If you want to see what innovation looks like, just look at the computer games industry. With the advancement of real-time interactive 3D graphics engines, low-cost, high-powered computer graphics hardware, and new types of input devices, the video game industry is transforming the way others are using these technologies. As a result, new trends and solutions are now being adopted by businesses and organizations outside of the gaming industry to streamline the understanding of complex projects and information and better the overall ability to make faster, more informed decisions. This class will give you a bird’s eye view of how others in government, military, and corporate businesses sectors are adopting trends and making use of technologies from the video game industry to create solutions that would otherwise not be possible with traditional industry tools.

In this class, students will learn how to use Revit software, the Live add-in, and Stingray game engine to create high-quality, interactive visualizations from 3D models. First, you will learn how to use the Live add-in to convert 3D Revit models to the game engine, Stingray. Once in Stingray engine, you will learn how to create immersive environments for your clients. In these environments, owners can explore, interact, and even edit their own projects. They can choose from various design options and view the costs associated with them. Students will learn a workflow that is simple, repeatable, and teachable, even for those unfamiliar with video games or programming. The benefits of using gaming in construction include increasing owner involvement, reducing the time and effort it takes to produce an attractive proposal, and facilitating bidding on smaller projects with a quality offering only affordable by larger projects today. Visualizations through Stingray game engine ultimately lead to winning more work. This session features Autodesk Stingray and Revit. AIA Approved

What would school look like if it played like a video game? Faculty at Boise State University created an experimental game-based learning management system and have been conducting and researching classes built on the principles of quest-based learning (QBL) using experiences points, badges, achievements, leveling, and student choice. The presentation demonstrates tools, pedagogy, and results of more than 2 years of design-based research into student success and satisfaction in QBL.

This class will walk you through how to prepare and deploy your Inventor/Fusion 360 3D models into a bespoke application for the HTC Vive and the Microsoft HoloLens. Creating interactions on the Vive and the HoloLens is more like video-game development than engineering, and that can be a tough barrier to cross for those who don't have a computer science background. You will leave this class with a basic understanding of how to create and deploy what is essentially a really boring video game that lets you walk around your Inventor/Fusion 360 3D models as if they were really there. We'll also cover how to optimize your designs in 3ds Max software for maximum performance, and we'll cover some of the limitations of the hardware. If you've ever wanted to see a full-scale 3D rendering of your designs that you can walk around and mark up, then this is the class for you.

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Anthony Jones is one of the most sought-after artists, having done visuals for Hasbro, Inc., Magic: The Gathering, and God of War®. In college, he pursued his two greatest passions, film and video games. He became a programmer before discovering his love for concept art. He currently also teaches at the Otis College of Art and Design and at Red Engine Studios in Los Angeles, CA. In this class, Anthony Jones will break down his methods and thoughts when approaches a new design. He will discuss how important it is to have a solid foundation for your concept. He will also talk about how he has had success with past projects and what influences him to make the decisions.

In this class, we will demonstrate the differences and similarities between rigging for games and rigging for film. We will cover the challenges associated with each area and what can be done to overcome such challenges.

Today clients expect to be "wowed." This means that you as a designer need to find ways to do more with your work and help your audience or clients better understand your designs and intentions. Generating compelling, interactive 3D in presentations is a way to really engage and help clients and stakeholders visualize spaces and designs, and in turn help you win more work. We'll use real-life project examples to show you how to effectively integrate a workflow that takes advantage of your existing Autodesk® Revit or AutoCAD® Civil 3D® software models to create an interactive walkthrough that is as easy and smooth to navigate as a modern video game and can be used for client, real estate, or town board presentations. We will discuss some of the challenges that designers may encounter when getting started, but how ultimately, anyone can take advantage of technology to produce professional presentations that can help build more business. Learn about available options for gaming engines to get the most value from your project intelligent models.

Whether we use a pencil or the latest technology, as digital artists we still need to develop creative to give our clients an advantage over the competition. Clients sell the same product to the same clientele—how do we help them differentiate? We have technology converging in many ways (architectural visualization, video games, real time)—how do we find the best way to make use of this convergence? Ultimately, as a creative agency or architectural visualization firm, we need to look for ways to show off products and environments that are visually more compelling so that they become the catalyst of this differentiation. Products such as 3ds Max software, Maya software, NVIDIA mental ray software, Revit software, AutoCAD software, and new emerging real-time technologies like Showcase software help with this problem, but that’s just the beginning. In this roundtable we will talk about why we follow these trends and where these new technologies will bring us. Is it all a fad? Will we find a real practical use other than entertainment? Will our clients end up showing us the way?

Game engines are known for their innovative graphics and physics. That would make it seem like game engines are only beneficial to architects. This is just not the case. Game engines provide a wide range of benefits to engineering firms, and this class will explain how to get started using them in a way that is easy, fun, and affordable. Game engines could be used to help QA/QC a project, or to help visualize engineering analysis 3D models, or for real-time interactivity using virtual reality (VR), or even as an interactive game that shows construction sequencing animations, and much, much more. The possibilities are endless. Game engines are fun to use, so it’s time to use them in your engineering firm!

You've heard the stories of humble startups who create a hit game that brings them fame and fortune. Although many of your students will sign on with larger companies when they graduate, some of them will go off and create amazing work on their own or with small teams. Learn how you can incorporate the entrepreneurial spirit and skills in your curriculum and help your students be prepared for whatever path they choose.

Games and applications, especially those on continually evolving mobile devices, now occupy an increasing percentage of a student's day. At the same time, performance in math and engineering for that same demographic is dwindling at an alarming rate. To compete in the future and secure promising opportunities, the latter (but not necessarily the former) must change. This class will offer ways to increase class engagement while using—and building—the types of games and applications almost certainly found in nearly every student's pocket.

