A huge amount of thanks go out to everyone who helped to make 3D Stimulus Day 2011 so successful! When you run into any of these people at events,
Ezra Cove, Director of the Game Art and Animation Program generously hosted the event and was on hand all day to help ensure that everything ran smoothly. Check out their new site at http://www.idagames.com.
Our wonderful speaker/presenter/moderator, Chad Moore from Turbine who helped wrangle panelists for the superb Tech Art Panel, and spoke to the timely topic of how to get a job in 3D. Chad's site http://artandanimationwork.com/ is a great resource! Chad is also a founder of the Rigging Dojo - teaching the art and science of character rigging. And he's running the Boston Maya User's Group as well - Chad's a busy guy!
Alex Schwartz and Yilmaz Kiymaz of Owlchemy Labs did an awesome presentation of how to Combine 2D and 3D in Unity. Their presentation is posted to their blog, so go check it out - and there are some goodies they snuck in after the presentation!!! It was very cool to have Mr. Chris Allen of Brass Monkey on hand to share a bit about their software that turns an iphone or other device into a fully immersive controller! Audience gameplay, FTW! (*BABY*)
During the lunch break everyone was able to visit the local vendor area, our 3d Farmer's Market, so to speak... Jono Forbes jumped right in to show everyone his Asset Cloud Tool for Unity, that provided asset and resource management in Unity. Chris Allen was playing games all day...errrr... demoing his Brass Monkey immersive controller technology with Smuggle Truck and the Owlchemy Labs' scientists, Alex Schwartz and Yilmaz Kiymaz. Frankie Martin with Wacom was on hand to let everyone try out the tablets. Elliott Mitchell of Vermont Digital Arts was there with his Spin Spell game that is available now on the app store! (Support your local artists! Go forth and download...) Vinnie LaCour had his Kinect/Motion Builder mocap demo that got tons of interest, and Great Eastern (hey, that's us!) had the Kinect & mo cap demo running and some systems set up so people could try out the new 2012 versions of the Autodesk software, as well as try their hand at sculpting in ZBrush!!
After lunch we started in with a bang! The star-studded Tech Art panel was great fun and super helpful - the crowd really stepped it up with lots of thoughtful questions, and everyone on the panel shared so much of their knowledge and experience!! The tech artists members of the panel who so freely gave of their time and knowledge were: Justin Woodard, Turbine; Brandon Bateman, Turbine; Farley Chery, Freelance/Instructor; Elliott Mitchell, Vermont Digital Arts; Ryan Griffin, Turbine; and of course Chad Moore who gave a command performance as moderator.
Willem van der Schyf of Tencent Boston then gave an amazing demo of his workflow for modelling normal mapped characters.
After Willem's presentation everyone headed upstairs to the vendor area to play some games, try out the mo cap solution with the Kinect and Motionbuilder, and have some good snacks and networking time. It was a great day and we are already looking forward to seeing everyone next year!
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