Join us for a bite of cinematic innovation as David Vickery, Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, shares how their team brought dinosaurs back to life in this summer’s blockbuster film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. This session showcases the combined efforts of the ILM creature effects and visual effects teams and how they used data and leading-edge technology to build the real SFX models to breathe life into the dinosaurs.

After collaborating on the award-winning feature Arrival, Framestore reunited with visionary director Denis Villeneuve for the 2017 science-fiction sequel Blade Runner 2049. In this session, Framestore will discuss the visual artistry and tools that contributed to the film's distinct look, and, in the spirit of Blade Runner 2049, we'll touch upon the trends that are shaping the future of visual effects.

In this class you will learn how to position yourself as an expert, treat your career as a business, deal with clients, build an unstoppable resume and reel, and create an effective website and online presence. You will learn how to gain a following based on your work, and you'll discover other activities that you can do to get your name out there so you'll get noticed. You will learn about things you should do to associate yourself with various products, tools, and subject matter. You will understand how to do your research, find your niche, and define yourself so effectively that people instantly associate you with their projects and reach out to you before they contact anyone else. Finally, you will learn how to target specific studios that will benefit your career, and you'll discover backdoor ways to get in with those companies, avoiding the other hundreds of applicants by taking the initiative and the time to approach in ways that will set you apart and eliminate the competition.

Oregon-based LAIKA is a renowned animation studio that has inspired audiences with an unprecedented visual artistry. Animators breathe life into meticulously hand-crafted puppets on handmade sets. Visual effects artists seamlessly enhance performances with cutting-edge technologies. This unparalleled fusion of stop-motion and computer graphics has garnered the studio two Oscar nominations and worldwide acclaim. In this session, Mark Shapiro will discuss the upcoming feature The Boxtrolls, using rarely seen images and timelapses. Production puppets will be on display.

Augmented reality—or supplementing real-life experiences with computer-generated images (think Google Glasses)—is a rapidly evolving market. A recent study released by CCS Insight predicts that the augmented-reality hardware market alone will reach $4 billion by 2018. As design studios consider how they can become more inventive and effective in the future, augmented reality is definitely playing a role as they consider how to blur the lines between physical and digital prototypes. In this class Brian Pene, director of emerging technology at the office of the CTO at Autodesk, Inc., shares insights into the trends and new technology that his team is researching and involved with. Specifically, Brian will talk about the new types of both input and display interfaces that have recently become available, as well as the possibilities with interactive real-time 3D experiences. He’ll also talk about how you can apply this technology to design problems of particular concern to automotive design, such as the improvement of perceived quality.

In part 2 of this 2-part class (part 1 taught by Joe Gunn) you will see the production pipeline from start to finish on a commercial spec spot for the HBO show Boardwalk Empire. This class will pick up where part 1 left off, showing how the latest tools and techniques were used to bring this piece to life. The animation and visual effects are complete; now it's time for some lighting. Who knows, the client may even have some changes that need to be quickly addressed before render passes are set up and composited. Throughout both classes you will learn real-world production-proven techniques and timesaving tips that will help artists from any background who use 3ds Max software.

This round table discussion will centre on the strategic deployment of technology within Arch Viz commercial projects and studios. James Orchard and Sam Slicer from FloodSlicer  will review the creative decision making process that lies behind the creation of successful high end projects,  referencing FloodSlicer projects that demonstrate high levels of technical prowess – in particular animations. The Arch Viz environments of the round table audience will be included and considered in discussions.

3ds Max 2016 software has shipped and you may have heard or even seen the new features, but do you know how they work or what tips or insights you can gain for using them? In this class we’ll take a deep dive into the top new features in the latest release and explore some key benefits of some of the other new features. Did you know you could create new modifiers with the Max Creation Graph editor? What does the updated Xref system mean for you? What is the difference between TurboSmooth and Open Subdiv? Did you know you could create your own customer templates? This fast-paced session will cover these features, and hopefully more.

More and more devices and environments are capable of showing advanced 3D models providing enormous opportunities for interactive 3D. Unfortunately data built for manufacturing is often way too detailed and filled with irrelevant details making the models too big for streaming and too heavy to render with high performance. In this session we will cover how Simplygon can bridge the gap between CAD data and interactive experiences.

