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.

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.

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.

During this presentation, you’ll learn how to start using the Arnold rendering engine that is part of 3ds Max software. Lighting is a crucial element in architectural design. Based off an imported Revit file, you’ll learn what kinds of lights Arnold offers to help tell the story of your design. Besides exploring different Arnold lighting techniques, you’ll get a much better understanding of the most important Arnold render settings. This will include the advantage of NVIDIA’s RTX-based technology, which will help denoise your image in a split second. We’ll also explain the Arnold standard surface material to give you a much better understanding of the next step in the world of 3ds Max materials. The presentation will end with some smart vegetation techniques that don’t slow down your Arnold rendering at all.

The media and entertainment industry is faced with increased demand for high-quality visual effects—and shrinking production schedules and budget. Studios need to provide graphics applications for employees and freelancers from any location, foster collaboration, and minimize IT and real estate costs, while ensuring that IP is secure. To provide a native workstation-like experience for artists, companies are looking toward virtual desktop infrastructure powered by NVIDIA virtual GPU technology and Teradici cloud-access software. Learn how two leading visual effects and animation studios are meeting the demands of artists performing computer animation and modeling on Maya software from anywhere, while maintaining a high-quality user experience. See how you can use the latest NVIDIA RTX technology that lets Arnold boost performance for interactive rendering as compared to rendering with CPU only, along with the added security of Teradici PCoIP protocol.

In the wake of the second digital turn in architecture (Carpo, 2017), this talk questions the opinion of Gershenfeld (2012) that ‘’a new digital revolution is coming, this time in fabrication.’’ It questions the widespread use of digital fabrication from industry and investigates the impacts on architecture and society. It's not a pure architecture lecture but multidisciplinary research which tackles the 3D printing industry as we know it today. Specific examples from digital software such as processing would be given in order to demonstrate how the new tools give computational power to architects and produce a new architecture. The lecture debates the above phrase through different approaches towards digital materiality, the use of digital tools in fabrication, the goal of mass customization-collaboration and the relation of design with making. Moreover, It searches the origins and the development of the idea of digital fabrication from antiquity to 21st century. Specific examples are presented towards the prospects of digital fabrication regarding its opening to the society, its further development of embodied technology, and the overcoming of temporal limitations of cost, speed, and quality. Finally, it concludes with useful findings and questions for further research in the field.

3ds Max 2018 software introduces the Arnold 5.0 rendering engine as one of the default rendering engines, replacing the mental ray engine that many Revit users are accustomed to using. This has ramifications for workflow, materials, and lighting when linking or importing Revit models into 3ds Max software. You might be tempted to stick to the ART renderer to avoid the change, however the Arnold renderer can provide stunning still images, as well as 360°, virtual-reality, stereo panorama images when configured properly. This class will provide you with the tips and tricks you'll need to successfully pair your Revit model with the new features of 3ds Max. Come get acquainted with Arnold!

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.

Over the past year, we’ve seen the pandemic change the way studios work and affect how artists collaborate with one another. With remote work becoming the “new normal”, it’s become apparent that sharing a common physical space isn’t always necessary. We decided to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers by setting up a small remote studio to create a 3D sequence called Mkali's Mission, from concept through final render. We set out to create our animated short using each of the tools in the Media & Entertainment Collection – including Maya, 3ds Max, Arnold, and Mudbox – to showcase the breadth and power of the toolset. We also set up a ShoGrid site to track our progress and manage reviews. To bring this project to life, we hired freelance artists from across the globe for modeling, rigging, animation, FX, look development, and rendering. During this session, I’ll take you through each step of our journey, sharing all of the challenges, successes, and learnings along the way.