In this hands-on lab, you'll use AutoCAD software to create a basic 3D game environment and a side-scrolling 3D game environment. Learn how to create and import street furniture, buildings, vehicles, and other 3D objects using AutoCAD software's Solid, Surface, and Mesh tools. Export the 3D environment to an FBX file format for the Stingray gaming engine. Import the AutoCAD 3D model into Stingray to see the model in real time. This class is designed to expand your AutoCAD 3D modeling knowledge.

In this intermediary class I will discuss the theory behind my workflow for shading and texturing environments, props, and characters. These techniques can be used to texture any high-resolution object, whether for visual effects, animated films, video game cinematics, or even architectural work. We will discuss shaders, as well as available methods for applying textures to your models. We will also cover pattern creation methods, from procedurals to hand-painted textures to photo manipulation. We will focus on how to efficiently shade thousands of individual objects without having to spend a lot of time UV shading everything (although we will touch on UV shading). Many of the examples will use 3ds Max software, Mudbox software, Chaos Group's V-Ray rendering engine, and Adobe Photoshop—but you can apply the principals discussed to the 3D app, paint application, and renderer of your choice.

In this intermediary class I will build upon the theory presented in my class, Shading And Texturing Workflow, with a practical example that involves shading and texturing a high-resolution photoreal robot. The techniques presented can be used to texture any high-resolution hard-surface object, whether for visual effects, animated films, video game cinematics, or even architectural work. We will focus on how to efficiently shade thousands of individual objects without having to spend a lot of time UV shading everything. Blended box maps, projection paint, curvature maps, occlusion maps, and the building of a library of materials are just some of the topic that we will cover. I will use 3ds Max software, Chaos Group's V-Ray rendering engine, and Adobe Photoshop for this example, but you can apply the principals discussed to the 3D app, paint application, and renderer of your choice.

At Eidos-Montreal, the art team is passionate about architecture and it shows in our games.  Deus: Ex: Mankind Divided features some of the richest environments eaver built in a video game.  In this talk, you are invited to take a peek behind the curtain.

Hubert Corriveau, Environment Director will explain the process by which Eidos-Montreal typically builds an environment using Autodesk 3ds Max. He will dive into the details such as the challenge of designing an extremely dense, narrative driven and gameplay-heavy environment while trying to stay as close as possible to real-life architectural constraints. He will also approach how to deconstruct an environment into lightweight visual modules to be able to polish them by adding unique visual elements: clutter, decals and more. How to then re-organize the modules into large, memory-intensive environments, and finally the limits of current real-time technologies and their workaround.

 

In a well-set-up workflow, it gets harder to find those incremental improvements that we can use to shave seconds off of each task. What if we could shave seconds off of lots of tasks with one tool? Computer gamers and mechanical-keyboard enthusiasts have a few tools that the CAD community has not yet widely embraced. Gaming peripherals are designed to send multiple keystrokes or commands to a computer in one key press. This class will look at how input devices such as game pads, gaming mice, and customized keyboards can improve a design professional’s workflow. We’ll look at several types of individually customizable input tools, and discuss how we can implement tools that were not designed for a corporate environment in that environment. We’ll examine where these tools have shortcomings, and how to dial in their utility versus the potential for them to be a distraction. The speaker has been using the tools we’ll discuss for more than a decade in Revit software and AutoCAD software—find out why.

3D models help us to create better-quality products, but also help us to visualize our designs in various ways: 3D images, videos, games, 360 panoramas, virtual tours, augmented reality, virtual reality, and so on. All these are digital and are able to reach a big audience. Sometimes we need to step out of this digital world and go back to the basics! Brick Reality is a partly 3D printed and partly Lego build of a 3D road design. This class will show you how an InfraWorks model was made and turned into visualizations and a 3D-printed/Lego model.

In this intermediary class I will show practical examples of my workflow for producing concept art. My workflow combines both 2D painting and 3D rendering to produce the most detailed images possible in the shortest amount of time. I have split up my image-making process into 20 stages, starting with rough 2D sketches and photobashing. I then move on to rough 3D and then a more detailed 3D stage, followed by a final 2D stage of painting tiny details and compositing the final image. Whether or not you're a concept artist for visual effects, animated films, or video games, you'll gain insight into techniques that can help your own process. We will primarily use Adobe Photoshop, 3ds Max software, Chaos Group's V-Ray rendering engine, and Red Giant Software's Magic Bullet—but you can apply the principals discussed to the software of your choice.

Creating photorealistic digital assets is key to increasing the realism of today's games and movies today. Could it also be important for decors, natural scenes, samples, faces, bodies, or props? There is a fast-growing demand to bring the as-built or as-existing reality into the production pipeline. Some advanced production houses have embraced reality capture technologies, and they already use photos, videos, or lasers to capture reality. The Autodesk Reality Capture Group has developed tools that make these technologies easier to use. Come and discuss your needs for reality capture, and see how you can benefit by using these new tools to create your own digital assets for use in your own production environment.

This class will focus on basic workflows in Stingray game engine to get your project into Stingray game engine for visualization. We will focus on what you need to do to prep your data and convert your design data to a Stingray project. You will discover the pitfalls to avoid, and you’ll get to an interactive model quickly. And we will cover basic interaction. The class will assume you have familiarity with 3ds Max software and either InfraWorks 360 software or AutoCAD Civil 3D software. Both are preferred. This session features Autodesk Stingray, 3ds Max, and InfraWorks 360. AIA Approved