Maximize the power of Pixar's USD with Arnold software in production scenarios. We'll show examples of exporting and importing USD assets—including full shading, material assignments, and render setup—from any of the applications that Arnold supports, such as Maya software, 3ds Max software, Houdini, or Cinema 4D. We’ll also demonstrate how you can take advantage of the power of USD's composition and variants to address common scenarios in modern studio pipelines. All of Arnold software’s effort for USD is open source. You'll learn what's out there and how you can contribute.

Through Maya software, we can solve the limits of digitally shooting both on-set and recreated environments so that the initial ideas can come to life. Whether it's recreating a museum for Missy Elliott or the Staples Center for rapper Cal Scruby, Maya has played an essential role in making these ideas happen. This class will show you how the speaker placed the live-action talent into new environments, and how those environments were built from the ground up. You will see what went into creating the interior of the Staples Center from scratch—including modeling, texturing, lighting, and rendering—and how the artist was placed inside with the camera sweeping all around. You will also see how we overcame some obstacles on Missy Elliott's latest music video, "Cool Off," by digitally recreating a museum.

Synchronizing two robotic motion-control camera rigs, we’ve been able to create a new visual effect never attempted before: time displacement, which involves having the image reflected in a mirror show the reflection of an action 10 seconds after that action happens on the screen. We can detach the time of the reflection, but maintain the physics of a coherent reflection angle—all in a single take.

Arnold is a powerful production renderer used across the industry for realistic imagery. However, you can use Arnold for much more than rendering. The film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a good example of Arnold software’s versatility. NPR (nonphotorealistic rendering) can be a solution for fast-turnaround visualization projects, such as initial briefs or competitions. In this class, we will explore how to use traditional 2D illustration techniques in 3ds Max software with the powerful and versatile Arnold Toon Shader, with the help of some OSL nodes. To streamline the process, you will learn how to use Arnold Operators to create templates and efficiently apply different illustration styles that are perfect for fast-paced projects. From adjusting linework quality to hatching styles, we will cover tips and tricks to start implementing NPR and stylized looks into your workflow.

In the real world, one program just can’t do it all. Sketching, massing models, final design, animation, and rendering of engineering models—this class will discuss the workflow for using multiple Autodesk products in a production environment. Discover the ins and outs of this workflow, starting with a sketch, moving to Inventor software for final design, then finishing with 3ds Max software and Arnold to render the final animation. Learn how Autodesk Drive can help manage the workflow files, review the Inventor-to-3ds-Max import process, and see how to render photo-quality images. We’ll cover how to use Arnold materials and lights to light the scene and composition to create compelling images. And we’ll show you how the Camera controls can adjust the scene exposure and depth of field. Get ahead of the competition by learning to create your renderings using photographic composition in a streamlined workflow.

Learn how to use USD across the Maya tool set to help solve the problem of being able to store, edit, and export complex asset data like modeling, materials, lighting, and shading variations in a single USD container. This also allows users to transport and share these data across different software products along various stages of a pipeline non-destructively and without any loss of fidelity. Create, edit, and share complex USD prototypes with multiple variants, purposes, and so on, using only the Maya tool sets. Finally, use the power of Maya Bifrost to procedurally create an entire city of pods from one unique module by creating complex prototypes and USD Point Instancer that can be rendered easily with the Arnold MtoA plug-in.

365 Materials Challenge started as a case study to create realistic materials. The goal: create one physically based rendering (PBR) material per day. In this demo, we'll learn how Open Shading Language (OSL) maps and Arnold Renderer helped us achieve this goal. We'll explain how to make the transition from 3ds Max legacy maps to OSL maps, and describe some tips and techniques for making the best use of OSL maps. Then we'll show how to create photorealistic materials with Arnold Renderer with OSL maps and Arnold's Standard Surface. Then, we'll see how Autodesk’s Physical Material is the best software for studios and individuals handling multiple renderers. Last, we'll look at techniques for starting to use Arnold Renderer for architectural visualization, and explore why it is such a powerful tool.

This class will teach you a typical workflow for creating a basic rendering of a scene using the highly efficient renderer Arnold, which was incorporated into 3ds Max 2018 software. The class will begin with a brief overview of the Arnold renderer before learning to use Arnold-specific lights to illuminate the scene. You will learn about the shaders provided for Arnold and how to modify the parameters of the Arnold Standard Surface shader to create different kinds of materials. Finally, we will use the Arnold renderer to render the scene.

In the real world, one program just can’t do it all. Sketching, massing models, final design, animation, and rendering of engineering models; this class will discuss the workflow for using multiple Autodesk products in a production environment. Discover the ins and outs of this workflow, starting with a SketchBook, moving to a massing model, then Inventor software for final design, and finally 3ds Max software and Arnold software to render the final animation. Learn how Drive can help manage the workflow files, review the Inventor-to-3ds-Max import process, and learn how to render photo-quality images. Use Physical Materials and the Sun Positioner to simulate outdoor lighting and composition to create compelling images. Utilize the Physical Camera controls to adjust the scene exposure and depth of field. Get ahead of the competition by learning to create your renderings using photographic composition in a streamlined workflow.

High-quality architectural presentations are more than just good-looking renders; your images need to tell a compelling story. This course will show you how to use 3ds Max software to create cinema-quality presentations and expertly showcase your architectural projects. The course will explain the basics of composition and visual storytelling from a filmmaker’s perspective, including such topics as storyboarding, shot selection, shot sequencing, and screen motion. We’ll then dive into camera techniques and workflow in 3ds Max, including camera selection, animation, rigging, and rendering, following through to postproduction and final output. Every building tells a story—learn how to tell the best story for your project.