The mParticles toolset (formerly Particle Flow toolbox#2) has been fully integrated into 3ds Max software since the 2013 subscription expansion pack. This class will look at particle structure and particle destruction. You will learn how to avoid unwanted explosive behavior caused by the NVIDIA PhysX and MassFX engines. You'll also discover how to build structure suitable for bindings inside of Particle Flow, how to trigger breaking behavior, and how to skin geometry to particles that can rip and tear. Please see video: https://vimeo.com/30497054

Shawn Hendriks returns with this popular tips and tricks class and a whole new set of techniques to expand your thinking on how you can use 3ds Max software. Shawn started out using 3D Studio Dos 2.0 software, and he worked as the Canadian technical specialist for 3ds Max software for many years, exploring the dark corners of the software. No matter how long you've been using 3ds Max software, chances are you'll learn something new in this class and be surprised by a tool that you'd forgotten all about.

It's not enough to know how to create striking 3D renderings; you have to make images that really sell. To effectively sell your renderings, you need the knowledge of a photographer. This class will introduce worthy architectural photography principles and show you how to apply them to 3D renderings. You will learn how to translate good image composition, lighting, and staging to your renderings. This class will also discuss photographic phenomena (such as vignetting, barrel distortion, and glare), and we will cover how to fine-tune these photographic flaws to your advantage to create compelling visualizations that really sell.

This interactive class will demonstrate the importance of the discovery process at the beginning of any visualization or video project. After an introduction to the key elements of the discovery phase, the class attendees will collaborate to develop a set of questions to ask during discovery that will achieve the best results and reveal the single most important message to tell. Working in small groups, the class will then compete with each other to find the most compelling story in several scenarios based on typical client requests.

Animation can be a time-consuming venture that can slow down the production pipeline. You can use a host of procedural animation tools to speed the process and produce flexible and editable animation sequences. This class will help attendees to expand their knowledge of 3ds Max software's animation toolset and procedural animation methods.

This class will illustrate the storytelling process undertaken for a recent international airport design competition in Dalian, China, and the critical role storytelling played in the firm’s competition submittal. The class will demonstrate how a variety of media was used to create an inspiring video that set the firm’s submittal apart from its competition. We will explore each phase of the project, starting with discovery and storyboards. Then we will move into a discussion of production for both live and CG elements, and we’ll end with compositing and editing. We will explain why key decisions were made and when they were made to get the best results. The audience will gain an understanding for each part of the process by seeing real-world examples and behind-the-scenes footage during each phase. Finally, we will share successes and lessons learned from our experience working with 2 Design and Production Teams that were on opposite sides of the world and 14 hours apart.

Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the biggest films of 2015, a thrill-seeking, high-octane adrenaline rush. Directed by George Miller, Fury Road is the fourth film in a franchise that was born in the 1970s and has continued to excite ever since. In this talk, Iloura's Greg O'Connor will explain how he led a team of artists and technicians through production to manage the large assets that were required to create the Citadel location, the stronghold of Immortan Joe. He will show you how to use Maya to manage high density 3D scan geometry and align photoscan camera sequences for projection in a real time environment, how to present real time images to your client for immediate feedback, and explore how to take advantage of interactive lighting, as well as real time representation of normal, displacement maps and textures. If you’re interested in learning how you can better utilize Maya for production and efficiency, this talk is for you.

The class will discuss the process of creating aerial cinematography and integrating computer-generated elements, including shoot preproduction and planning, helicopters and drones, FAA and aircraft limitations, cameras, high-frequency and low-frequency vibrations, rolling shutter, stabilization systems, footage selects, post-shoot stabilization, 3D tracking, 3D lighting, 3D rendering, compositing, color, and finishing. The course will be illustrated by videos of actual shoots, behind-the-scenes photos, and screen captures of post-production processes. The class will also review timelines and costs.

With nearly everything you need to make an animated film, Maya Entertainment Creation Suite software enables animators and directors to do some real guerrilla filmmaking. This class will walk you through some of the techniques we are employing to bring the feature film Dog Eat Dog to life on a budget of less than $1 million. From timesaving rigging techniques to at-your-desk facial motion capture, we are bringing our entire bag of tricks to bear in our quest to release quality animation on a grassroots budget.

Whether you’re a small firm or a big Hollywood studio, you’ll want the fastest rendering power available to bring your visions to life with reliable and flexible cloud access directly from your design environment. Join Intel and Chaos group, the makers of V-Ray - the world’s most popular renderer for architectural visualization – to explore how you can scale your rendering speed with your own systems at your location, or in the cloud. You will also learn how you can make use of this service for free through the end of the year, so you can start saying yes to crazy deadlines right away.

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.