG. Now, learn to do it better.

In this class, we present tried and tested methods for creating large-scale environments out of modular pieces. These tricks can help you populate your scenes with geometry and dress your shots quickly. Our case study is a 4-minute short film that used a single12 foot x 12 foot modular set to bring an entire story to life.

Facial setup can be a complex task, but when it is done right, it can be done quickly with flexible results. This class explores methods for setting up faces using a blend of bones and morph targets with the goal of having production-ready controls and flexibility for animators to do their jobs. When morph targets are blended with bone systems and compound targets, the result can be very organic and produce a natural system. Building targets that blend together can be time consuming, but with a few tricks it can be fast and easy to blend compound targets.

Everything from walking and running to quadrupeds and bipeds relies on a few basic principles. Many artists get these principles wrong! In this class, I speed through the different cycle types and demonstrate the proper use of timing, posing, and space to get your cycles pixel-perfect and frame accurate.

Learn methods and best practices for setting up and rigging mechanical rigs of all types. Rigging systems are not just for characters but also for handling complex systems with mechanical parts. Multi-jointed systems and systems that need to operate within constrained parameters are explored along with many of the typical problems that are faced when dealing with mechanical setups.

This class covers several techniques for shortening the amount of time needed to produce architectural animations. The class demonstrates the impact of planning during the layout and animatic phase of an animation project and how camera decisions can save time and money.

This class covers the basics of the SketchBook Pro desktop application. You will learn how to create painterly effects that mimic real mediums and textures. We teach these techniques through the lens of character creation and creature design.

Spencer Nugent is a professional industrial designer and a founder of Sketch-a-day.com and idsketching.com. In this class, he talks about how sketching is one of the most universal ways of communication. He covers how to capture an idea and express it in a visual form. Furthermore, he explores ways to be better at communicating through sketching and lays out ways to go beyond a plateau to improve your skills.

This is an intensive class about animating a human face. You learn how to see a face: its form and structure and its features when a person talks, feels, and expresses. We cover anatomy and muscle behavior, and we explore what's really going on underneath a face when that face is showing emotion. We show examples of great facial acting and the psychology behind this acting in making human characters come alive. Although this is a class that specializes in faces, the subject matter is a very large part of how a CG artist can become a master animator and actor. This class is also software agnostic. Although we demonstrate with Maya® software, we are focusing on the art and techniques of character facial animation that work whether your platform is Maya, 3ds Max®, or Autodesk® Softimage® software.

There are presently factions of diversity across the construction industry and representing them in media is one way of signaling to additional diverse talent that there is a place for them in the industry. But today, if you scroll through a construction-related content feed, you’re still likely to see and hear from people who look a lot alike. How can we change that? What types of content can be highlighted to accurately showcase more inclusivity? What sorts of initiatives can the media industry adopt? A diverse panel of representatives from the media and construction industries will review what some of the challenges to showcasing diversity in media thus far have been, and how we can address them to be more inclusive. The goal is for the discussion to spark ideas on new topics for coverage and presenting content with inclusion in mind, so we can attract more diversity to the construction industry.

This class covers how to use storyboarding and previsualization tools to help convey ideas before final rendering. We show you some successful and not-so-successful examples.

Breaking down your 3D renders for compositing is not as intuitive and easy as many people assume. This class explains why you break things into layers and shows you techniques for doing it well. Create final looks easily in your pipeline by breaking your renders into passes that will allow you to dial everything in. Understand render elements and what they bring to the table. We go over VFX shots incorporated into live action plates and also full CG shots where everything is rendered.

It is not enough to know how to create great 3D renderings. You have to make images that really sell, and to do that you need the knowledge of a photographer. This hands-on lab covers worthy architectural photography principals and explains how to apply them to 3D renderings using mental ray® in 3ds Max® 2014 software. In this lab, you learn how to translate good image composition, lighting, and staging to your renderings. We also discuss photographic phenomena such as vignetting, barrel distortion, glare, and other issues and describes how to fine-tune these photographic flaws to your advantage to create a rendering that really sells.

Architectural renderings are generally extremely time consuming and usually require high-end equipment. Learn how to take full advantage of the Nitrous Accelerated Graphics Core in 3ds Max® software for previsualization to eliminate the need to perform a rendering. In addition, see various ways to reduce render times by using fake but convincing techniques based on effective use of materials, HDR images, and compositing. In this class, we also tackle a couple of the more difficult but most often needed means of creating grass and people using Hair And Fur and the new Populate toolset in 3ds Max 2014.