In the real world, one program just can't do it all when it comes to design, animation, and rendering of architectural models. This class will discuss the use of and best practices for animating and rendering Revit models using 3ds Max 2018 software and the new Arnold renderer in 3ds Max 2018. Learn methods for working with Revit models and rendering photo-quality images. Explore the use of the Scene Converter to update linked models so they work with Arnold. Use Physical Materials and the Sun Positioner to simulate outdoor lighting. Learn traditional photographic techniques and rules of composition to create compelling images. Learn how to frame a shot using composition techniques like the rule of thirds, diagonals, and the golden ratio. You will also see how to utilize Physical Camera controls to adjust scene exposure and depth of field. Get ahead of the competition by learning to create visually compelling, photorealistic renderings using photographic composition in a streamlined workflow.

Visualizing a complex project requires creation of high-quality images for print, video, interactive, virtual reality (VR), and more. Print and video may require full-featured renderers such as Arnold or V-Ray, while interactive and VR demand real-time engines such as Unreal and Unity. These competing requirements often create conflicts, making it difficult to manage large projects. The solution is to create flexible rendering pipelines that can deliver many different outputs with a minimum of fuss. This course will explore ways to optimize your projects for easy rendering across multiple engines and formats. This includes setting up elements such as geometry, lighting, textures, and materials so they can be used throughout the project. The course will show how to move as seamlessly as possible between technologies—including 3ds Max software, Maya software, Arnold, V-Ray, Substance, Unreal, and Unity—in a production environment.

3ds Max software is a mature, 3D digital content-creation package. It is widely used in the video game industry by numerous TV and VFX studios, and it’s a standard in design and architectural visualization. It’s the perfect outlet to let you explore and express your creativity and design intent. In this session, we’ll first explore best practices for importing design data into 3ds Max. Next, we’ll take a look at workflows for embellishing, adding details, and bringing your designs to life. Finally, we’ll use the flexibility of 3ds Max software’s powerful artist tools to achieve a look and feel that is truly your own. Take the lead, convey your vision, and tell your story with 3ds Max!

3ds Max software is a mature 3D digital content creation package widely used in the video game industry, at numerous television and visual effects studios, and as a standard in design and architectural visualization. With the recent addition of the Arnold renderer, creating stunning imagery and video has never been more accessible. Arnold now brings the visual quality of the Hollywood blockbuster movie back home to 3ds Max. In this session, we’ll explore techniques and workflows for bringing your Revit projects to life. First, we will see how to go from Revit software to Arnold in just a few minutes. Next, we’ll use tools such as Civil View, Populate, and Pflow to help tell a story. Then we’ll take a look at the brand-new Fluid system in 3ds Max that can create stunning water features in no time. And lastly, we’ll dive into some compositing workflows using Arnold AOVs. You might also have a chance to see what's coming next! Take your visualization game to the next level with Arnold and 3ds Max. Brute force for all!

3ds Max software is a mature 3D digital content creation package, widely used in the video game industry and by numerous television and visual effects studios. And it is a standard in design and architectural visualization. With the recent addition and democratization of the Arnold renderer, creating stunning imagery and video has never been more accessible. Arnold now brings the visual quality of Hollywood blockbuster movies back home to 3ds Max. In this session, you’ll learn how to import any CAD models in 3ds Max. Then, we’ll show how to create and edit shaders and build realistic lighting setup in an interactive environment. Next, we’ll see how to capitalize on out-of-the-box features to bring your designs to life, such as 3ds Max Fluids to simulate physically accurate liquids and nCloth to generate realistic fabric type objects. Last, we’ll look at flexible techniques for final project delivery. You might also have a chance to see what's coming next! Take your viz game to the next level with Arnold and 3ds Max. Brute force for all!

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.

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.

Layout in the animation and VFX (visual effects) industry utilizes a broad scope of tools to bring cinematic ideas to fruition. This session will be a deep dive into the benefits found using Maya software and Bifrost to boost creative film making and ultimately save time and money. In this course we will capitalize on the latest toolsets and features to compose content that aligns with the director's vision at an early stage of production.

Now you can use Arnold 6 software for production rendering on both the CPU and GPU. John Paul Giancarlo will show you how to take advantage of the latest technology and add GPUs for increased rendering power. Learn about Arnold in the USD ecosystem, including Hydra render delegate, Arnold USD procedural, and USD schemas for Arnold nodes and properties.