Creating animations in 3ds Max software is quick, easy, and fun. In this class, you will learn to animate the movement of daylight throughout a day to create an animated shadow study. This study will provide an accurate representation of how daylight will cast shadows in the scene. You will start by creating a Sun Positioner that provides realistic sunlight with a full sky environment. This system uses a simple and intuitive workflow to create geographically correct positioning and movement of the sun. You will then animate the position of the sun over time for a realistic shadow study.

A modern VFX (visual effects) rendering pipeline is made up of many materials with detailed descriptions called looks. Looks need to be passed across different software products without loss of fidelity. Current workflows involve duplication across complex pipeline tasks that are hard and laborious to maintain. Arnold software lets you author asset looks in any supported software and then reuse the same looks in another software using the Arnold data format, which is fully extensible. Arnold furthers this approach by capitalizing on open-source back ends like MaterialX and USD, enabling users to build a very flexible, reusable, and connected pipeline. Arnold users can take advantage of this interoperability right out of the box. The data is always live, enabling users to make alterations (major or minor) at any point in the pipeline. In this talk, you will learn about setting up your pipeline to capitalize on reusability of looks. You will also see examples of taking your asset looks through different software.

This class will present a fast, easy-to-use workflow for creating great-looking textures using Maya software and Substance Painter. This hands-on class has the indie artist and 3D generalist in mind, instead of the big company with an army of specialized artists. Substance Painter has become the industry standard tool for creating textures for games and films, but it's a very complex and daunting software, and its integration with Maya is not always straightforward. This class will cut to the chase and show you how to prepare your model in Maya, set your materials, export, procedurally create the texture in Substance Painter, and then—finally—bring it all back to Maya and render beautifully with Arnold.

Mechanical and architectural design relies on visualization technologies to showcase designers’ ideas. Increasingly, that relies on generating highly realistic materials. This class will examine how to incorporate the use of OSL shaders along with the physical material in 3ds Max 2020 software to render photorealistic images and animations. Learn where to find and download OSL shaders that can be used in a visualization, and how to customize your own OSL shaders. Use multiple shaders to create a unique material for your models. Get ahead of the competition by learning to create visually compelling, photorealistic renderings using OSL shaders and compositional rules in a streamlined workflow.

Arnold 5.0 represents an evolution in rendering for artists everywhere. With a significant update to the Arnold core, faster rendering, new feature additions, enhancements to existing workflows, and exciting new capabilities, Arnold 5 will help artists create more stunning imagery than ever. Join Autodesk Technical Specialists John Paul Giancarlo and Morgan Evans for this hands-on class, where you will experience the power and simplicity of rendering with Arnold in Maya for yourself. Arnold 5 is available now as a stand-alone renderer, as well as a plugin for Maya (MtoA), 3ds Max (MAXtoA), and Cinema4D (C4DtoA).

SYNK is an innovative real-time production toolkit that enables content creators to produce linear and virtual content using the same tools and processes used by big studios with decades of experience in animation. SYNK allows assets from traditional digital content creation software and outputs from game engines to be managed in a single accessible environment through an integrated real-time workflow. SYNK manages the data from the early concept phase all the way to final delivery, enabling output to virtual reality (VR) and extended reality (XR), cinema, animation, video games, and virtual productions.

As technology continues to evolve, the intersection of 3D design and artificial intelligence (AI) presents exciting opportunities for innovation in content creation. In this session, we'll showcase experimentation with innovative techniques—namely, ComfyUI, ControlNet, and Stable Diffusion—to forge a future pipeline that seamlessly integrates 3D rendering with AI-driven processes. We'll outline a visionary approach toward empowering artists and streamlining the content creation process. By using advanced AI algorithms and data-driven insights, we aspire to give artists greater control over their creations as they enhance their efficiency and creativity while using Autodesk tools, specifically Maya and Arnold software. Our vision for the future pipeline revolves around achieving a seamless transition from 3D design to AI render, while empowering artists with unprecedented control over their creations.

This class will present a quick and easy-to-use workflow between Maya software and ZBrush. Maya is the industry-standard software for 3D animation, and ZBrush is the industry-standard software for 3D sculpting. Although both are widely used in the industry, it is not common to see beginner tutorials about the workflow and integration between both software systems. This course will try to fill this gap with plenty of examples and best practices. We will show you how to create basic meshes in Maya, how to refine the basic mesh in ZBrush using Live Boolean, how to go back and forth between both programs using the GoZ plug-in, how to export high and low-poly models back to Maya, and how to create textures in ZBrush and apply them to an Arnold shader, among other interesting topics. In the end, you will have a very good grasp of how to use Maya and ZBrush together.

It's 2023 and you've been wondering "WTF is USD?” You're not alone! Software never stops evolving, and it is easy to feel left behind when new tech enters the scene. Funny enough, that is exactly what USD is aiming to address. USD stands for Universal Scene Description, and it is an open-source initiative, meaning it is being built in a public facing manner, without any single company claiming ownership of its development. Rather, multiple companies share the same vision – a world where sharing production assets among programs is consistent, reliable and easy. In this class you will learn USD's origin, where its currently at in the Media & Entertainment Industry, where it is headed, and how these techniques and technologies add benefit to any industry pipeline.

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened new frontiers for creative expression and world building, transcending traditional boundaries of imagination. This session will explore the potential of AI-generated worlds in fostering empathy, rituals, and community building, while reflecting on the environmental challenges faced in the Anthropocene. We’ll discuss a case study of an imagined world, that we call Eden. This world was designed to have one-to-one mirrors of the relationships formed between ecosystems on planet Earth, while being different enough to avoid an uncanny valley effect. We’ll highlight the role of AI-generated worlds in providing a mirror for understanding our own planet and community, emphasizing the importance of empathetic practices for planetary interests.